Amy Is...
Amy Says...
Amy Wears...
Amy Dates...
Amy Links...
Amy Stuff...


3ACV05: The Birdbot Of Ice-catraz
First UK airing: Sky One, 8:30pm, 18-3-01

"You can do this! It's just like murdering a little butler!"

Let's face it -- how can anyone resist an episode with killer penguins?

'Birdbot' got off to a slow start, with some fairly laboured environmentalist jokes (although I did like the '6000 hulls' gag, and Fry's follow-up), but once it got to Pluto it took off. The place has obviously changed since its most recent TV appearance on Starship Troopers: The Series, but I guess that's 3001's programme of terratmosphering for you.

'Birdbot' was hardly a classic, but once the episode reached full speed it raised the laughs. There's something about the sight of a robot vomiting a stream of mashed-up fish into a baby penguin's mouth that just exemplifies comedy. Plus there's the fact that penguins are intrinsically funny, especially when they're being wrung out or having sound effects added to lessen the tragedy. Naturally, once 'loveable dictator' Bender get in on the act, nature's little butlers turned psychopathic killers, and their being pitted against mental tree-huggers made it all the more amusing. Come on, admit -- Leela's line about if it's fun, it's not environmentalism rang true, didn't it?

For the rest of the episode, were we in a parallel reality? After all, the Professor's using the Finglonger! Plus (grrrr) there was no Amy, which I understand will be a recurring untheme for the next few episodes. Don't they understand that Amy's as essential to Futurama as Seven is to Voyager? (Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration.)

Some music and sound effects notes -- the music just before Bender rebooted in penguin mode sounded a lot like Danny Elfman's penguin music from Batman Returns, and his reboot sound effects were (guh) from Star Trek. The bit with all the penguins squashed against the window was also Futurama's version of 'The Mark Of Gideon', which even though it came from the much-maligned third season (Fred Freiberger, you can try to justify it all you like, but season two of Space:1999 and the fact you wrote MST3K's giant grasshopper flick The Beginning Of The End prove you suck!) was actually half-decent.

Despite this, I'm only giving the episode three pellets of Dark Matter overall. Hey, life is hilariously cruel...

Rating:

1