1ACV05: Planet Of The Bots

1ACV05: Planet Of The Bots

Review by Haynes Lee {hl} [email]

SYPNOSIS (Canadian TV Guide): Fry and Leela accept their most dangerous assignment-- delivering a package to a humanphobic planet, where people are killed instantly upon arrival. But Bender finds the place enchanting and contemplates whether to turn his back on his friends in favor of taking on the exciting robot lifestyle.

REVIEW: Kind of a dissapointment. Bender's comedic hatred of humans turns too dark. Tonight's episode should have featured more of the secondary characters. What happened to Nibbler?

GRADE: B-

BASEBALL/BLERNVALL REFERERNECES: - Baseketball? (from the creators of South Park) - Basebrawl (1970s MAD magazine feature which makes proposal to make baseball more fun) - Rollerball (movie about ball game played on motorcycles on oval track. Inspired by MAD feature mentioned above) - bungee jumping - pinball (multiple ball bonus) - early racial discrimination against Blacks

GOOFS: - various preview Futurama articles said that pigeons where wiped out by owls.

SIMPSONS REFERENCE: - "Want butter on that?" gag similar to cream gag in "You Only Move Twice" [3F23].

ONE EYED JOKES: - Leela would have needed the second eye for depth perception with the 3D glasses.

OTHER REFERNCES: - Monty Python And The Holy Grail: asking mundane question before crossing gate. - Woody Allen's Sleeper: mechanical puppy. - blocks fell down like in Tetris game - Hitler (South Park did this better)

20th TECHNOLOGY: - Planet Express ship has windsheild wiper - LCD clock display - 3D movie glasses - Judge is an Apple computer - robot porn is an electric circuit diagram

PREVIOUS EPISODES: [1ACV03] Kill All Humans

eof

And my favorite reference was "Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!" voiced much the same as the Berserk arcade game, where, strangely enough, you are a human trying to escape murderous robots and a happy smily bouncing ball.

I don't remember a bouncing ball in "Berzerk"

However an arcade version of Bezerk was made "Robotron 2085" very same controls of "Bezerk" R2085 added the principle of rescuing humans Brett-D wrote in message ...

Andy Howard wrote in message ...

The "bouncing ball" is the ball-shaped boss guy who comes out after you mess around too long in the maze, at least in the Atari home version. I kept waiting for a reference to him, but alas...no

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GRiM wrote in message ...

and the ball's name was......

Evil Otto!

That's it! I just couldn't remember his name, and I was just too lazy to look it up.

Adam DeFranco wrote in message ...

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And more trivia... "Atari" in japanese (loose translation) means "Prepare to be attacked!"

:

But the real Berzerk arcade game was, of course, made by stern...

...how many of you ever played the sequel 'Frenzy'?

Brett-D wrote:

I thought that game was called "Robotron". At least it was around here.....

:

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Robotron did not have any digitized speech... Go to www.vaps.org and come back when you have a clue =-P

Berzerk had you fighting robots in a maze that shoot at you...

Robotron had you fighting robots and other misc creatures in a large square 'arena' while "trying to save the last human family"...

No, Berserk was it. Robotron featured a little guy made of boxes that shot in 8 directions and saved the "last human family". Berserk had different robots and that smiling, bouncing ball showed up if you spent too much time on a level. I remember because if you set it in HARD difficulty, the ball showed up after like 15 seconds. :)

-Nitesbane

Bill Porter wrote:

Haynes Lee wrote in message ...

<snip>

Another video game reference: when Leela and Frye are spotted, the robots say "Intruder Alert" (and one more phrase, I think) from the classic video game Berzerk. Which also features robots trying to kill humans.

In article , "Jeremy Reaban" wrote:

And when they're first spotted (after the "coolant leak"), the robot screams as in 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'; another communist era reference.

Rollerball the movie was inspired by Rollerball the short story, that appeared in Esquire magazine in either 1970 or 1971. I forgot the author, but you will recognize his name.

Evan

my opinion of Family Guy: for a mid-season replacement, it's not bad. It ain't the Simpsons however. It's not even The PJs. What I would like to know though, is how did an abnoxious guy like Peter get a woman as pretty as Lois?

[email] (Haynes Lee) writes:

I can't agree with much of anything in that review. This episode was great. Bender's hatred of humans was obviously just playing to the crowd to satisfy his greed; even more humorous (and less dark) than him dreaming about killing all humans. And just what would have Nibbler done in this episode, rather than look cute?

DYN: The planet Chapek 9. Karl Capek (the C should have a little upside down caret over it, and is pronounced 'ch') wrote the play "Rossum's Universal Robots" in which he created the term "robot".

Robot pornography consists of circuit diagrams (as has been mentioned in at least one Groening interview).

OhhhHHHhh yeah.... you're a BAD little girl aren't you?

Thom

VERY well spotted!!! I am wicked impressed!

I could only think of a couple pulp stories about all-robot planets, but I never would have remembered that particular reference.

In article , [email] (Haynes Lee) wrote:

Hmm. This might have been my favorite so far.

*Too* dark? I guess I love dark humor, so I'm not sure if, for me, humor can even be too dark.

Why?

Alas, he was put to sleep...

Fry finally got around to wearing that hilarious apron.

Quiet Desperation wrote in message news:[email].. .

In article ,

More 20th Century references: The "Got Milk" billboard The hunt-trumpet played a Mac startup sound

-Kraig Finstad

Seriously doubtful, unless the arcade had somehow managed to use a Berzerk cabinet for Robotron.

Robotron had two joysticks and you wandered round a square playfield that had some things that would stop your movement, and a ton of robots and Brains that tried to run over the "Last Family."

Berzerk had the same sounds as in Futurama, the round, bouncing Evil Otto and robots that tried to shoot you while you ran through a series of extremely simple mazes.

On Wed, 21 Apr 1999 01:28:37 GMT, [email] (Haynes Lee) wrote:

There was another Monty Python And The Holy Grail reference in the episode. The scene with the robot elders combines elements of the Knights Who Say Ni & the Three-Headed Monster. The one elder at the end yelling "Silence!" in a high-pitched voice sounds a lot like one of the Knights who say Ni, and the prisoners being allowed to escape while their captors bicker pointlessly is just like the Three-Headed Monster scene

	So...

OTHER REFERENCES: - Monty Python And The Holy Grail: yelling "Silence!" in irritating high-pitched voice - Monty Python And the Holy Grail: prisoners being allowed to excape while captors bicker pointlessly.

The Tetris reference made me cry!!!