Reaction Paper on Futurama: Space Pilot 3000

Futurama is a science fiction television series, which follows the adventures of a pizza delivery boy, known as ‘Fry’, who accidentally gets frozen and awakens to find himself a thousand years into the future.

The pilot episode of the series, Space Pilot 3000, shows how Fry is introduced to the 30^th century and how he is immediately taken in and is expected to just accept and go with everything they tell him. The episode is the director and author’s take on what our world will be like, a thousand years from now. It shows, I think, what most of us expect the future to be: with highly advanced technology, peaceful interaction with aliens; a world where almost everything is easily accessible and almost nothing is impossible. This perceived future is almost all good at first glance: aliens, robots, flying vehicles, transportation tubes that can move a person from one place to another in less than a minute; it is what most of us would dream of simply because it would make our lives easier. Despite of all these seemingly positive aspects, there are a few downsides that are not emphasized in the show but are still present nonetheless. For me, some of these negative aspects are: the fact that because the technology is already so advanced, everyone is being so dependent on it that they no longer give importance to their own judgements, and the fact that people don’t recognize the value of some things like history and culture just because they can replace everything so easily. This only shows that science and technology can indeed improve our lives and society in ways we can never think possible, but it also shows that too much of it can affect us negatively, not only individually, but also society as a whole.

Lastly, the episode tackles time travel in a different way. It shows that the kind of technology they use is by freezing and unfreezing or cryogenic freezing. This kind of time travel, I think is a little bit more dangerous because just like what happened to Fry, someone or something can get accidentally or purposefully frozen and sent to the future and can never get back.