Futurama: Season 6 details (Spoilers)

[tharpdevenport]

Wonder why Matt (or is it FOX, or Comedy Central?) that it going along with this "rebirth" thing (whatever exactly that is)? They're taking what we love, what made us loyal fans and made the re-runs and DVD sales SO GREAT, that they brought it back from the dead ... into something that is not what we supported.

 

[ManOnTheWave]

The reset button sounds lame, but I'll give it a shot.

 

[barnaclelapse]

I still like the hell out of the second and last films. The first and third ones were somewhere between mediocre and terrible.

 

[Christopher]

Wonder why Matt (or is it FOX, or Comedy Central?) that it going along with this "rebirth" thing (whatever exactly that is)? They're taking what we love, what made us loyal fans and made the re-runs and DVD sales SO GREAT, that they brought it back from the dead ... into something that is not what we supported.

Judging from the pencil-test footage that was recently released, it looks more like they're just hitting a reset button that restores the status quo.

 

[bigdaddy]

If they reset it so the movies never happened I'm all in favor, but I doubt they will do that.

It's not resetting it in the same universe because we have a Hyperchicken and not a Hypertoad.

 

[Christopher]

If they reset it so the movies never happened I'm all in favor, but I doubt they will do that.

No, the footage picks up where the last movie ended, but instead of emerging in another universe as implied there, they just come back to Earth and Planet Express. So they're acknowledging the movies briefly and then going back to the continued adventures of the Planet Express crew as before. Or so it seems. The pencil-test footage (of the teaser for the first new episode) had a "cliffhanger" whose resolution remains to be revealed.

It's not resetting it in the same universe because we have a Hyperchicken and not a Hypertoad.

What? It's Hyperchicken (the incompetent, Southern-accented attorney who is a large rooster, from Greek hyper-, "above" or "beyond") and Hypnotoad (the toad with the ability to hypnotize people, from Greek hypnos, "sleep"). The Hypnotoad does appear at the opening of the pencil-test footage.

 

[Broccoli]

I bet the resetting of the status quo will be pretty much resetting the last 5 minutes of the last movie. In other words, even though that stuff happened, something will occur that will reset the characters' mindsets to where they were before any big developments happened, such as all of them being fugitives from the law and, of course, the Fry/Leela relationship.

My guess from the clip is that the whole "rebirth" has the professor growing the characters new bodies which also, somehow, affects their memories.



Or they'll just have Nero go back in time and form an alternate universe.

 

[Starbreaker]

Oh... now I know the difference between hyper and hypno. Thanks.

 

[RJDiogenes]

My nephew was over the other day, and had it on "Wizards of Waverly Place" over on Disney. There was something that kept bothering me about the screen resolution, and it finally registered with me that Disney had blurred out the mom's cleavage because they apparently thought her neckline was too low.

Is the space pope reptillian?

He damn well better be!

He should be ursine.

 

[AdmiralGarak]

Is the space pope reptillian?

He damn well better be!

He should be ursine.

You are condemned by the Space Pope.

 

[tharpdevenport]

A reset would make the movies as a whole pointless, and having watched them even more infuriating than not having enjoyed most of them. All for not kind of scenario.

Maybe it's a litte more involving than all this, like Nibbler in the past and the way Fry's brain affected plotlines later. Maybe there is something we don't know that's been planned over the movies, but we don't understand yet.

 

[Christopher]

A reset would make the movies as a whole pointless, and having watched them even more infuriating than not having enjoyed most of them. All for not kind of scenario.

Why? It seems no different from any past instance where an episode has not been followed up on. I mean, in "Time Keeps on Slipping," the cumulative time jumps probably added up to at least a couple of years, but that was never acknowledged in any subsequent episode. And the career-chip idea from the pilot has been completely ignored in every subsequent story but one. Futurama continuity has always been loose. There's more development and change than in The Simpsons, but it's still very far from being serialized. I'm sure the movies will be treated the same way as everything else -- something to be referenced, jokingly or otherwise, when a story warrants it, but not something absolutely binding on what comes next.

And for future reference, I think you mean "all for naught," as in nothing, zero.

 

[Unicron]

So the character's actual name is "Hyperchicken"? Just curious since he was used often enough to be a semi-regular, but never really given much of a specific identification.

 

[Trent Roman]

As I recall, he usually says "I'm just a simple hyperchicken from a backwater asteroid...", so no, it's not his name; must just be a shorthand the writers use to refer to him.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Christopher]

So the character's actual name is "Hyperchicken"? Just curious since he was used often enough to be a semi-regular, but never really given much of a specific identification.

His name is unknown, but he once referred to himself as "a simple Hyper-Chicken." So he's known as "the Hyper-Chicken," more as a description than a name. Kind of like Comic Book Guy. A deleted scene in Into the Wild Green Yonder had Zapp referring to him as "Matcluck" (a pun on Andy Griffith's Matlock), so that might be his name, but not officially yet.

 

[Broccoli]

A reset would make the movies as a whole pointless, and having watched them even more infuriating than not having enjoyed most of them. All for not kind of scenario.

Why? It seems no different from any past instance where an episode has not been followed up on. I mean, in "Time Keeps on Slipping," the cumulative time jumps probably added up to at least a couple of years, but that was never acknowledged in any subsequent episode. And the career-chip idea from the pilot has been completely ignored in every subsequent story but one. Futurama continuity has always been loose. There's more development and change than in The Simpsons, but it's still very far from being serialized. I'm sure the movies will be treated the same way as everything else -- something to be referenced, jokingly or otherwise, when a story warrants it, but not something absolutely binding on what comes next.

And for future reference, I think you mean "all for naught," as in nothing, zero.

You'd be surprised. The continuity for Futurama is pretty strong. Oh, sure they have retconned things away here and there or have neglected stuff in the past for a joke or premise, but on the whole, they did a hell of a lot better job than one would think. I would argue that the continuity is way more consistent than most comedies, animated or not.

On one of the commentaries (don't ask which one, because I don't remember - I think it was an early one), they talk about how made a conscience effort to keep tabs on their continuity, because they know how "sci-fi fans are nutty about their continuity".

In any event, I doubt they'd retcon the movies. What would be the point. I think the most they would do is what I suggested a few posts up.

 

[RJDiogenes]

He damn well better be!

He should be ursine.

You are condemned by the Space Pope.

Eh, he's too busy trying to make a "pilgrimage" to the Zeeba Planet to worry about me.

 

[Christopher]

You'd be surprised. The continuity for Futurama is pretty strong. Oh, sure they have retconned things away here and there or have neglected stuff in the past for a joke or premise, but on the whole, they did a hell of a lot better job than one would think. I would argue that the continuity is way more consistent than most comedies, animated or not.

I'm not surprised, because I know that perfectly well and appreciate it. But my point is that the continuity is not so fanatically tight that they'd be obligated to retcon the movies out of existence in order to restore the general status quo, which is a conclusion that some posters here are jumping to without any real basis. There's no reason to assume they'd treat the movies any differently than they treat everything else in the show's history.

 

[Kegg]

In any event, I doubt they'd retcon the movies. What would be the point. I think the most they would do is what I suggested a few posts up.

Aren't the signs pointing to a 'rebirth'? That's not the same thing as a retcon. Hell I'm not entirely sure what it is, but they could just reset the character interactions to that of the series period with a few flicks of some sci-fi extravagance and call it a day.

Because aside from Fry and Leela ending up together (and the ending of the final movie) the movies didn't actually do anything significantly altering the show's premise, for all the epic pomp and circumstance.

 

[Broccoli]

^ They don't...which is why I don't think they'll retcon away the movies the way some other people here are thinking. I do think they'll "adjust" some things to return some things to the status quo, such as the Fry/Leela relationship and the Planet Express crew as fugitives. If anything, the preview clip strongly implies on how the writers will do that.