Benders Big Score

Proving that good TV scifi cannot forever be kept down, Furturama has returned in the form of a direct to DVD movie entitle, somewhat misleadingly, Bender's Big Score. Bender's Big Score picks up where the series leaves off.

For those not familiar with Futurama, which played on its original run on the Fox Network and now can be seen in reruns on the Cartoon Network, the series depicts the misadventure of a 20^th Century slacker pizza delivery guy named Philip Fry who finds himself accidently locked in suspended animation. Fry wakes up in the 31^st Century, which turns out to be a weird combination of Star Trek and Blade Runner.

Since Fry has no marketable skills, even for a denizen of the 20^th Century, he finds himself working as a delivery boy for a firm calling itself Planet Express, which delivers strange packages all over the universe in a ramshackle, green space ship. These deliveries are usually the starting point for very strange adventures in the bright, but dysfunctional world of tomorrow.

Planet Express is owned by Dr. Hubert J. Farnsworth, a decrepit and thoroughly mad scientist whose inventions, naturally, have unintended consequences. Leela, an ass kicking, one eyed mutant (think Ripley from the Alien films, but sexier) is the chief pilot. Bender, a kleptomaniac, hard drinking, lascivious robot serves as Fry's best friend in the future and chief troublemaker. Dr. Zoidberg, a humanoid crab who is apparently also Jewish, is the Chief Medical officer who apparently does little doctoring. Rounding out the cast are Amy Wong and Hermes Conrad, apparently "normal" humans. Reoccurring characters include Captain Zap Brannigan (think Captain Kirk but even worse), his long suffering alien First Officer Kiff, and Robo-Santa, who thinks that everyone is "naughty" and deals with them accordingly with machine guns and rocket launchers.

The future that Philip Fry finds himself in is a strange place. It features the talking heads of almost everyone in history, including Richard Nixon and the entire cast of Star Trek, in vats of nutrients, giant, floating brains that invade the Earth, and huge, muscular Amazons who demand "snoo snoo" of every male they capture, just for starters.

The plot of Benders Big Score is, appropriately, convoluted. It involves naked, alien internet scammers, time travel, alternate universes, alternate people, and an amusing riff on The Terminator. Benders Big Score is said to be the first of four direct to DVD films, which will eventually be broken up and served up as episodes on the Comedy Channel.

Extra features on the DVD include a commercial for An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore (whose head also appears in the film) and Bender (whose point of view on the subject I have an odd sympathy for) and a math lecture which uses the many math puns used in the Futurama series.