Futurama: I think Amy and Zoidberg should go on missions more with the main trio

One thing I noticed with the new seasons was the show was willing to use the entire Planet Express team more on missions, which I think is a good thing, but I felt a lot of the time there ended up being too many characters. Hermes works better as a desk jockey type, with the Professor.

Personally I think five is a good number of characters, for situations where you want a bit more then three to bounce off, so if I was writing for the series, I would have a few missions where Amy and Zoidy get promoted to being more regular on missions. I would say Amy and Zoidberg are the two Planet Express crewmembers who have the most dynamic personalities outside the main three, or at least have the kind of quirks that lend themselves well to missions. Hermes and the Professor work best in the office role, and if Amy goes on missions we can have the occasional scene of the Professor coveting her blood and anxiously fretting if anything happens to her, if the blood will be saved. Zoidberg and Amy also make a good pairing I think, so we can have missions were the party split up, that means we have a lot more combinations of characters to work from: Amy and Leela make a good compliment and contrast set, as do Amy and Fry. Also this gives Bender two chumps to abuse and exploit and use as meat shields and steal from as only Fry is really dumb enough to fall for Bender's schemes when its just the two of them and Leels.

If I'd written the series from teh start, I would have had five mains, rather then three, as I personally think five is the perfect number for a core ensemble cast. As a writer, I tend to stick with five for a number of narrative and artistic reasons. Five is my favourite number when it comes to working with an ensemble.

I also thought it would be funny however to have an episode where Hermes takes the place as Leela as captain, Amy takes Fry's place as sweet but naive deliverykid, and Zoidberg occupies the id role normally used by Bender, while the main trio have the day off and mooch around the building.