Bender's Big Score

Bender's Big Score is the first of the four Direct-to-DVD films, and was released on November 27, 2007 in the USA. Years have passed since The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings, both in the show and in reality, the opening reflects this, but also reflects including the cancellation of the show. Each of the films will be chopped up into four episodes each, possibly with additional material, for the Comedy Central season due to air in 2008.

A preview of the film was shown at Comic-Con 2007. 

The film is released in wide screen format and soon be available in Hi-Def DVD.

Plot outline
The film is introduced with a cold start, with Hermes introducing everyone by their job title and full name. Apparently, Hermes is now a grade 34 bureaucrat. But as he introduces Farnsworth, he tells them they are all fired, because of the delivery network shot them down two years ago. However, the phone rings, and he is soon given the information that the people who cancelled their license were them themselves fired for incompetence. And also that some of them died and were grinned into a fine powder, market as Torgo's Executive Powder. They throw a party, and as Hermes shows his moves under a sabre in limbo, his head is cut off, and his body runs wild like a chicken and gets the entire Planet Express Ship to crash onto him.

The title sequence starts, with altered music, and introductions of each character, but with the same familiar events in the sequence. At the Head Museum, Hermes is put in a jar by Lars, the jar feeder at the Head Museum, who is flirting with Leela. When LaBarbara and Dwight enters to find Hermes in a jar and that his body won't be fixed until at least a week, LaBarbara goes out to find a new handsome husband. Farnsworth enters to tell the crew that they have a delivery to the Nude Beach Planet.

At the Nude Beach Planet, Leela finds out Fry has a tattoo of Bender on his ass, which Fry did not know he had either. Later, Bender is asked by Nudar and his gang to sign up for a partition and give his email address. They manages to get most of Planet Express crew to sign up.

Later back on Earth, Leela is dealing with a lot of spam, but an email about an animal going extinct unless it gets her bank account number opens her eye. Similar Amy is also getting spammed, and manages to order some Anti-Depressing pills. Bender is keen on the fact that he can Get Rich Watching Porn, but ignores when his system tells him to perform a virus scan. He is immediately infected with the virus. Dr. Zoidberg is the victim of a Nigeria scam.

When Farnsworth finds out with his illegal keylogging software, he wishes to teach them out to spot scams on the Internet. But he is self a victim when he sees that he have won the Spanish National Lottery, a price of 400 dollars. He signs the form on the site, and the doorbell rings. When he opens, Nudar and his gang informs him that they now own the company.

Bender, being infected with the obedience virus welcomes the new masters. And soon Planet Express is turned into a scam house. Later, Lars returns and asks Leela out. The scammers is apparently a species who enjoy information, and Fry apparently has a lot of it, or rather a very important piece of information. Which is revealed to be the tattoo of Bender on his ass. Then, they zoom in on it to see if there is any information in it, and in Bender's eye on the tattoo is a binary code. Nudar tells Bender to read it aloud or Scruffy dies. As he finishes it, the Galaxy Entity hears it, and sends back a time sphere.

As they debate what they can do with the time sphere, Nibbler appears to warn them about the consequences by using it. And after an unsuccessful attack by the Nibblonians' kitten-class ships, Nudar wants to take it for a ride. But Farnsworth objects, because it would create a paradox, but Nibbler informs that it is a Paradox Correcting Time Code, which means everything will work out all right. Nudar travels back to yesterday, where he meets himself, and apparently made out with himself. But suddenly the Smelloscope falls upon the new duplicate of Nudar and kills him, with Farnsworth's word; "Paradox resolved."

A problem occurs with their plans to steal all things of value in Earth's history. Because the time sphere can only get them back to the past, not forward into the future. Bender informs them that he can travel back in time, steal the stuff, then hang out in the basement of the building, and come up after a few centuries or more. And so his stealing of Earth's past values begins. And in 3206, where the Nobel Peace Price is given to the East and West Coast Rappers, Bender is revealed to be the alien spaceships that destroyed the original New York.

For Hermes, his wife have gone back with Barbados Slim, and his life is getting worse, since his body won't be fixed in a good deal of time, maybe years.

Farnsworth wants to sell off his doomsday devices in order to make money. But he won't sell out his favourite, the Sphere (very similar to the one in Time Keeps on Slippin'), he handcuffs a bag with it around his wrist. The scammers order Bender to get it, using the old method of Switcharu, Bender decides to saw of the professor's hand. When Hermes sees how well it worked when Zoidberg sew the professor's hand on, he asks if he could do the same for him and his body. So he asks Bender to go back in time and get his body back. But faith has it that Zoidberg puts back on backwards.

Meanwhile, the professor and the Globetrotters are discussing if paradox free time travel is possible, and sure enough, it is. The reason is due to the doomsfield in the equation. Which means, a duplicate created from a time travel is always doomed, it is just a matter of time.

Lars and Leela goes out on a date, and Bender has finally stolen all the stuff they need. But now that the scammers are rich, they suddenly care if the universe gets destroyed. So they want to blank the code from the robot, and vaporise Fry. But Fry escapes, and using a mirror, he reads the code of his ass. And travels back to January 1, 2000, 12:30 AM. Bender is ordered to travel back a few moments before he arrives, and terminate him. Bender arrives at 12:28 AM. But after drinking the beer Fry left before he was frozen, he for the first time needs to go to the bathroom. So he goes back 19 seconds, and asks the former Bender to wait for Fry to come, while he goes to bathroom.

Before Fry arrives, another copy of Bender arrives in a suit, and he tattoos the tattoo on Fry's ass. Fry arrives, and Bender threatens to kill him, but when Fry explains he is his friend (but also due to urinating problems), Bender goes into Automatic Destruct Sequence. But before he explodes, Fry kicks into the freezer and sets it for 1 million years.

The Bender in the bathroom leaves, and spots Fry leaving for the elevator. He tries to catch up, but is too slow. he thus begins his hunt for Fry. But failure after failure, he cannot find him. But in 12 years later in 2012, he spots Fry on the ducks, with a long beard walking off a boat. He calls a cab, which is driven by Al Gore, but after an accident, Bender is thrown towards Fry's location, while Al Gore explains that the hundred dollars Bender would have given him could have bought him one gallon of gas.

Bender lands in front of Panuccis Pizza, he spots Fry in the window above it, and shoots the building with his gun. It collapses, and he cries over killing his best friend. He walks up from the basement in the Planet Express hangar, where he explains his mission is accomplished to the scammers. The scammers inserts a head cleaning tape into his mouth, and the virus, the time code and 50 terabytes of porn is deleted.

In Central Park, the crew holds a memorial for Fry. And Bender explains it was him who killed him. But suddenly Fry appears once more, and explains that at 1:00 AM, January 1, 2000, he figures he has no money from that era. So he knows where he can find free pizza, so he goes back to Applied Cryogenics, but since the pizza is cold, he figures he could travel back an hour and eat it. And so he does. This is where he sees himself kicking Bender into the freezer, but his past Fry warns the current Fry of using the time code. So our current Fry tells him not to then. The past Fry leaves, and the other remains.

Fry then realises that his frozen self has a lot of old money, but since his pants is pulled down due to the tattooing of his buttocks, he touches his own butt instead of his wallet. He is terrified, and slips on the chair Fry originally fell into the tube from and falls into the tube again. When originally frozen Fry walks out of the tube on December 31, 2999. The other Fry turns it to 7.95 years and freezes himself again. At which he explains he just came back to the park right now. Farnsworth explains to Bender, that the Fry he killed was doomed anyway.

But Fry gets to know that his other me lived for 12 years before Bender killed him, so Fry wonders what his life was like, and while none of the crew members gets to know. We, the viewers (the lucky viewers), does. Fry returns to Panuccis, but instead of asking for food, he asks if he can rent the storage room upstairs. He can. He begins living there, and soon discovers that his true calling is helping a narwhal, named Leeloo.

Meanwhile, Fry in 3007 is getting his tattoo removed, so they cannot use the time code again. Since they are all unemployed now, and the entire city of New New York is being turned into a panda hunting reserve, they are all without homes. And thus, on Xmas, 3007, they are all living in an alley (obviously nothing new to Zoidberg). Robot Santa appears while they are singing in the alley, and attacks them, and Leela explains in song that Lars popped the question about marriage while they will hugging in fear.

Back in the past, Fry is getting along with narwhal, Leeloo, he teaches it to eat, have fun and what not. But in 2010, he is informed that it must be send back into the wild to make room for the Loch Ness monster, which is apparently just a log with a Halloween mask glued to it. But Fry decides to follow Leeloo and capture her back.

The wedding between Leela and Lars begins. Fry's plan to stop the marriage is to replace the pen to sign the wedding license with, with one with no ink. As they are replacing the pen for a better one, they manage to stick it in Hermes' eye as he is cleaning his glasses. He slips over a rope, and the chandelier falls down and destroys Hermes' body. As Lars discovers this, he calls off the wedding. And dumps Leela as well.

Meanwhile, Fry captures Leeloo back, and have her inserted into a tank on the ship. But slowly begins to realise that the male narwhal swimming beside them is not upsetting her.

However, Nixon reveals that he is about to close a deal to buy back Earth, but the deal he has found is obviously a scam, and Earth looses its final bit of money, and is forced to evacuate the entire planet. Thus ships at South Street Spaceport is caring people to different planets in the solar system. The Planet Express Ship leaves for Neptune. On Neptune, they meet Robot Santa, who is too depressed for murder and mayhem, as the scammers have also scammed him. But Leela decides it is time to fight back.

So the proposes a strategy for Nixon, but he reveals that the scammers have used the money to build several remote controlled solid gold Death Stars. And thus all hope is lost. But Robot Santa reminds them that he still have elves to build weapons. So he gets together with the Kawanzaa-bot and the Chanukah Zombie. Soon their weapons are built, and they are ready to reveal the attack strategy, which is done by Zapp Brannigan. Apparently, his plan is to send in a children brigade first to buy them off a few seconds.

But as they approach Earth, one of the Death Stars shoots down the Nimbus. At which Leela takes control. But soon realises that it is too difficult to control an entire fleet of ships, thus Hermes says he can be of help, and is wired directly into the battle grid with help from the Professor. And he controls the entire battle smoothly. And soon the battle is won.

But the scammers have one final trick up their sleeves, they reveal the doomsday device's bag that they stole from the Professor. And gives them 30 seconds to decide on an ultimatum. Thus Bender reveals that he was the one who cut off the Professor's hand with an extremely dull saw. But to their surprise, he reveals that he has the bag with the actual doomsday device, and the scammers have been scammed. They fire off the device and destroys the scammers' ship. Bender explains that after he was off the virus, he did the old Switcharu, and thus got himself the device. And thus they celebrate New Year's Eve, 3008 and also because Bender saved the Earth.

Meanwhile, Fry in 2012 realises that Leeloo is in love with the male narwhal, and decides to set her free, in his words; "I want what makes you happy, not what makes me happy."

At the New Year's eve celebration, Lars comes and gives Hermes' his body back. Fry tells Leela to meet him at Applied Cryogenics, and he then also invites Lars. But as Lars is trying to explain to Fry why he and Leela simply cannot be together, Nadur enters, explaining that he was wearing a doomproof suit. He says he wants the time code, but Fry stresses that Nibbler removed it from him. But Nadur says that Lars has it. But as Nadur threatens to kill Leela, Lars does what he says, cause he has always loved Leela, he goes to the tube with Bender in it. He opens it and drags Nadur onto Bender together with himself. Bender counts down, and instead of blowing up at first, he just says "boom!" But after a short laugh, he actually blows up, killing Nadur and Lars. Leela then spots that Lars has the same tattoo on his butt as Fry.

Back in 2012, Fry is entering his home above Panuccis. When Bender comes around destroys it. During the fire, Fry's hair is burnt off, and his lungs are infested with smoke. His voice changes, and so does his appearance. But as he sees himself in the mirror, he realises that he himself is Lars. He rushes to the Applied Cryogenics lab, and gets in the tube with his girlfriend Michelle, and sets it for 990 years. Thus waking up in 3002, he gets employed at the head museum.

At Lars' funeral, it is explained by Lars in a video, that he waited for the day Leela would arrive. But when he saw Hermes' body destroyed at the wedding, he realises, that has a time paradox duplicate, he himself was doomed, and would not put Leela through that. But Nibbler and Bubblegum reminds that in order for any of this to make sense, one must travel back in time for one last time, to tattoo the tattoo on Fry's butt in the first place. And thus Bender does as told.

Back at Planet Express, Bender comes up from the basement and says he have done the job, but also says he met all his own copies down in the basement, and told them too stick around, instead of coming up when they logically supposed to. Thus creating an extreme amount of duplicates. Nibbler fears the worst, and thus escapes out of the universe. And suddenly a huge riff in time and space appears before them. Which Bender concludes with, "we're boned." And the film ends.

Characters
(this list is not yet complete)
 * Headless body of Agnew
 * Al Gore
 * Amy
 * Barbados Slim
 * Bender
 * Bubblegum Tate
 * Chanukah Zombie
 * Charles de Gaulle's head
 * Cubert Farnsworth
 * Dr. Zoidberg
 * Dwight Conrad
 * Hedonism Bot
 * Lars Fillmore
 * Fry
 * Hermes
 * Kif Kroker
 * Kwanzaa-bot
 * Leela
 * Leeloo
 * Michelle
 * Morbo
 * Nibbler
 * Nudar
 * Philip J. Fry, II
 * Professor Farnsworth
 * The Galactic Entity
 * Robot Mafia
 * Robot Santa
 * Sal
 * Scruffy
 * Seymour
 * Yancy Fry, Jr.
 * Zapp Brannigan
 * Zyxel

Cast

 * Billy West as Philip J. Fry, Dr. Zoidberg, Professor Farnsworth, Zapp Brannigan and Additional Voices
 * Katey Sagal as Turanga Leela
 * John DiMaggio as Bender Bending Rodríguez, Barbados Slim and Additional Voices
 * Phil LaMarr as Hermes Conrad and Additional Voices
 * Lauren Tom as Amy Wong and Additional Voices
 * Maurice LaMarche as Kif Kroker and Additional Voices
 * Frank Welker as Nibbler and Additional Voices
 * Al Gore as Himself
 * Coolio as Kwanzaabot
 * Dawnn Lewis as LaBarbara Conrad
 * Mark Hamill as Chanukah Zombie
 * Sarah Silverman as Michelle
 * David Herman as Nudar and Additional Voices
 * Tress MacNeille as Linda and Additional Voices
 * Tom Kenny as Yancy Fry, Jr.

Episode Credits

 * Writers
 * David X. Cohen
 * Ken Keeler
 * Director
 * Dwayne Carey-Hill
 * Voices
 * Billy West
 * Katey Sagal
 * John DiMaggio
 * Phil LaMarr
 * Lauren Tom
 * Maurice LaMarche
 * Tress MacNeille
 * Dave Herman
 * Frank Welker
 * Special Guests
 * Al Gore
 * Sarah Silverman
 * Coolio
 * Tom Kenny
 * Mark Hamil

The DVD
The DVD have been confirmed to contain the following:
 * The film itself.
 * Commentary track
 * The reading of Futurama Returns from Comic-Con
 * A 22 minute episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad.
 * Deleted storyboard scenes.
 * A Terrifying Message from Al Gore.
 * Commentary track with Matt Groening and David X. Cohen
 * Bite my shiny metal X &mdash; a math lecture (what exactly it is is unknown as of now)
 * 3D models
 * The original first draft of the script
 * New character - design sketch
 * Original 5-minute Comic-Con promo

Notes and references

 * The DVD cover shows Hermes' head in a jar (beloved member of the crew who suffers a decapitation, as it says in the plot's summary).
 * This is the second time the Death Star was mentioned (And seen) The first Death Star was the Near Death Star.