Möbius Dick

"Möbius Dick" is the one-hundred-and-third episode of Futurama, the fifteenth of the sixth production season and the eighth of the eighth broadcast season. It aired 4 August, 2011 on Comedy Central. Leela becomes obsessed with hunting down a mysterious four-dimensional space whale.

The story
Farnsworth is mourning the loss of his first Planet Express crew, having it been exactly 50 years since they were lost. To commemorate the anniversary, Farnsworth order the current crew to pick up a memorial and fly it back to Earth. However, on the way back, there is the Bermuda Tetrahedron, which is thought to have killed the lives of many spaceships which have travelled through it. But Leela insists that they should fly through.

In the spaceship graveyard inside the Tetrahedron, the crew spots the old Planet Express ship, where they find the crew to have been gone. However, inside the old ship, the crew is attacked by a four-dimensional space whale (which Leela refers to as a 'Möbius Dick'), and the flee to their current ship. The whale re-attacks them, eating their cargo and engine, but leaves the ship afloat.

Leela orders the crew to set the sun-wave sails to replace the spaceship engine. But instead of fleeing the Bermuda Tetrahedron, Leela decides to hunt down the whale. Her obsession with killing it, eventually means the crew is eaten by the whale, wherein the whale consumes her, as it feasts on obsession. But Leela manages to get the whale back to Earth, where she can re-introduce the crew and the first crew to their relatives.

Production
During June 2011, Countdown to Futurama released three items of promotional material for the episode: concept art of the Planet Express ship with sails on 1 June, part of the storyboard showing Zoidberg crash in the ship's escape pod on 2 June, and a video clip of the Planet Express crew hunting the whale down on 18 June.

Trivia

 * The episode was for some time thought to be the broadcast season's second episode, but the announcement that "Benderama" would air on 23 June in its place proved otherwise.
 * This is the first episode where Zoidberg is addressed as "Johnny" (his first name being John).

Allusions

 * The title and the overall plot is a parody of the -penned novel ', which was previously referenced in "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid". The title is a of ' and the.
 * Möbius Dick is also well known in the mathematics community as the answer to a pun-based math riddle: What's non-orientable and lives in the ocean?
 *  is also the title of a 2000 novel by.
 * The Bermuda Tetrahedron is a reference to the real-life, a region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and surface vessels allegedly disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
 * When Leela calls the crew "you space dogs", she is referring both to the expression "you dog", and to the of the 1950s and 1960s.
 * The state of the old Planet Express ship, completely deserted but with food still set at a table, is a reference to the real-life "ghost ship the .
 * The Fourth Doctor from the British television science fiction series  can be seen, amongst others, emerging from the body of the Four-dimensional space whale.
 * The sequence where the people exit the space whale's mouth is similar to the scene where the abductees leave the alien ship in . The Professor even says "they haven't aged", a line said by a scientist during that sequence.

Ships in the graveyard
A number of spaceships and other vehicles are identifiable in the Bermuda Tetrahedon.


 * from 
 * from 
 * The spaceship used on album covers for the rock group

Continuity

 * Leela's parents are shown on the surface, after being granted their freedom in "The Mutants Are Revolting".

Goofs

 * Dr. Zoidberg is shown to have been working at Planet Express since at least 2961, but it was established in "Insane in the Mainframe" that he began work in at Planet Express during 2992.
 * When hunting the whale, Bender calls for Leela from above the ship and Leela replies. Seeing as sound can't travel in space, they couldn't have heard each other. Similar goofs have been made in the past as well.
 * It is possible that Bender was actually communicating through radio with the ship.
 * Leela calls Amy "miss Wong" instead of "Dr. Wong". Of course this could have been a mistake on Leela's and not the writers' part.
 * Doctoral titles are often not used outside of academic settings. However, as Leela insists on using "boaty" terms, she should have referred to Amy as "doctor".
 * After the whale has been harpooned, it pulls the ship with enough force to make everyone aboard it hit the wall in the following order: Bender, Amy, Fry, Hermes, Zoidberg, Leela and then Bender again. Logically Bender should not have been shown hitting the wall twice.

Characters

 * Amy
 * Bender
 * Debut: Candy
 * Dwight Conrad
 * Professor Farnsworth
 * Debut: The four-dimensional space whale
 * Fourth Doctor
 * Fry
 * Hermes
 * Inez Wong
 * LaBarbara Conrad
 * Debut: Lando Tucker
 * Debut: Lando Tucker, Jr.
 * Leela
 * Leo Wong
 * Debut: Lifter
 * Debut: Mrs. Tucker
 * Scruffy
 * Turanga Morris
 * Turanga Munda
 * Zoidberg