The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz

Infobox Futurama episode
episode_name = The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz


caption = Bender hides among the penguins.
episode_no = 37
prod_code = 3ACV05
airdate = March 4, 2001
country = USA
writer = Dan Vebber
director = James Purdum
opening_subtitle = Now With Chucklelin
opening_cartoon = Koko The Clown
guest_star = Phil Hendrie as Free Waterfall Sr.
season = three

"The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz" is the fifth episode in the third production season of "Futurama". It originally aired in North America on March 4, 2001 as the ninth episode of the third season. The episode was written by Dan Vebber and directed by James Purdum. Phil Hendrie guest stars in the episode as Free Waterfall Sr..

Plot

This episode opens with Professor Farnsworth giving the crew an extremely controversial mission: towing a dark matter tanker through the solar system, and dangerously near the penguin preserve on Pluto in order to avoid a tollbooth. Leela refuses to take part, and the Professor makes Bender the new captain. Leela joins the protesters from Penguins Unlimited.

After initially failing to stop the tanker, Leela and the protesters race ahead to intercept the tanker at Pluto. Meanwhile aboard the Planet Express ship, Bender lets his new power go to his head. Fry gets fed up with Bender's captaining, and rejects both his leadership, and his friendship. A distraught Bender goes on a sobriety binge, and takes the tanker on an erratic course over Pluto. The tanker collides with an iceberg, and spills dark matter across the landscape.

For his part in the disaster, Bender is sentenced to community service, cleaning up the spill alongside the Penguins Unlimited environmentalists. However, when the police officers supervising his work are distracted by a round of friendly hugging, Bender dons a tuxedo and blends into the colony of penguins.

Leela sets off to search Pluto for Bender, while Fry inexplicably decides to take the Planet Express ship and search for Bender in space. That night, Bender is mauled by an orca, and the damage causes him to shut down. When he reboots, his boot loader reinitializes him with penguin-like behaviors.

Back at the Penguins Unlimited facility, it is announced that the dark matter has increased the penguins' reproductive speed by tens of thousands of times. Whereas one penguin usually lays one egg a year, the penguins (both males and females) are now laying eggs at a rate of six eggs every fifteen minutes, which go on to hatch in 12 hours. In order to save the penguins from mass starvation, penguin hunting season is declared. A reluctant Leela agrees to take part; but her first shot hits Bender in the head, causing him to reboot into his normal personality.

When the hunters arrive, Bender leads a large force of penguins in an assault (while delivering a speech reminiscent of Winston Churchill's famous "We shall fight on the beaches..." speech). After the penguins succeed in driving off the hunters, Bender takes off his tuxedo. Unfortunately, since he had taught the penguins to hate anything that wasn't a penguin ("If it ain't black and white, peck, scratch and bite"), he and Leela come under attack. The penguins corner them on a floating slab of ice, but Fry arrives in the ship to save them. When it lands on the ice, it tips the block, sending the penguins sliding into the gaping mouth of an orca. Leela and Bender board the ship, and everyone returns to Earth. Leela states that nature will set things right and the episode ends with two penguins with very serious looks picking up leftover guns and cocking them.

Continuity

* This episode is the second appearance of Phil Hendrie as a member of the Waterfall family. He appeared in "The Problem with Popplers" as Free Waterfall Jr. and appears later in "A Taste of Freedom".

* The Fing-Longer, first seen in "Anthology of Interest I" was the uninvented tool proposed by the What-If Machine to show Professor Farnsworth what life would be like if he had invented it. Farnsworth, however, uses it in this episode, suggesting that he invented it sometime between the two episodes. However, it could also be inferred that they existed before "Anthology of Interest I", as the Professor wanted to know what things would be like if he himself had invented it.

* When Bender restarts his programming, he looks at Leela, identifies her as a human, and boots up accordingly. This is proven to be correct since we find out that Leela is not an alien, as was the popular theory when this episode was broadcast.

Characters

Characters making their first appearance in this episode:
* Free Waterfall Sr.
* Old Man Waterfall

Broadcast and reception

In its original airing this episode was number 75 for the week and received a 4.9 rating/8 share.cite web| url=http://news.awn.com/index.php?ltype=top&newsitem_no=4455| title=U.S. Primetime TV Ratings For The Week Of February 26 – March 4, 2001| date=2001-03-06| access date=2007-07-04] In 2006 the episode was ranked by IGN.com as number 22 in their list of the Top 25 "Futurama" episodes noting Free Waterfall Sr. and the penguin overpopulation in particular as the funniest part of the episode.cite web |url=http://tv.ign.com/articles/716/716663p1.html |title="Top 25 Futurama Episodes" |author=Dan Iverson| date=2006-07-07 |accessdate=2007-07-04 |format= |work= ]

Cultural references

* The title of this episode comes from "The Birdman of Alcatraz", nickname of convict and aviculturist Robert Franklin Stroud, who was featured in a 1955 book and 1962 movie of the same name.
* The idea of the tanker running out of control due to its drunken captain, devastating the local wildlife, is borrowed from the true story of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and its devastation of millions of acres of Alaskan wilderness. The name of the dark matter tanker, the "Juan Valdez", is a pun on the "Exxon Valdez" and named after the fictional spokesperson for the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia.
* "Penguins Unlimited" is a reference to Ducks Unlimited, Trout Unlimited, and similar conservation organizations founded by hunters and anglers primarily for the purpose of preserving and enhancing the habitats and populations of their preferred quarry.
* After being thrown by the orca, Bender makes the same sound as R2D2 from "Star Wars" after being spit out of the water by a creature in a swamp on Dagobah. His subsequent landing in the ice references when R2 got stunned by Jawas in New Hope.
* When Bender is awakened by the Penguins, we see the view from "inside" Bender, like when Robocop is first awakened.
* When Leela finds Fry and Zoidberg playing video games, she calls them "Kong Donkeys", an obvious reference to video game character Donkey Kong.
* Bender leading the penguins with "We will fight them on the beaches!" is a reference to a famous speech by Winston Churchill.
* The scene where the orca is leaning on the piece of ice is a parody of the climatic ending of the 1977 movie "Orca" starring Bo Derek.
* The drink offered to Bender by Zoidberg is called "Olde Fortran Malt Liquor". Its name is a play on the fact that Olde English is a malt liquor, which is named after a human language, and consumed by humans, while Olde Fortran is named after a computer language, Fortran, and consumed by robots.
* The song Bender sings at the helm while sober—a condition that in robots is similar to drunkenness in humans—is "Greenland Whale Fisheries," a folk song once popularized by the Chad Mitchell Trio.
* One of the environmentalists has a sign with "Free Chilly Willy" written on it. This is an allusion to the film "Free Willy", and Chilly Willy, a character from "Woody Woodpecker".
* Free Waterfall Sr. failed to stop the oil tanker with a ring of protestors because spaceships can move in three dimensions, a fact he forgot to consider; in "", Khan lost a battle for the same reason.
* The space squid that attacks the Planet Express Ship while the crew consists only of Fry and Zoidberg is likely a reference to the iconic giant squid attack on the Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
* Bender's programming automatically scanning his surroundings in order for him to choose the best form to adapt is a possible reference to "Transformers" where the titular robots scan Earth and take on the forms of Terran vehicles for the same reason.

References