Möbius Dick

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Season 6 episode Broadcast season 8 episode
Möbius Dick
Leela stabs the four-dimensional space whale.
No.	103
Production number	6ACV15
Written by	Dan Vebber
Directed by	Dwayne Carey-Hill
Title caption	FEATURING SPARKY, THE INVISIBLE ELF
First air date	4 August, 2011
Broadcast number	S08E08
Title reference	Moby Dick and Möbius strips
Additional
Commentary (Transcript) Transcript Storyboard Pictures
Season 6
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 ← Season 5 Season 7 →

"Möbius Dick" is the one-hundred-and-third episode of Futurama, the fifteenth of the sixth production season and the eighth of the eighth broadcast season. It aired 4 August, 2011 on Comedy Central. Leela becomes obsessed with hunting down a mysterious four-dimensional space whale named Möbius Dick.

Plot

This plot section needs updating. The following plot section requires a going-over, such as giving it more detail and description.

Farnsworth is mourning the loss of his first Planet Express crew, having it been exactly 50 years since they were lost. To commemorate the anniversary, Farnsworth order the current crew to pick up a memorial and fly it back to Earth. However, on the way back, there is the Bermuda Tetrahedron, which is thought to have killed the lives of many spaceships which have travelled through it. But Leela insists that they should fly through.

In the spaceship graveyard inside the Tetrahedron, the crew spots the old Planet Express ship, where they find the crew to have been gone. However, inside the old ship, the crew is attacked by a four-dimensional space whale (which Leela refers to as a 'Möbius Dick'), and the flee to their current ship. The whale re-attacks them, eating their cargo and engine, but leaves the ship afloat.

Leela orders the crew to set the sun-wave sails to replace the spaceship engine. But instead of fleeing the Bermuda Tetrahedron, Leela decides to hunt down the whale. Her obsession with killing it, eventually means the crew is eaten by the whale, wherein the whale consumes her, as it feasts on obsession. But Leela manages to get the whale back to Earth, where she can re-introduce the crew and the first crew to their relatives.

Production

During June 2011, Countdown to Futurama released three items of promotional material for the episode: concept art of the Planet Express ship with sails on 1 June, part of the storyboard showing Zoidberg crash in the ship's escape pod on 2 June, and a video clip of the Planet Express crew hunting the whale down on 18 June.

Image gallery

• 

  The episode overview showing what appears to be a whale.

• 

  Concept art of the Planet Express ship with sails.

• 

  Page 121 of the storyboard.

• 

  A screenshot from the video clip.

Reception

In the original U.S. broadcast on 4 August, 2011, "Möbius Dick" scored a 0.8 among adults aged 18-49 and 1.459 million viewers, with total viewers down about 34,000 viewers from the previous week.

Additional Info

Trivia

• The episode was for some time thought to be the broadcast season's second episode, but the announcement that "Benderama" would air on 23 June in its place proved otherwise.
• This episode is among the Futurama media featuring its title within the story.
• This is the first episode where Dr. John A. Zoidberg is addressed informally as "Johnny", which is due to the respect for and liking of him that Professor Farnsworth had at the time.

Allusions

• The title and the overall plot is a parody of the Herman Melville-penned novel Moby-Dick, which was previously referenced in "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid". The title is a portmanteau of Moby Dick and the Möbius strip.
  • Möbius Dick is also well known in the mathematics community as the answer to a pun-based math riddle: What's non-orientable and lives in the ocean? and the title of a 2000 science-fiction novel by Andrew Crumey.
• The Bermuda tetrahedron is a reference to the real-life Bermuda Triangle, a region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and surface vessels allegedly disappeared under mysterious circumstances. It's appearance is an allusion to The Route of Ages, an interdimensional portal from the show Andromeda.
• The members of Professor Farnsworth's first crew are all blatant equivalents to his current crew. Lando Tucker was not only the crew's captain, but also has the same initials as Turanga Leela ignoring mutant naming conventions. Lifter is a robot whose name is its primary function. Candy, while she is female, is a type of comfort food, just as French Fries are.
• Tickle Me Elmo's fire parodies St. Elmo's fire, an electrical weather phenomenon, and the Tickle Me Elmo doll based on the Sesame Street character. As a space phenomena, Tickle Me Elmo's fire is a separate concept from St. Elmo's fire.
• When Leela calls the crew "you space dogs", she is referring both to the expression "you dog", and to the Soviet space dogs of the 1950s and 1960s.
• When the current crew explores the old ship, multiple allusions are made to the Firefly episode "Bushwhacked".
• The state of the old Planet Express ship, completely deserted but with food still set at a table, is a reference to the real-life "ghost ship" the Mary Celeste.
• Fry describes their predicament as "like that Bible guy who got swallowed by a whale...Pinocchio!". This refers to both the Biblical figure Jonah, who was swallowed by a beast sometimes described as a whale, and the Disney version of Pinocchio, in which the title character is swallowed by the whale Monstro.
• Captain Lando Tucker melded with whale's flesh might be a reference to the second and third films in Pirates of the Caribbean series, where several crew members are shown united with The Flying Dutchman ship.
• The Fourth Doctor from the British television science fiction series Doctor Who can be seen, amongst others, emerging from the body of the four-dimensional space whale.
• The sequence where the people exit the space whale's mouth is similar to the scene where the abductees leave the alien ship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The Professor even says "they haven't aged", a line said by a scientist during that sequence.

Space ship graveyard

A number of spaceships, vehicles, and objects are identifiable in the Bermuda Tetrahedron.

• Discovery One from 2001: A Space Odyssey
• A black monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Oceanic Flight 815 from Lost
• The spaceship used on album covers for the rock group Electric Light Orchestra
• An Omicronian mothership as seen in "When Aliens Attack"
• The Satellite of Love from Mystery Science Theater 3000
• The spaceship from Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space
• The Jupiter 2 from Lost in Space
• Stereotypical UFO
• Garmin GPS satellite
• TomTom GPS satellite
• First Planet Express ship
• An Apollo Command/Service Module labelled "Apollo 100"
• An Apollo Lunar Module
• The scarab beetle spaceship used on album covers for the band Journey.
• The Skylab space station
• The guitar spaceship used on album covers for the band Boston

Continuity

• Leela's parents are shown on the surface without any trouble, confirming their freedom in "The Mutants Are Revolting".
• Fry stated that he knew Professor Farnsworth had other crews, but not the first one. This is true, Fry was aware of the previous crew that died on duty since "Space Pilot 3000", as well as having met Captain Musky and seeing a previous ship's wreckage in the hive of Space Bees.

Goofs

• Dr. Zoidberg is shown to have been working at Planet Express since at least 2961, but it was established in "Insane in the Mainframe" that he began work in at Planet Express during 2992. This may be the new precedent.
• Zoidberg is drawn with teeth during the Professor's flashback.
  • This may be a reference to Zoidberg having teeth in the early episodes. Perhaps he used to have them and lost them due to dental problems?
• During Farnsworth's flashback, before the rocket takes off, a hand with five fingers and nails turns the knobs.
• When the whale is harpooned, the scar-like marking on its eye disappears.
• The order of characters to fall the wall when the whale is harpooned and the rope is stretched: Bender - Amy - Fry - Hermes - Zoidberg - Leela - Bender. In other words, Bender has dropped the wall twice.
  • It is likely this was simply a joke.

Quotes

Leela: Okay, which of you space dogs has the guts and know how to harpoon that whale?
Amy: I spent a semester in Africa harpooning giraffes, and giraffes are basically just land space whales.
Leela: Miss Wong, you have the 'poon.

Characters

(In alphabetic order)

• Dr. Amy Wong
• Bender Bending Rodríguez
• Debut: Candy
• Dwight Conrad
• Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
• Debut: Möbius Dick
• Fourth Doctor
• Philip J. Fry
• Hermes Conrad
• Inez Wong
• LaBarbara Conrad
• Debut: Lando Tucker
• Debut: Lando Tucker, Jr.
• Turanga Leela
• Leo Wong
• Debut: Lifter
• Debut: Mrs. Tucker
• Scruffy
• Debut: Sparky, the invisible elf
• Turanga Morris
• Turanga Munda
• Dr. John A. Zoidberg
• Debut: Charlie

References

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