Trollheart

2.12 "Nightshifter"

The guys are investigating a case in Wisconsin in which a trusted employee robbed the place and then shot one of the other employees when he discovered her and tried to turn her in. The robber, a girl called Helena, then went home and committed suicide. Another ex-employee of the bank, Ronald, which was also robbed, maintains that it was not his friend that did it. He says it had his face, but was what he calls a mandroid. He has CCTV footage and startles the brothers when he shows them a freeze frame on which they can clearly see the “laser eyes”, as he calls them, which they have seen before, on the shapeshifter in season one's “Skin”. They pretend it's nothing and fob him off, but now they're worried. If another of these things is on the loose ...

They pose as security specialists and check the cameras in the bank to see if they can spot the shifter. Just as they do though, Ronald charges in with an assault rifle yelling “This isn't a robbery! Everybody down!” and assumes control. Dean tries to win his confidence, telling him that he believes him: there is something in the bank, but it's no mandroid. Mandroids don't exist. No, this is a shapeshifter. As Ronald forces all his hostages into the bank's vault, he and Dean explore and find a pile of shed skin. This is not good. Dean and Sam had traced the shapeshifter to be the bank manager but if it's shed its skin then it could now be anyone.

In the vault one of the hostages, the guard from the bank, starts having breathing problems. He could be having a heart attack. Sam hesitates while Dean finds a body, ostensibly the guy who is right now helping the guard and demanding he be let out. He's the shapeshifter, but as Dean confronts him he attacks him and escapes. Dean pursues him. An amateur at this, Ronald passes by an open window and is shot dead before Sam can save him. Dean releases the bank guard, and they find that the shifter has changed again: another pile of skin. Now they have no clue who they're looking for. Then things take a turn for the worse.

The FBI arrive, and they know about Dean. The lead agent, Henriksen, has been tracking him and (thinks he) knows all about him. He gives Dean and Sam a chance to surrender or his team is coming in hot. Meanwhile Sam finds the dead body of Sherry, the female hostage who had become so enamoured with Dean's bravery. Back at the vault, they drag Sherry out, ready to kill her but she faints, which surprises them: it's not the sort of behaviour they would have expected from the ruthless shapeshifter. Then they see the “dead” eyes of the other Sherry opening and realise that it is the shifter. Once again it escapes. The feds enter the building in full assault mode.

Sam and Dean kill the shapeshifter using a silver letter opener (?) and then down two feds and take their uniforms, making their way out of the bank. However they are now, as Dean says, screwed. The feds are after them and they will be on their trail. As if their job was not difficult enough already...

MUSIC
Styx: “Renegade”


PCRs
Dean refers to Sam as Agent Johnson, one of the two FBI agents from Die Hard

Dean's FBI badge shows his name to be Jack Bauer (from 24) and later Jack Ryan, fictional character in novels by the late Tom Clancy

Sam's ID is Han Solo, from Star Wars. Odd he gets away with such an unusual and well-known name, but I suppose nobody looks too closely at nametags.

Dean tells Ronald he wasn't exactly a smooth criminal; referring possibly to the Michael Jackson song of the same name.

Ronald references Terminator 2 , Arnie's blockbuster followup to Terminator.

Ronald shows the guys a copy of Fortean Times, which mentions the Cybermen, one of the recurring enemies of Doctor Who.

The ARC of the matter
Not a massive amount of arc material here, but a few plot strands join up as season one's episode “Skin” returns to haunt the guys, Dean still being seen as the murderer in St. Louis and hunted by the FBI, who are now closing in.

2.13 "Houses of the Holy"

In Providence, Rhode Island, a bored woman watches TV when suddenly an electrical storm knocks out all power, but amazingly, her TV comes back on, the screen filled by a Televangelist, who seems to be speaking to her directly, telling her to prepare for the coming of angels. As she turns towards the door, she sees a bright figure outlined there, impossible to make out, but seemingly made of light. She smiles... The next we see of her, she is in an insane asylum, having been committed there after stabbing a man to death. Posing as a doctor there, Sam asks her why she did it and she tells him that God sent one of His angels and told her to do it. She is utterly convinced she carried out God's will.

When he returns to Dean, who is laying low after the robbery, he tells his brother that he believes the woman, Gloria (really?) is not insane. She is the second person in this town to kill and claim to have been told to do so by an angel. Oddly, though he readily believes in demons (can't help but; he's seen them after all) Dean seems ill-disposed towards crediting the existence of angels. Going stir-crazy at the hotel, by his own admission, Dean suggests they check out Gloria's apartment, but Sam says he has already done so. Nothing. However, he does remember the woman saying that she saw a sign outside the door of the man she killed, who lived in the same building as her, so they head over. When they get there though all they see that could have triggered Gloria's attack is a plastic Christmas decoration in the shape of an angel. Dean scoffs, but Sam remembers something the girl said.

“He was guilty to his deepest foundations”, she had told Sam, and as they explore the cellar they come across scratches on the wall and a human fingernail. Digging where they found it, they uncover a skeleton. Evidently, whoever or whatever spoke to Gloria had some inside knowledge about this guy she killed. Meanwhile, the “angel” visits another person, and guided by it, he kills a guy as he opens his door, led there by the blinding white presence. When the brothers break into the victim's house and check his computer, they find he had been in the process of setting up a meeting with a thirteen-year-old girl. The rendezvous was supposed to take place today.

They then find another link between the three victims, that they all attended the same church, Our Lady of the Angels. Of course. As they leave the church they see a shrine, and the priest, Father Reynolds, tells them it is for one of the other priests, a Father Gregory, who was killed two months ago in a carjacking. There wasn't even time, he tells them, to administer last rites. Since then, he's been “praying for deliverance”. Things are beginning to slot into place now. The brothers head to Gregory's grave, but when they arrive Sam sees a statue of an angel begin to vibrate, a blinding white light and he collapses. When Dean finds him, he tells his brother he has actually seen an angel. Dean is of course skeptical, being aware that some demons and spirits can read minds, and thinks Sam is being used.

Dean decides the only way to convince his brother that it is the spirit of Father Gregory and not an angel who spoke to him is for them to call it forth, and they arrange a seance to be carried out by his graveside. But as they return from the stores with their necessaries, Sam suddenly sees a man on the pavement outlined in brilliant white light, and knows he has been given a sign that this is the man he has been told by the angel he must stop. Dean believes this means his brother will, if necessary, kill the man, and while the other three victims (or two at least) have been proven to be, in Dean's words, world-class pervs, and this man most likely is carrying some dark secret or about to perpetrate some horrible deed, Dean does not want Sam jumping the gun. And so he jumps into the Impala and heads off in pursuit of the mystery man, leaving Sam to go back to perform the seance.

As he does, Father Reynolds walks in and aghast at this desecration, as he sees it, of Church property, is ushering Sam out when a blinding white light suffuses the nave and indeed, as Dean had predicted, the spirit of Father Gregory rises, to his fellow priest's total astonishment. However when he claims to be an angel, his fellow priest reminds him that angels are supernatural, divine beings who serve God. A man cannot become an angel, and what Gregory is doing is wrong: it is not the work of God, it is vengeance. Dean meanwhile shadows the man marked out by Gregory for Sam, and indeed he does turn out to be up to no good, pulling a knife on his date. But Dean stops him and the girl is saved. When the guy drives off, Dean heads in pursuit.

Back at the church, Father Reynolds convinces Father Gregory to allow him to perform the last rites, and the confused priest's spirit is finally at rest. Dean tracks the would-be killer until they end up at a railway crossing, where a truck carrying metal pipes swerves, one of the spikes smashing through the window of the car Dean's quarry was driving and he is impaled, dead as a can of spam. Dean begins to wonder, despite himself, if there is after all some higher power at work, and if possibly, it might be protecting them.

MUSIC
“Down on love”: Jamie Dunlap


“There's a good times a comin'” : Doug Stableton
(No video available)

“Knockin' on Heaven's door” : Bob Dylan


WISEGUY

After Sam has told him there is more lore on angels than demons, he responds with “Yeah, there's a ton of lore on unicorns too. I hear they shoot rainbows out of their asses!” Sam sits down, shocked. “Wait”, he says, as if trying to wrap his head around the concept, “You mean unicorns don't exist?”

BROTHERS
The root of Dean's refusal to believe in angels seems to have its source in disappointment. He and Sam have seen demons, devils, all sorts of dark creatures, but never once have they seen anything even approaching an angel, or even a good spirit. Having conversed with demons, learned that Hell exists and that his father is suffering there, Dean seems angry that Heaven, if it does exist, shows no interest in sending its agents down to help them do battle against the forces of Satan. If God exists, shouldn't He be giving them some aid here? And if He does not exist, then doesn't that just skew the whole good/evil balance very much in the favour of the latter?

Dean believes there are no angels - probably believes there is no God either - and he is depressed, angry and feels like someone who has been promised something and then found out it was all a lie. He wants Heaven to exist, but as he says to Sam, he believes in what he sees with his own two eyes, and no evidence of God, Heaven or angels has made itself known to him. Therefore, to his mind, none of these things exist. For a demon hunter, he's amazingly pragmatic.

However, later in the episode we find that the actual reason he refuses to believe in angels is that their mother used to tell him that angels were watching over them - in fact, it was the last thing she ever said to him, and he knows she was wrong, because they lost her, and they lost their father, and Dean himself is now lost, even though he won't tell Sam about it.

We also learn that, to Dean's amazement and almost derision, Sam prays. He prays every day, something his brother did not know or even suspect about him. I guess, in their line of work, you'll take all the help you can get.

In what I consider a fantastic piece of writing, there's a total turnaround in the end, worthy of the best of JMS. Sam, who believed in God and angels, has had his faith shaken by seeing proof that Gregory was not an angel, and has begun to re-evaluate his beliefs. Dean, on the other hand, the eternal skeptic and scoffer at the concept of a higher power, has seen with his own eyes what he believes may have been the will of the Almighty carried out in the freak execution of the guy he was chasing, and it's so off-the-wall, the way it happened, that he's beginning to believe. So the positions have been, for now, completely reversed.

The “WTF??!!” moment

Sort of isn't one, really, unless you count the inexplicable death of Dean's quarry, but that doesn't really qualify, not to me.

PCRs

I don't know if it's meant to be one, but given Supernatural's use of images and themes from music I wouldn't be surprised. Anyway, the priest at Our Lady of the Angels says “I guess we could all use a little divine intervention”, which is almost a direct quote from Alison Moyet's hit “Love resurrection”.

As part of their hastily thrown together summoning kit, Dean buys a Spongebob Squarepants mouse mat!

Gloria asks Dean archly “You mean, am I stark raving for Cocoa Puffs?” A presumably American version of our Coco Pops, a popular breakfast cereal for kids.

Dean says “Roma Downey made her do it” speaking of Gloria. Roma Downey is a character in sickly-sweet TV series Touched by an Angel

Dean asks Sam disparagingly if he is “Mister 700 Club”. A religious news talk show

Dean again: “You've got to wait for some religious Bat signal, eh?” I sure as Hell am not explaining that one!

Sam this time: “Seance, eh? I hope Whoopi is available!” Reference to Whoopi Goldberg's role as a psychic in the movie Ghost.

Finally, the very title of the episode, like many of them, is a PCR which refers to the Led Zeppelin album of the same name.

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2.4 “Fry and the Slurm Factory”

Tagline: “LIVE from Omicron Persei 8!”

After almost choking on a bottle cap from a can of Slurm (why is a bottle cap inside a can? Don't ask stupid questions, meatbag!) Fry and Bender are delighted to find that they have won a trip to the Slurm factory as guests of the mascot of the most addictive soft drink in the galaxy, Slurms MacKenzie, the original party worm! Mind you, this comes after they have already checked out ninety thousand cans of the drink using the professor's new f-ray, which can see through anything, including metal. Having found the golden cap and won the contest, Fry Bender and the crew head to the planet Wormulon, where Slurm is made. Here they are given a guided tour of the factory. Interesting though it is, with stories of a secret ingredient that makes Slurm so addictive, Fry is soon dying of thirst, but no drink is offered.

In desperation, he tries to lean out of the boat which is travelling over a river of pure Slurm but falls in and, unable to swim, has to be rescued by Leela. Separated from the tour, they, along with Bender (“Why did you jump in?” asks Leela, to which the robot replies “Everyone was doing it! I just wanted to be popular!”) are sucked into a whirlpool which takes them down into a sewer and discover that not only is what they thought to be Slurm something entirely different, but there appear to be two factories. One, behind the door marked “fake” is the one they have been touring, while the other, marked “real” leads them to the actual Slurm production chamber, where they find...

Slurm is actually the excretions of a huge mother-worm, a massive queen who is squeezing out the noxious substance into cans on an assembly line. Horrified, they give away their presence and are pursued by the guards. Captured, they are sentenced to different fates: Bender is to be made into Slurm cans (174, to be precise), Leela is to be submerged into raw Slurm and will become a Slurm Queen while Fry is given concentrated super Slurm that is so addictive he can't even tear himself away from it to rescue his friends. He manages to drag the tank with the Slurm in it over to the controls and releases Leela, who then saves Bender. As they make for the exit they run into Slurms MacKenzie, who reveals he is sick of being the original party worm and will help them escape if they will take him with them back to Earth.

In the end, he sacrifices his life by bringing down the roof of the cave upon the giant mother worm and allowing Fry, Leela and Bender to escape. Farnsworth relates the whole sordid story, the secret of Slurm and its origin to the Bureau of Soft Drinks, but when Fry hears they are about to ban the drink, he says the professor is senile and making up stories, and so the evidence is ignored and buried, and Slurm will continue to be the number one soft drink in the galaxy.

QUOTES
Zoidberg (asked to look at Bender, who is feeling ill): “I'll have a look but I remind you I'm an expert on humans, not robots.” (Shines light in Fry's eyes)
Fry: “I'm not Bender! I'm Fry!”
Zoidberg: “Really? I thought you were the robot!”
Fry: “Nope! Human!”
Zoidberg: “All right, all right! Spare me your life story!”

Bender: “All right! The original party worm! Are you ready to get down, get funky with us?”
Glurmo; “He'd better be: that's what we pay him for, right?”
Slums (sheepishly): “Right!”
Glurmo: “In fact, Slurms has to party all night, every night, or he's fired!”

Zoidberg (to the others, about Fry): “I didn't have the heart to tell him. It's fin fungus. He'll be floating upside-down by morning!”
Glurmo: “Welcome, friends, to the wonderful world of whimsy that we like to call Slurm Centralised Fabrication Unit!”
Farnsworth: “Who are those horrible orange creatures?”
Glurmo: “Why, those are the grunka-lunkas. They work here in the Slurm factory.”
Farnsworth: “Tell them I hate them!”

Hermes: “So you're telling me I could fire all my staff and hire grunka-lunkas at half the cost?”
Glurmo: “That's right. They think they have a good union but they don't. Essentially, they're slaves!”

Fry: “Grab my legs and lower me into the Slurm so I can drink.”
Leela: “I will not: that's moronic!”
Fry: “Fine! I'll let go and swim around in the Slurm, and drink as much as I like!” (He does) “Help! Leela! I can't swim!”
Fry: “My God! What if the secret ingredient is ... people?”
Leela: “No, there's already a soda like that: Soylent Cola.”
Fry: “Hmm. How is it?”
Leela: “It varies from person to person.”

Glurmo: “So, you discovered the secret ingredient in Slurm. That concludes the portion of the tour where you stay alive!”

Slurm queen: “You (Leela) will be submerged into pure royal Slurm, which in a matter of minutes will transfer you into a queen like me!”
Glurmo: “But Your Majesty, she's a commoner! Her Slurm will taste foul!”
Slurm Queen: “Exactly! That's why we'll market it as New Slurm! Then, when everyone hates it, we'll bring back Slurm Classic and make billions!”

Fry: “Don't worry about grandpa sir! He's always making up crazy stories!”
Farnsworth: “I'm not your grandpa! You're my uncle, from the year 2000!”

PCRs
Fry worries that the secret ingredient in Slurm may be .... people! But Leela assures him there's already a drink called Soylent Cola! It's a clever reference of course to the cult sci-fi movie Soylent Green. If you don't know the movie I won't ruin it for you.

Of course, the biggest and most obvious PCR is the fact that the whole episode is a homage to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Futurama are not the first to try this - both The Simpsons and Family Guy put their own special spin on the story - but I believe they came closest to really nailing it. From the grunka-lunkas to the purple-coated, top-hatted Glurmo and from the competition to win the golden bottlecap to the general layout of the place, it could be no other. Plus they take some great swipes at Coke!

Those clever little touches
As the competition is announced, a rapid-talking voice reels off: “No purchase necessary, unless you wish to enter the competition. Odds of winning mathematically insignificant!”

Feeling ill and running a temperature (of 900 degrees!) Bender is invited to lie down on the couch by Hermes. The couch is immediately incinerated, at which Hermes snaps “You're payin' for that!”

As Leela and the Professor play scrabble, the professor is looking dumbfounded at his tiles, which if arranged slightly will form the word “Futurama”!

In the Slurm shop there are four sizes of t-shirt: small, medium, large and mutant! The mutant sizes have four arms!

A robot called Bender
An incorrigible thief, Bender can't resist stealing things, and even when it becomes clear that it's the theft of Amy's watch that has been making him sick, and he apologises and they hug, he nicks her ear rings!

As they flee from the monster worm in the sewers below Wormulon, they run up against a chasm, but Bender saves them by extending his body like a bridge. Afterwards he coughs and demands payment.

When they find themselves having come full circle and are faced with the queen worm again, Bender says “I brought the prisoners, Your Majesty!”

Calculon/All my Circuits
We see a brief clip of the show, as Calculon finds his evil half-brother in bed with his wife. “You may be my evil half-brother” he glowers, “but there's no law against killing the other half!”

My God! It's full of ... Robots!
As they head out with the F-ray in hand, looking for mischief, Bender and Fry are passed by what Bender believes to be a sexy robot lady, but when he uses the F-ray on her he discovers to his dismay that she is not all she seems. “That's no lady!” he gasps, to which the robot sneers “Down Chico! One more upgrade and I'll be more lady than you can handle!” Quite why a male robot would desire to be a female one is a question I can't answer, but it's damn funny.

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2.5 “I second that emotion”

Tagline: “Made from meat by-products”

There's also a pre-episode clip, where we're told “Futurama is brought to you by Glagnar's Human Rinds: they're a buncha cruncha muncha human!” And we see an alien eating a bag of said snacks.

Bender has had it with Nibbler, Leela's pet alien, getting all the attention. When they find out what age he is and throw him a birthday party, it's the last straw for Bender who takes the little guy and flushes him down the toilet. Leela is heartbroken but Bender just laughs, until Profesor Farnsworth fits him with an empathy chip. Now he can feel what Leela feels, and he does not like it. So when the emotion becomes too much for him he decides to flush himself down the toilet to seek out Nibbler and return him to Leela. Hot in pursuit, Fry and Leela follow him, even though Amy worries that there are rumoured to be mutants living down there.

These rumours turn out to be true, but luckily these mutants are not interested in eating brains (isn't that zombies, anyway?) and are quite friendly. Until, that is, Leela lets slip that Nibbler may be the dreaded bogeyman of their culture, El Chupanibre! Then they advance on the trio and take Leela prisoner, hoping to offer her up as a sacrifice to the monster. But when Nibbler appears the mutants point to something behind him: a huge scaly monster! Nibbler is not El Chupanibre: that thing is! Problem is, hampered by Leela's emotions Bender is unable to save them. So he advises Leela to forget about Nibbler, and think instead of all the things she could buy if she didn't have to take care of him. Think about herself for once. It works, and Bender defeats the monster, the four of them take their leave of the mutants and return Nibbler to the surface. Has Bender learned an important lesson? What do you think, meatbag?

QUOTES
Bender (after having been released from the giant can-opener Leela was using to open Nibbler's food can): “Stupid can opener! You killed my father, and now you've come back for me!”

Farnsworth: “And so we say goodbye to our beloved pet Nibbler, who has gone to a place where I too hope one day to go: the toilet.”

Farnsworth: “I'm installing an empathy chip.”
Fry: “And that will allow Bender to feel emotions?”
Farnsworth: “Yes, if by allow you mean force.”

Farnsworth: “Now I'll just tune it to Leela's emotional frequency...”
Bender: “My God! I'm overcome with feelings! I'm experiencing a powerful yearning to ... cram my gullet full of mackerel heads!”
Zoidberg: “That's me, baby!”
Bender (after some adjustments): “Now I'm afraid that I'm not as smart as Leela, but at the same time I'm relieved that I'm cuter than her!”
Amy: “Uh, that's me.”
Fry (whispering): “Thanks for covering!”
Bender: “This time I'm missing Nibbler, and I'm feeling nosy and opinionated.”
Amy: “Bingo!”
Hermes: “That's Leela!”

Amy: “Hey, do you know what would cheer you up? You should get yourself a puppy.”
Leela: “A puppy. Nibbler loved to eat puppies!”

Mutant 1: “Mutants? Perhaps it is you who are the mutants!”
Mutant 2: “Puh-leeze, Duane! Have you looked in the mirror lately?”

Fry: “Wow! You guys worship an unexploded nuclear bomb?”
Mutant 2: “Yes but nobody's really that observant. It's mostly a Christmas and Easter sort of thing.”

Mutant 1: “Our only hope is to offer El Chupanibre a snackrifice.”
Mutant 3: “Yes! An unspoiled virgin!”
Leela: “I volunteer!”
Mutant 2: “Nice try, Leela, but we've all seen Zapp Brannigan's webpage!”

Bender: “Listen to me Leela, I'm an expert at not caring! The secret is to stop giving a rat's ass about other people and start thinking about the things you want, the things you deserve! That the world owes you!”

Farnsworth: “Bender, you're not going to believe this, but the empathy chip burned out, so the emotion you felt for Nibbler was actually your own.”
Fry: “Hah! I guess Bender learned an important lesson about respecting other people's feelings after all!”
Farnsworth: “No, wait, I'm wrong. It was working at triple capacity!”
Bender: “And I still felt barely anything! Goodnight losers!”

PCRs
The unexploded bomb in the church is of course a nod back to the movie Beneath the Planet of the Apes. They also get a good dig in at Christianity!


Sign of the times
Outside the animal clinic: Virtual pets debugged!

As Fry levers off the manhole cover to allow them descend to the sewers, it's embossed with the logo of The PJs, a very short-lived cartoon series on Fox.

Those clever little touches
As Leela waits at the vet to have Nibbler seen to, there's a man with a cat on his lap and next to him, a large cat with a tiny man on her lap!

When Bender is asked to make a cake for Nibbler's birthday, he grins evilly and says he'll make a cake they'll never forget, to accompanying ominous music. Next we see him cackle and take rat poison out of the cupboard .... and deal with the rats in the kitchen. Then he goes to make the cake.

Calculon/All my Circuits
Bender watches an episode where Calculon is given some bad news: “Your entire family perished when the plane flown by your fiancee crashed into your uninsured home, and you have inoperable cancer!”
(Okay: how does a robot even get cancer??)

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New for 2017...

Coming soon.
Ish.

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The Batlord

Have you just started watching Game of Thrones?

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Trollheart

Of course not. I'm fully up to date, waiting for the new season.

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2.6 “Brannigan begin again”

Tagline: “Not Y3K compliant”

After making something of a hash in opening the new DOOP (Democratic Order Of Planets) headquarters (he tried to use the ship's laser to cut through the ribbon and instead, well, cut through the entire space station, destroying it!) Zapp Brannigan is stripped of his rank and dismissed from the DOOP . At his trial Leela, happy to pour on the misery, testifies against him, but to her annoyance Farnsworth allows him and Kiff to join Planet Express. Kiff is delighted that someone actually praises his work when all he has been used to is being put down by his commanding officer, however they join at a time when Fry and Bender are annoyed at Leela's taskmaster-like mode of command, and it's not long before events conspire to allow a mutiny, where Brannigan takes over. Having taken an instant dislike to the Neutrals, around whose planet the ill-fated new DOOP headquarters (backup HQ: New Jersey!) had been orbiting, Brannigan decides to launch a sneak attack on their planet, hoping to redeem himself. The fact that the Neutral “war machine”, as he calls it, is a figment of the Captain's imagination, and that the Neutrals are not arming for war (they're neutral, after all: they're even a beigey grey colour and have no expression) matters not to Brannigan, and the mission is on.

However when they realise that Brannigan's masterplan involves them crashing the Planet Express ship into the Neutral capital, killing them while he escapes in “the only space suit”, Fry and Bender change their minds and run to Leela, realising what a loon Brannigan is . As the ship hurtles towards destruction, locked on course by the now departed Brannigan (who has taken a very unwilling Kiff with him - “Look Kiff! I have a child's spacesuit you can wear!”) Leela formulates a desperate plan to collect all the dark matter in Nibbler's tray and throw it into the ship's furnace, thus giving the vessel the extra boost it needs to break free and abort the death dive.

When the story comes out later, again in DOOP court, Zapp tries to claim credit for the rescue, but Leela is about to have her revenge when the Professor urges her to tell the truth: if DOOP don't take back Brannigan he can stay on as captain at Planet Express. Faced with this unnerving prospect, Leela chooses the lesser of two evils and supports Brannigan's fanciful account, allowing him to be the hero. As a result, he is reinstated as captain and returned to the DOOP, but at least now Leela won't have to put up with him at work!

QUOTES

Farnsworth: “Good news everybody! We have a mission to further the noble cause of intergalactic peace!”
Bender: “No. Watching cartoons.”
Fry: “Sorry.”

Leela: “What are we delivering?”
Farnsworth: “Something without which no ribbon-cutting ceremony could proceed: the ceremonial oversized scissors.”
Leela (taking the scissors): “We'll get them there are quickly as we can.”
Farnsworth: “All right, but don't run with them!”

Fry: “DOOP? What's that?”
Farnsworth: “It's similar to the United Nations from your time, Fry.”
Fry (showing incomprehension): “Uh...”
Farnsworth: “Like the Federation from your Star Trek program.”
Fry (smiling): “Oh!”

DOOP leader: “I can think of no better place for this centre of diplomacy than here in orbit around the Neutral Planet.” (Turns to president) “What are your thoughts on this momentous occasion, Your Neutralness?”
Neutral President: “I have no strong feelings one way or the other!”

DOOP leader: “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the ribbon-cutting ceremony of DOOP's magnificent new headquarters, a fitting home for an organisation which has fostered peace throughout the universe. Even between the insectoids and the space lizards!”
(As she says this, a spotlight moves to zero in on the representative of the space lizard race, who is at that moment swallowing the delegate from the insectoids. He hastily spits him out and waves in an embarrassed way as he shakes the thing's feeler.)

Brannigan: “I hate these filthy Neutrals, Kiff. With enemies you know where they stand. With Neutrals, who knows? It sickens me!”

Brannigan to Leela: “You're under arrest. How do I know these scissors aren't part of a Neutral plot?”
Leela: “But these scissors aren't even sharp! (they're giant safety scissors) Who could we harm with them?”
Brannigan: “The Yarn People of Mylar IV? So, a plan to assassinate a weird-looking alien race with scissors. How very Neutral of you. It was almost the perfect crime, but you forgot one thing: rock crushes scissors.” (Thinks) “But ... paper covers rock, and scissors cuts paper! Kiff, we have a conundrum. Search them for paper. And bring me a rock.”

DOOP leader: “And now, to cut the ribbon, the legendary DOOP captain who just returned from a triumphant carpet-bombing of Eden VII: Zapp Brannigan!”

Brannigan (to Fry): “What makes a man turn Neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?”

Brannigan: “One day a man has everything, the next day he blows up a four hundred billion dollar space station and the next day he has nothing. It makes you think.”

Brannigan: “So continues the epic struggle between good and neutral. Now, in the name of all that is good and honourable, we'll contact the Neutral president with a message of peace, then blast him. Fly the white flag of war!”

Bender: “Leela, save me! And yourself I guess. And my banjo. (after a pause) And Fry.”

Neutral official: “Your Neutralness! It's a beige alert!”
Neutral President: “If I don't survive, tell my wife hello.”

Prosecutor: “Your Honour, I'm just a simple hyper-chicken from a backwoods asteroid, but if it please the Court, I'm gonna call the whole jury!”
DOOP leader (now Judge in Brannigan's trial): “I'm going to allow this.”
shortly afterwards: “The vidence against Zapp Brannigan is strong. However in light of his years of service and the incompetence of this hillbilly prosecutor, I'm afraid I'm going to have to dismiss all charges.”
Leela: “Dismiss all charges? Your Honour, I know the case is closed and you've rendered your judgement but I want to testify.”
Judge: “I'm going to allow this.”
Brannigan: “I'd like to cross-examine the witness.”
Judge: “I'm going to allow this.”

Leela: “Hurry! I don't want to die at the age of twenty-five.”
Bender: “Honey, unless we hit a timewarp, I wouldn't worry about it!”

Zapp: “And so when Captain Leela panicked, perhaps distracted by female problems, my quick thinking allowed me to do whatever if was I did to save the day.”
Judge: “Leela? Is this rambling tale of magic and heroism true?”
Leela: “Well, actually...”
Farnsworth (whispering): “Atta girl! If they don't take him back we can keep him on as captain!”
Leela: “Your honour, it's all true. My female incompetence, Zapp's catlike reflexes, the stuff that made no sense: all of it!”

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!

In the opening scene, Bender and Fry are playing some sort of hologrammatic version of chess (in something of a homage, I believe, to the sequence in Star Wars) and Fry makes a move that annoys Bender – basically, his horse stabs Bender's bishop to death. Bender then looks at the board intently, looks up and growls “Get him fellas!” and all his pieces attack Fry. It's a good twist on the by-now banal idea of playing a hologame, though you have to wonder a) how Fry can even comprehend a game that's based on chess, b) why Bender would bother playing the same game and c) what damage exactly Fry thinks these little pixellated characters are likely to cause him?

A robot called Bender

For the first time in a while, not much Bender in the episode, which pretty completely focusses on Zapp. Not surprising, with a title like that, but Bender has disappointingly little to do. He more or less follows Fry into mutiny (rather than instigate it, as we would normally expect, and take over himself), he has few lines and even the denouement only features him because the dark matter is too heavy for Fry to lift on his own. Essentially, he becomes exactly what a robot is these days: a tool, a machine to be utilised. There's little of his usual wisecracking humour (a few lines, but for Bender staggeringly little) and he really has no real impact on the story. Take him out completely, and other than being used as a hydraulic jack by Fry at the end, you would not miss him, and that is something we can rarely say about Fry's robot buddy.

PCRs
Not that many, though what this episode does well is reference their own culture. There are plenty of aliens present at DOOP headquarters for the official opening, and many are from previous episodes. I note a water man from My Three Suns, a robot elder, the alien who was used to advertise Glagnar's Human Rinds at the beginning of one of the episodes, one of the aliens that weren't allowed to watch the All My Circuits movie. Later in the jury we see one of the little snail-like creatures employed by Slurm, Elzar, or one of his people, and the judge herself, also the leader of DOOP, looks like one of Kiff's race, perhaps the only other one we've seen up to now.

As they struggle to make ends meet, Kiff and Zapp turn to selling their bodies on the street. Zapp wears a cowboy outfit similar to that worn by Travolta in Urban Cowboy.

As they head off to their new life in civvy street, Harry Nilsson's “Everybody's talkin'” plays.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

And the books? I have still to finish the last book unfortunately.

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Trollheart

I haven't read the books. Yeah, I'm one of them...

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

You totally should though. They're pretty amazing, if a bit longwinded, but they're so good that you don't care cause you get to read more of **** you want to read.

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