Which Sci-Fi References do you see more in Futurama?

[Reply #40 on:]

It possibly is star trek, but there are also very much Star wars references. I.e. the battle scene in ACOMO, Smitty and URL's light swords, the light swords in WITHW, ansd wasn't there Jar Jar Binks as head in jar somewhere?

edit: C3PO in COTH

every now and then another TOTPD

[Reply #41 on:]

 

Originally posted by David A:
 According to IMDb, Mr. Hartman was never on The Jetsons.  I can't say that I remember the episode that you're talking about, though.  I never really watched much of the new Jetsons episodes in the 80s.

Try tvtome.com, or at least when it is up in running again.  He is listed as one of the casts and he did "additional voices".

[Reply #42 on:]

Futurama samples a little from all of the big
Sci-Fi shows.  Love and Rockets was definitly the influence of Hal from 2001.  But for the most often used it has to be Star Trek.  Zapp himself is William Shattner-esk. 

[Reply #43 on:]

You know, I forgot to mention that Futurama has many references to Soylent Green, just as well.  Maybe not as much as Star Trek, or Star Wars, but it is funny when the make references to Soylent Green.

[Reply #44 on:]

 

Originally posted by fryfanSpyOrama:
You know, I forgot to mention that Futurama has many references to Soylent Green, just as well.  Maybe not as much as Star Trek, or Star Wars, but it is funny when the make references to Soylent Green.

Yea... there is alot of Soylent Green references in Futurama and all of them are funny so thats my favorite Reference even though its not a choice. Ha!

[Reply #45 on:]

When were Red Dwarf and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy referenced? I'm a fan of both yet can think of zero H2G2 references and one possible Red Dwarf reference (A book in the Scary Door episode with the library is called "The Red Dwarf of Courage" - this could be a reference to a type of star though).

[Reply #46 on:]

What about Jack Spegal and his owner Fluffers?  That cat alien, I thought, was a reference to cat from Red Dwarf.

And when Fry and Bender hang out at the Pub, it reminds me of Arthur and Ford drinking at the Pub in HHGTTG.

Fry is a slob, much like Lister in Red Dwarf.  Lister had a crush on Kochanski, who was a space captain.  He was a screw up and she was strict.  She only saw Lister as a friend at first.  Does that ring a bell?

[Reply #47 on:]

One that has not ben mentioned yet: 1984 by George Orwell.

e.g.
- the PE spot in Futurestock is a parody of 1984.
- the incinerator used by Hermes (i cannot recall the episode  )

[Reply #48 on:]

 

Originally posted by fryfanSpyOrama:
What about Jack Spegal and his owner Fluffers.  That cat alien, I thought, was a reference to cat from Red Dwarf.

She's a cat, granted, but she doesn't look or act like the Cat from RD or have anything else Red Dwarf-related going on nearby. Besides, there have been feline aliens in plenty of shows, Cat is just the most famous.

 

Originally posted by fryfanSpyOrama:And when Fry and Bender hang out at the Pub, it reminds me of Arthur and Ford drinking at the Pub in HHGTTG.

Besides the presence of a pub, how are these scenes similar? You could say it was a reference to Cheers by that logic.

 

Originally posted by fryfanSpyOrama:Fry is a slob, much like Lister in Red Dwarf.  Lister had a crush on Kochanski, who was a space captain.  He was a screw up and she was strict.  She only saw Lister as a friend at first.  Does that ring a bell?

The basic outline of the relationship there has been used in huge numbers of TV shows/ books/ films etc. A slob is a very common character type in comedy just like a space captain is in sci-fi, it's not surprising that both would appear in a sci-fi comedy.

There's a difference between deliberate references and vague similarities.

 

Originally posted by DDie:One that has not ben mentioned yet: 1984 by George Orwell.

e.g.
- the PE spot in Futurestock is a parody of 1984.
- the incinerator used by Hermes (i cannot recall the episode )

And in that Scary Door episode I mentioned there was the book "2984".

[Reply #49 on:]

@ Prof.Wernstrum

You have a cool (nerdy  ) signature!

[Reply #50 on:]

I'm just curious was Red Dwarf a animated show or Live action? I just want to know since I've never seen or heard of it until I started coming here.

[Reply #51 on:]

   

Originally posted by Professor Wernstrum:She's a cat, granted, but she doesn't look or act like the Cat from RD or have anything else Red Dwarf-related going on nearby. Besides, there have been feline aliens in plenty of shows, Cat is just the most famous.

She is meant as a minor reference. He's a humanoid cat alien.  Cat from Red Dwarf was the first thing that popped in my head when I first saw Fluffers.


   

Originally posted by Professor Wernstrum:Besides the presence of a pub, how are these scenes similar? You could say it was a reference to Cheers by that logic.

When was the last time cheers had a guy show up with a robot to drink?  Sure there have been drinking scenes, before that scene.  But a scene where a guy and robot stop by to drink is rare.  HHGTTG is the only other time I remember where a guy comes with a robot and they both drink and talk.

   

Originally posted by Professor Wernstrum:The basic outline of the relationship there has been used in huge numbers of TV shows/ books/ films etc. A slob is a very common character type in comedy just like a space captain is in sci-fi, it's not surprising that both would appear in a sci-fi comedy. There's a difference between deliberate references and vague similarities.

I'm aware of the that fact slobs are common in TV/Film/Books. But again it is rare to see a slob in space and have a crush on the ship's captain.  Leela has the spirit of Kochanski, based from reading the Last Human.

[Reply #52 on:]

 

Originally posted by Bumpy:
What about Jack Spegal and his owner Fluffers?  That cat alien, I thought, was a reference to cat from Red Dwarf.

Maybe she was a reference to M'Ress, from the old Star Trek cartoon.

More likely though, she and her pet were just a joke on the predominance of sci-fi aliens that look like anthropomorphic animals, and not a reference to anything specific.

 

Lister had a crush on Kochanski, who was a space captain.

No she wasn't.  Captain Hollister was the ship's captain.

[Reply #53 on:]

Daid A: Well, I know she was Lister's superior, just like how Leela is Fry's superior.  In "the Last Human" I think she does become captain, or makes herself captain.

Also, in AOI2 Bender becomes human.  In "The Last Human",  Kryten (the robot, not the good fanfic writer) becomes human.  And pretty much a similar joke is made in both references.  Bender say's his antenna has "moved". Kryten, now human, asks Kochanski if his new human penis is normal size.  To me Bender turning human in AOI2 is a direct reference to Red Dwarf.

[Reply #54 on:]

Try to keep in mind that there is a difference between something that the writers and/or animators actually intended as a reference to another show or movie, and something that just happens to remind you of something else.

[Reply #55 on:]

Sorry if I'm stating the obvious or anything but was the deleted scene of Obsoletely Fabulous (with the large hologram of Mom as the defect robots pass through on the conveyor belt) a take-off of Brave New World?

[Reply #56 on:]

I enjoyed the Dune reference when Al Gore said "ive rode the mighty moon worm"...so there´s a micro Dune   reference.

[Reply #57 on:]

el Gazza: I don't think that's a specific Brave New World reference. When the writers parody stuff, it's usually a direct lift or reference. That scene's more of a resemblance.

I think it's just Sci-Fi cliches 101: Brainwashing the masses.

[Reply #58 on:]

 

Originally posted by Squeaky:
I'm just curious was Red Dwarf a animated show or Live action? I just want to know since I've never seen or heard of it until I started coming here.

 http://www.reddwarf.co.uk/  Red Dwarf is a live-action BBC sitcom that has run for 8 seasons (Surprisingly long since the average is about 12 episodes). A movie has been "upcoming" since sometime round about the dawn of time but it looks like it is finally getting started.

[Reply #59 on:]

There are many episodes where specific sci-fi shows or movies are the basis of parody for any given episode, but there seems to be prevailing references from Star Trek, 2001, or Star Wars in almost all the episodes.
But I'm wondering what inspired the "city bus air brake"
sound of the Planet Express ship every time it lands...

[Reply #60 on:]

I watched an early Star Trek (I'm not quite sure if it was a Star Trek movie, but.. well I think it was one) movie lately. There was exactly the same drum playing mechanic monkey seen in "obsolete fabulous"!

[Reply #61 on:]

 

When was the last time cheers had a guy show up with a robot to drink? Sure there have been drinking scenes, before that scene. But a scene where a guy and robot stop by to drink is rare. HHGTTG is the only other time I remember where a guy comes with a robot and they both drink and talk.

When in HHGTTG do a human and a robot go to a pub together?  There are robots and pubs in the series, but I don't recall a scene specifically like the one you mentioned.

[Reply #62 on:]

It was some place at the beginning of the novel where Arthur and Ford meet and they are drinking.  They are drinking and Ford tells Arthur that the Earth is going to be destroyed.

[Reply #63 on:]

Yeah. 'Cept Ford's not a robot.

[Reply #64 on:]

He's not? oh crap, I have my sci-fi novels crossed and it has been a while since I read that book. Was he an alien? cause then you can say it was a drinking scene involving a human and nonhuman.

[Reply #65 on:]

Well, sure, if that's the way you want to put it. But now you've gotten away from your original "Futurama makes direct reference to HHGTTG" thing. Face it. It's a coincidence.

[Reply #66 on:]

No, I don't think so.  In HHGTTG Arthur has a confersation with Ford and they are drinking and they are drinking buddies.  Fry and Bender are drinking buddies in that they drink and just talk the same way normal drinking buddies drink and talk, only one is human and one isn't.  When I first read that scene, I remembered the drinking scenes Fry and Bender had in both SP3K and I, Roomate.  So, it is a vague reference.

Also, little known fact, in My Three Suns, where Fry is walking through the desert, I hear it is a reference to Popeye. Another vague reference.

[Reply #67 on:]

The basic characters were almost certainly created before the idea that they would visit a pub at some point came up. It's not like Bender was brought in just for that ludicrously obscure reference. Some kind of non-human characters were absolutely inevitable in both Futurama and H2G2, while a pub is a totally generic location featured in vast numbers of stories. Simply combining the two does not make a reference and even if it does then the scene is also a reference to Star Wars, various Star Treks (In particular DS9 with Quark's bar), Third Rock from the Sun, Discworld, Lord of the Rings... Just about any reasonably long-running sci-fi/fantasy series will feature a scene that vaguely fits this description.

You seem to be having difficulty distinguishing between genuine references and scenes that share some loose similarity. A proper reference of this kind will contain something that refers specifically to the original scene - maybe the characters are clearly made to look like characters from the original, or some line of dialogue is taken from the other show and parodied. Also, while this can be hard to verify, the writers must have had the original in mind when they wrote the scene or it is not a reference.

[Reply #68 on:]

Well, if you're really searching for a Hitchhiker's Guide reference... Bender's head gets left in Roswell in 1947 (forgive me if I got the year wrong), and the PE crew goes and picks him up at the same place 1055 (give or take) years later. Marvin gets left on Frogstar World B, which later becomes the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, where the main characters pick him up five hunderd and seventy-six thousand million years later. Robots getting left somewhere, their friends getting propelled forward in time and finding them in the same place, lifetimes later. I think it's a coincidence (they don't mention it on the commentary, and it feels different enough to not be a direct reference and rather a case of a couple people having similar ideas), but I think it's a lot more similar than the human/non-human drinking buddies thing.

And thank you, Prof. Wernstrum, for pointing out the 2984 joke. I'd never caught that one, and my life has just been enriched a teeny tiny bit.

[Reply #69 on:]

I think that Bender's head getting left in the past is a reference to the Star Trek: the Next Generation episode "Time's Arrow" in which Data's head gets left in the past.

[Reply #70 on:]

Thanks, prof. That was everything I wpuld've said, if I didn't lack the inclination to write anything over 1 paragraph long. 

[Reply #71 on:]

Zapp saying that Le Palm D'Orbit "handles like a bistro" reminds me of the Bistomathic in Life, the Universe, and Everything, but I doubt it's an intentional reference.  Most of the HHGTTG "references" strike me as being more because two satirical sci-fi series are going to cover a lot of the same material, rather than because of actual intent to copy the HHGTTG.

[Reply #72 on:]

Speaking of Zapp Brannigan, he has the same initials as Zaphod Beeblebrox.  And when I read the first HHGTTG book, I swear that Zaphod had an attitude much like Zapp, though not very much mind you.

[Reply #73 on:]

I think Zaphod has a few similarities to Bender, as well.  Once again, though, he's not THAT similar.

[Reply #74 on:]

Who and what are "Logan's Run" and "Red Dwarf"?
It seems to me as if everyone around here knows it, beside of me ...

[Reply #75 on:]

They're both tv shows.

"Red Dwarf" is a British sci-fi comedy about the only survivors aboard a gigantic spaceship.  Lister (the only human), a hologram of his dead roommate (Rimmer), a lifeform evolved from his cat (Cat), the ships computer (Holly) and a robot (Kryten), quite hillarious.

"Logans Run" is a tvhsow about a society where noone is allowed to live beyond the age of 30. Never seen it, but sounds depressing.

[Reply #76 on:]

Don't forget Teral, Logan's Run was also a movie.

[Reply #77 on:]

 

Originally posted by fryfanSpyOrama:
Also, little known fact, in My Three Suns, where Fry is walking through the desert, I hear it is a reference to Popeye. Another vague reference.

It's very similar to a scene in Popeye Meets Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.
That's one of the Fliescher's three 2-reeler Popeye cartoons that they did in color.(The other two being Sinbad and Aladin's Lamp)

[Reply #78 on:]

THEY DID A WHOLE EPISODE JUST ON THEM AND A STAR TREK planet where they have to battle to the death with each other (sound familiar), and stars wars and 2001

[Reply #79 on:]

One other Jetson reference I forgot to mention, Monique's head, from "All My Circuits" sort of resembles Rosie, the robot maid.

 

Originally posted by Cap'n Skusting:
 

Originally posted by fryfanSpyOrama:
Also, little known fact, in My Three Suns, where Fry is walking through the desert, I hear it is a reference to Popeye. Another vague reference.

It's very similar to a scene in Popeye Meets Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.
That's one of the Fliescher's three 2-reeler Popeye cartoons that they did in color.(The other two being Sinbad and Aladin's Lamp)

Also, I think they did two verisons of that cartoon episode.  One where is was real and another years later where Popeye was an actor and doing the adventure as part of a fil set.  His nephews were in that episode.