Love and Rocket

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For other uses with an 's', see Love and Rockets.


Futurama episode
"Love and Rocket"
Episode no.	57
Prod. code	4ACV03
Airdate	February 10, 2002
Writer(s)	Dan Vebber
Director	Brian Sheesley
Opening subtitle	WHEN YOU SEE THE ROBOT, DRINK!
Opening cartoon	Unknown
Guest star(s)	Sigourney Weaver, Lucy Liu
Season 4 January 2002 – August 2003
Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch Leela's Homeworld Love and Rocket Less Than Hero A Taste of Freedom Bender Should Not Be Allowed on TV Jurassic Bark Crimes of the Hot Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles The Why of Fry Where No Fan Has Gone Before The Sting Bend Her Obsoletely Fabulous The Farnsworth Parabox Three Hundred Big Boys Spanish Fry The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings
List of all Futurama episodes...

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

1 Plot
2 Cultural references
3 Goofs
4 Production notes

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

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. After a tour of the facilities, Fry becomes obsessed with finding the perfect candy heart to express his feelings for Leela. 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 (character 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 starts 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 VIII. 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 impact.

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 make sure there wasn't 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, which makes the ship even less rational. Fry notices that Leela's oxygen is running out, and with Leela busy and not listening to his warnings, he decides to give her his supply. 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 saying "U leave me breathless". The two find Bender, unaware that a little of the ship's program had slipped into his. Leela decides to dump the undelivered hearts into the quasar. The hearts vaporize, producing a romantic glow whose rays reach Earth on Valentine's Day, destroying many planets en route.

[edit] Cultural references

The title is a reference to the comic book Love and Rockets or possibly to the band of the same name.
The title could also reference the novel Love & Chocolate and the movie 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.
When first introduced to the ship's personality, "Two Princes" by the Spin Doctors plays.
When Bender and the ship visit the zoo they see an exhibit titled "Mountain Dew presents: Extreme Elk".
During the montage of Bender and the ship's relationship Bender sings the song Daisy Bell.
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.
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 Star Trek: The Original Series. 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 2001: A Space Odyssey:

The ship's camera interface is similar to HAL 9000.
The ship says "I'm afraid I can't do that, Leela" and the quote from 2001: A Space Odyssey: "I'm afraid I can't do that Dave".
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 2001: A Space Odyssey. 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 Year We Make Contact.

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 quasar’s glow on Valentine’s Day and the reference to it destroying many planets also resembles the ending of Arthur C. Clark’s short story “The Star”.

[edit] Goofs

When the artificial gravity is cut off, Leela, Fry, and Bender should not be able to "swim" out of the room, as there was no air in the room and air is not viscous enough to allow swimming at any reasonable speed anyway.
Another inconsistency between the show and realistic physics is the use of scramjets outside of the atmosphere.