Bender's Big Score

It's a worrying time when the first sign of senile dementia sets in. Especially if this occurs before your thirtieth birthday.

I of course, being a big Futurama fan, ordered the direct to DVD feature length episode "Bender's Big Score" as soon as it became available, as well as preordering Stargate's "The Ark of Truth". Arriving home last night I found two packages from Play.com. My initial excitement that perhaps the Stargate release date had slipped forward was dismissed when it turned out that at some point in the past I had preordered Bender's Big Score, and promptly forgotten about it. Or perhaps one of these is a temporal copy of the other one?

Thus, I am now the proud owner of two copies of this DVD.

I've always preferred Futurama to The Simpsons.I've just found the humour better, more surreal and quite often very cerebral. I could make a joke that this is why Americans didn't like it, but the main reason it was cancelled was because studio executives fully understand what the show was about.

There's a great opening where Professor Farnsworth is explaining that the idiots who cancelled them were in fact themselves fired for incompetence. The Box Network visual gag is very good. Then Leela asks "What does this mean for us and our many fans?" while standing in front of a rack full of desk fans. As soon as I saw that, I knew they were back on form.

The pace is maintained throughout, not even slowing down for the musical number. There were a couple of unnecessary cameos but on the whole, it was well written and very funny.

Score: A

OQ: Well....we're boned.