or viewers who may not have been able to keep on top of Fox's horribly erratic airing of Futurama (or aren't up late enough on weeknights to watch it in syndication on Cartoon Network ... or can't afford TiVo quite yet), this boxed set of the TV series' first 13 episodes is a godsend. And while the extras may be a bit on the light side in this first volume of discs, the overall look of the package is pretty attractive. Looking to do for—or to—science fiction what The Simpsons did for—or to—the American family (proclaims creator Groening on the set's featurette), Futurama has genre appeal that is deep and wide.
The first disc begins with the show's pilot, in which a chumpy pizza delivery boy by the name of Philip J. Fry (West) gets cryogenically frozen by accident on New Year's Eve, 1999. When he thaws out, it's still New Year's, but 1,000 years in the future! Yet despite the fact that everyone he's ever known and loved is long dead, Fry's pretty psyched to be in the 31st century. After (sort of) befriending an assertive, one-eyed alien woman named Leela (Sagal) and a depraved, self-destructive robot named Bender (Di Maggio), Fry succeeds in tracking down his only living relative—the doddering, semi-senile, semi-mad Prof. Farnsworth (West), who just happens to need a new crew to help run his intergalactic delivery business, Planet Express.
On their many adventures in this box set, the Planet Express crew (which includes the spunky intern Amy, the bureaucratic manager Hermes and the resident physician, the pathetic crustacean Dr. Zoidberg) embarks on some wonderfully freakish missions and encounters some wonderfully freakish characters. To mention just a few: in space, they meet the Kirk-cum-Shatner-esque Capt. Zapp Brannigan and his unfortunate alien lieutenant, Kif; on Capek 9, they encounter a planet of radically homicidal robots; at home in New New York City, they must find a way to get rid of a giant ball of garbage hurtling toward Earth; and on Mars, Fry returns to college and gets a superintelligent monkey for a roommate, while Bender returns to his old fraternity only to find it overrun by nerds.
Sardonic spaced-out adventures
Each of this box set's discs comes in its own (slim) individual case, the three of which are packaged in not one but two slipcases. And as one might imagine, given the series' all-around fantastic art, the design of these various holders is most pleasing to the eye, as are the discs' menu screens, which are complemented by some neato background science fiction-y sound effects. The vibrant colors that help define the show come through particularly well in this format, both in these menu screens and in the episodes themselves.
In the special-features category, the Futurama Volume 1 box set does leave a little to be desired, as viewers and consumers have come to expect a good deal from their DVD purchases these days. Fortunately, however, the set's fairly reasonable price doesn't make this lack too harshly felt. What special features there are here are pretty fun. Viewers get deleted scenes for almost half the episodes in this first volume, with only partial sound but with full animation. The animatics, script and storyboard (the latter two of which can be hard to read at times) for the series pilot are fairly fascinating, as is the "Concept Art Gallery," which contains tons of designs from the likes of Matt Groening, Dave Cooper and others.
The brief featurette is relatively interesting, but it's the full-length audio commentary, which is present on all of the episodes, that provides the real payoff in the—creative process and anecdotal—behind-the-scenes category. All the tracks have creator Matt Groening and executive producer David X. Cohen on them, with different directors and animators joining in for different episodes. Voice actor Billy West is on the mic for some of the commentary, but the overwhelming majority of the time it's John Di Maggio bringing a most unique energy to the episode. All of the commentaries contain lots of interesting and funny stuff—like translations of alien graffiti, various science-fiction jokes and references, production factoids and horror stories (a fair amount of them having to do with the ludicrousness of Fox executives), etc.—though in later episodes a certain fatigue does seem to set in for the commentators.
The real argument for buying this box set, though, is the overall quality of the series. From the writing to the animation to the direction to the acting, Futurama is a television show entertaining and sophisticated enough to easily warrant multiple viewings. Some episodes are better than others, of course, but Futurama's particular mix of perfected animated comic timing, sharp pop culture satire, great visual appeal and self-deprecating science-fiction love (or nerdiness) make it a true gem in the genre.
