Love and Rocket

Infobox Futurama episode
episode_name = Love and Rocket
episode_no = 57
prod_code = 4ACV03
airdate = February 10, 2002
country = USA
writer = Dan Vebber
director = Brian Sheesley
opening_subtitle = WHEN YOU SEE THE ROBOT, DRINK!
opening_cartoon = Unknown
guest_star = Sigourney Weaver as The Female Planet Express Ship.
Lucy Liu as herself.


caption = Fry and Leela in the brain room.
season = four

"Love and Rocket" is the third episode of "Futurama"'s fourth season. It first aired on February 10, 2002.

Plot

A few days before Valentine's Day, the Planet Express crew heads off to the most romantic city on Earth, Milwaukee, to land a delivery contract from Romanticorp, makers of all things romantic (also donning special uniforms to make themselves seem more official). After a tour of the facilities, Fry becomes obsessed with finding the perfect candy heart to express his feelings for Leela, though she just finds this antic annoying. Planet Express gets the contract to deliver the hearts and with the additional funding from the new contract, the Professor makes some upgrades to the ship. The upgrades include a new personality, complete with a female voice module (voiced by actress Sigourney Weaver). Bender and the ship's new personality fall for each other and start dating. Bender quickly grows tired of the ship, and begins cheating on her. The ship, suspicious of Bender, begins acting in a possessive and erratic manner.

The crew is assigned the task of delivering several tons of conversation hearts to Lrrr of the planet Omicron Persei 8 (Fry however, as the Omicronians have rarely gone a long period without declaring war on Earth, suggests they dump the hearts into a quasar instead, to no avail.) Unsurprisingly, the Omicronians are highly offended by the chalky candies and their poorly spelled messages. While escaping from the Omicronian death fleet, Bender decides to break up with the Planet Express ship. This cracks the ship's fragile mind, and it comes to a stop, allowing the Omicronian missiles to strike.

The ship is sent tumbling through space, dented and scorched, but otherwise physically intact. Leela attempts to console the ship, but she fails. The ship, acting irrationally, decides to fly into a quasar. With the power of ten billion black holes in it, the ship and Bender would be merged into a perfect quantum singularity. She offers to stop if Bender would merge his programming with hers. To eliminate any interference from Fry or Leela, the ship turns off the atmosphere and shuts off the artificial gravity. Leela has Bender distract the ship by agreeing to merge their programming while she and Fry try to shut down the ship's brain. While the two machines play a cat-and-mouse game, Leela continues to attempt to shut down the brain by popping the tops of its beer-can control modules (also winning a free trip to Six Flags), which makes the ship even less rational. Fry realizes that Leela's oxygen supply is about to run out but cannot get her attention right away, so he switches his tank for hers to keep her alive.

With this sacrifice, Leela is able to successfully shut down the ship's artificial intelligence, returning every system to normal. Unfortunately, Fry is rendered unconscious due to the lack of oxygen. Realizing that Fry risked his life to save hers, Leela gives him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Fry awakens and coughs up a candy heart that reads, "U leave me breathless", and the two smile and wish each other a Happy Valentine's Day. The two find Bender, unaware that a little of the ship's program has slipped into his. Leela decides to dump the undelivered hearts into the quasar instead of cleaning them up by hand (which was, ironically, Fry's initial idea). As inexplicably narrated by Zoidberg, the hearts vaporize, producing a romantic glow whose rays reach Earth on Valentine's Day, yet destroying many planets en route, including two gangster planets and a cowboy world. Nevertheless, couples around the world, including Fry and Leela, gaze at the beautiful sight.

Cultural references

* The Planet Express ship can be seen flying past the Horsehead Nebula at the beginning of the episode.
* Sigourney Weaver is best known for her role as Ellen Ripley in the "Alien" series.
* The title is a reference to the comic book "Love and Rockets" or possibly to the band of the same name.
* Fry says "Shields at maximum Yarnell". This is a reference to a comedic act, Shields and Yarnell.
* The Romanticorp Wire Mesh Dummy testing system is a direct poke towards Harry Harlow, one of the first scientists to use monkeys for lab testing, and one of the most infamous. Early on, he used methods to prove that monkeys (in relation to babies) displayed love towards something softer and more "loving" by using two mesh dummies, or "mothers", one with cloth and one with only a bottle.
* "Loveybears" may be a reference to the Care Bears.
* The popular Valentine's Day candy, Conversation Hearts, are featured in the episode.
* When first introduced to the ship's personality, Bender references The Birth of Venus, and later, "Two Princes" by the Spin Doctors plays, to Bender's protests that it "isn't alternative rock, it's college rock!"
* When Bender and the ship visit the zoo they see an exhibit titled "Mountain Dew presents: Extreme Elk".
* When Bender begins to combine his mind with the ship, the sound effects are similar to the sounds of a dial-up modem connecting.
* When first shown in this episode, the Omicronians are watching an episode of "Friends", which prompts Lrrr to ask "Why does Ross, the largest friend, simply not eat the other five?", to which Ndnd responds "Ah, probably syndication problems". In reruns and on the DVD, the line is changed to "Perhaps they're saving that for sweeps." The fact that the Omicronians are watching an ancient Earth television show is a reference to their first appearance, When Aliens Attack.
* The scene where Bender is uploaded into the ship is characteristic of the similar action in "The Matrix", whereby all surfaces are replaced by code.
* Zoidberg's mentioning of the gangster and cowboy worlds is a reference to episodes of . Set replicas of those planets appear in the later episode "Where No Fan Has Gone Before"
* The idea of a computer upgrade replacing a "male" personality with a "female" one also appeared in a "Star Trek" episode, "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" and in the television series "Red Dwarf" when Hattie Hayridge replaced Norman Lovett as the personality of Holly, the ship's computer.
* This episode contains many references and similarities to the film ""::* The ship's camera interface is identical to HAL 9000.:* The ship says "I'm afraid I can't do that, Leela", in reference to the quote from HAL 9000 in "2001: A Space Odyssey": "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that".:* HAL 9000 and the ship share murderous intentions towards their masters.:* The scene in which Leela, Fry, and Bender enclose themselves in a shower, which is the only place Planet Express Ship cannot hear them, to discuss Planet Express Ship's fate of disconnection is a reference to the film "". In "2001", the characters Dave Bowman and Frank Poole go into an EVA pod, which is the only place HAL 9000 cannot hear them, to figure out how to go about HAL 9000's disconnection. Additionally, in this scene, the Planet Express Ship states that she wishes she could read lips, in order to discover what the crew is planning. This is also a reference to "2001"; but in "2001", HAL 9000 could indeed read lips, and as a result, knew what Bowman and Poole had planned.:* Leela reads a print out of the ship's status after the battle on a punch card. In the film, astronaut Dave Bowman requested a punch card hard copy of the AE-35 antenna malfunction.:* The scene where Fry and Leela shut down the ship is very similar to the shutdown of HAL.:* Tapirs were featured in the beginning of the movie in the "Dawn of Man" sequence.:* The song "Daisy Bell", sung by Bender, was sung by HAL 9000 after Dave started to remove his circuit boards. It was one of the first things he was taught after he was brought online.:* The romantic glow is a reference to Lucifer, from "2010".:*The romantic glow is also a reference to the anomaly from the "" episode "All Good Things...".:* The starship's panel is nearly identical to the panel of the Ultrahouse (Voiced by Pierce Brosnan) in the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XII although that is itself a reference to "2001: A Space Odyssey".:* The panel, containing the infamous red eye is similar to HAL's.:* The "Howler Mummy" Exhibit in the zoo scene features a group of mummies screaming which sounds oddly like the haunting music played in the Monolith scene of "2001"
* On the DVD only, at the very end of the credits, just as the disc skips back to the warnings or next episode, a very brief flash appears on screen, saying "POP".

Continuity

* In one scene, Lucy Liu's head is seen is Bender's stomach compartment, referencing to the episode "I Dated a Robot".

Trivia

* In what was called "one of the nerdiest jokes," a diode facing a particular way represents a wall that stops Bender from running inside the ship's circuits as diodes only allow current to travel in one direction.
* After Bender engaged in the "interchanging" activity with the ship, according to the commentarists, he became more "feminine," this can be seen in later episodes, where Bender's nature became less fierce.

Production notes

* Lucy Liu's lines in this episode were recorded during "I Dated a Robot" for use in a future episode.cite video| people=Cohen, David X.|year=2003|title=Futurama season 4 DVD commentary for the episode "Love and Rocket"| medium=DVD |publisher=20th Century Fox]
* At the end of this episode, the word "pop" can be seen briefly for a few frames; this could be a reference to an alternate episode of the TV series The Prisoner where at the end the world explodes into the word "pop" (the actual meaning of "pop" is still a matter of debate)

References