Cold Warriors

"Cold Warriors"
Futurama episode
Planet Express is quarantined in order to suppress the long-extinct common cold.
Episode no.	Season six Episode 112
Directed by	Crystal Chesney-Thompson
Written by	Dan Vebber
Production code	6ACV24
Original air date	August 25, 2011
Opening caption	"We're following you, But not on Twitter"
Guest stars
Buzz Aldrin as himself Tom Kenny as Yancy Fry
Season six episodes
June 24, 2010 – September 8, 2011 "Rebirth" "In-A-Gadda-Da-Leela" "Attack of the Killer App" "Proposition Infinity" "The Duh-Vinci Code" "Lethal Inspection" "The Late Philip J. Fry" "That Darn Katz!" "A Clockwork Origin" "The Prisoner of Benda" "Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences" "The Mutants Are Revolting" "The Futurama Holiday Spectacular" "The Silence of the Clamps" "Möbius Dick" "Law and Oracle" "Benderama" "The Tip of the Zoidberg" "Ghost in the Machines" "Neutopia" "Yo Leela Leela" "Fry Am the Egg Man" "All the Presidents' Heads" "Cold Warriors" "Overclockwise" "Reincarnation"
List of all Futurama episodes

"Cold Warriors" is the twenty-fourth episode of the sixth season of the animated sitcom, Futurama, and originally aired on August 25, 2011 on Comedy Central.^[1] In the episode, Fry inadvertently reintroduces the common cold to the 31st century. The situation links to Fry's past, and flashbacks are shown depicting his entry in a NASA science competition and his relationship with his father.^[2]

The episode was written by Dan Vebber and directed by Crystal Chesney-Thompson. On June 5 and June 6, as part of its "Countdown to Futurama" event, Comedy Central Insider, Comedy Central's news outlet, released two preview materials for the episode; a storyboard of Leela trying to escape the Planet Express building and a character design of Fry's guinea pig dressed in a spacesuit. "Cold Warriors" received positive reviews from critics, who enjoyed its emotional ending and felt that it recaptured the feel of the show's original run.

Plot

Fry catches the common cold during an ice fishing trip, though the rest of the Planet Express crew are unaware of what the disease is as it was eradicated 500 years ago. Professor Farnsworth explains that the common cold virus had survived within Fry while he was frozen for 1000 years and has thus been reintroduced to mankind, which has lost all resistance to the virus. During this time, flashbacks to the year 1988 show Fry taking an ice fishing trip with his father, during which he falls through the ice and catches a cold. Later, egged on by his brother Yancy, he decides to enter a science competition judged by Buzz Aldrin in which the winner's entry will be launched into space in a satellite. His idea is to infect his pet guinea pig with the cold virus and see if can be cured by exposure to cosmic rays. A rival competitor, Josh Gedgie, learns of Fry's entry and decides to create an experiment about the common cold as well.

In the present day, the pathogens of the cold are detected and Planet Express is quarantined. Bender, who is immune to biological illness and forced to take care of the sick crew, becomes exasperated and breaks through the quarantine after being sneezed on by Zoidberg, spreading the virus across Manhattan. Richard Nixon becomes concerned with the rapid spread of the disease and brings in Dr. Ogden Wernstrom to resolve the situation. Wernstrom's solution is to destroy the virus by enclosing Manhattan in plastic wrap, lifting it into space, and hurling it into the Sun.

Believing that a vaccine can be created using a sample of the original virus, Farnsworth plans to extract it from Fry by grinding his body into a paste. Fry remembers that the winning science competition entry contained a virus sample. The crew escapes the city and finds the satellite containing the experiment, now encased in ice on Enceladus, with a flashback revealing that Gedgie's project won the competition. As the Professor uses Gedgie's virus sample to create a vaccine, and Manhattan is set back in place and its residents are inoculated to stop the outbreak, Fry has a flashback to the ice fishing trip with his father just after being pulled out of the ice, where Fry's father tells him that he loves him, and explains that he is only so hard on Fry because he wants Fry to grow up strong.

References

1. ^ "Interview: David X Cohen". June 24, 2010. http://www.avclub.com/articles/david-x-cohen,42482/. Retrieved August 28, 2010. 
2. ^ "'Futurama' producer teases new season". May 26, 2010. http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/ustv/news/a221887/futurama-producer-teases-new-season.html. Retrieved August 31, 2010. 

External links

• "Cold Warriors" at the Infosphere, the Futurama Wiki.