Futurama: Volume 5 (2010, 20th Century Fox, not rated, $40; Blu-ray, $50) is the latest batch of adventures of the hilarious crew of Planet Express from The Simpson's creator Matt Groening. The critically acclaimed show had taken a two-year hiatus before resuming with 13 new episodes on Comedy Central this summer. It mines mirth from such weighty matters as illegal immigration, censorship, religion, stem cell research and evolution, not to mention, robosexual marriage, cat intelligence and mind exchange.
The main character is Philip J. Fry (voiced by Billy West), a dopey current day pizza delivery boy who accidentally gets cryogenically frozen and wakes up 1,000 years later. He goes to work at a cargo delivery company owned by a 160-year-old descendant, Professor Farnsworth (West), who is also a mad scientist.
His colleagues include Turanga Leela (Katy Seagal), the one-eyed captain of the Planet Express ship; Bender Bending Rodriquez (John DiMaggio), a rowdy, cigar-smoking robot and a host of other equally eccentric characters. The world problems of today are greatly exacerbated in the future they inhabit despite great technological advances. It is populated by all manner of mutants, extraterrestrials and robots, and beings get around town by way of hover cars and giant pneumatic transportation tubes.
Groening and company use this broad canvas to generate an endless stream of laughs through satire, slapstick and send-ups of sacred cows and sci-fi classics. The episode titled "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela" for example, meshes the out-of-control satellite plot from Star Trek: The Motion Picture with the Biblical story of the Garden of Eden while "A Clockwork Origin" explores the evolution versus creationism debate replete with a celebrated court case. The new set includes such extras as audio commentaries on all the episodes, a video comic book drawn and performed by Fry, a music video by Bender, deleted scenes and other featurettes.
Futurama's first 72 episodes aired on Fox in prime-time from 1999 to 2003. They aired in syndication on Cartoon Network starting in 2005 and then Comedy Central since 2008. Four direct-to-DVD movies produced from 2007 to 2009 were divided into 16 new episodes shown on Comedy Central. This set includes the show's 100th episode, "The Mutants Are Revolting" and "The Futurama Holiday Spectacular," which aired in late November. Fans will be happy to know that another 13 new episodes are slated for 2011.
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1 comment:
Love this show so much. I had the holiday episode on my DVR so when I was stuck at the aiport Christmas Eve I used that TV Everywhere app on my iphone...I work at DISH and got that sling adapter the day it came out. It sure made the loooong wait for them to de-ice my plane a little more bearable, and since it was the Christmas episode it was even Holiday Appropriate!
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