Captain Quail 8 - Exposed (Aug. 22, 2013)

I am unabashedly a huge fan of Futurama. That's not to say I like every episode. Even the most die-hard Trekkies I know have at least one episode they will admit (normally in private, after you get them pretty drunk) is not great. I especially think that the stories Groening and co. created were better when they were still on Fox. The restrictions that I'm sure the the network made them conform to possibly made them more creative. I can't find any great articles (feel free to leave one in the comments), but my experience has been that working with restrictions makes better art.

That said, there is one episode of the newer Futurama seasons that I find outrageously funny. "All the Presidents' Heads" sends the Planet Express crew to the time of the American Revolution, and hilarity ensues. This episode also has one of the best running gags in the series, I feel: the people of the past view Bender, a robot from the future, as a piece of technology that can do everything their current technology can do. Bender is, over the course of the episode, referred to as a stove, a crockpot, and a cannon, and despite Bender's insistence that he's none of those things, he can perform all those functions.

When we expect sufficiently advanced technology to be magic, we also expect it to be able to do everything magically.

Poor Humdrive probably doesn't think she can serve as a USB stick full of cat pictures. She's hyper-advanced bird technology from beyond the stars! Its also amusing to imagine what a civilization of birds must think about cats.

Captain Quail and Humdrive will be returning to the final frontier soon enough, so stay tuned!

Thanks,

Philip

(P.S. Take a close look at the second panel today. Humdrive has better USB support than my MacBook.)