Roswell That Ends Well

Plot

As the crew watches a supernova, Fry puts a non-microwaveable metal "Iffy Pop" container into the ship's microwave. This causes a reaction between the microwave radiation and the "gravitons and graviolis" from the supernova, which sends the ship to 1947. Since there was no Global Positioning System in 1947, the crew has no way to accurately navigate the ship, and crash-land in Roswell, New Mexico. Refusing to wear a seat belt like the rest of the crew, Bender is catapulted out of the front of the ship by the crash and smashed to pieces. The crew and Bender's disembodied head go to seek out a way to return to their present, leaving Zoidberg behind to pick up the pieces. Zoidberg is captured by the U.S. military and taken to Roswell Air Base for experimentation. Assuming the pieces are the remnants of a flying saucer, the military "reconstructs" Bender's body as such.

Meanwhile, the microwave needed to return to the future has been destroyed and replacements have not been invented yet. A microwave antenna from the army base would work, but Professor Farnsworth warns that using it could change history. He likewise warns Fry against visiting his grandfather, Enos, who is stationed at the base, as he might kill Enos and erase his own existence. Rather than persuading him to avoid his grandfather, the professor's warning causes Fry to become obsessed with protecting Enos from possible harm and encouraging his copulation with his fiance Mildred. Fry finally resorts to locking Enos in an abandoned house to prevent his coming to harm. The house is located in the middle of a nuclear weapon testing range, and Enos is shortly killed by one of the tests.

Fry encounters and consoles his beautiful would-be grandmother Mildred. She seduces him, and Fry rationalizes that since he still exists, Mildred must not have been his grandmother, and he has sex with her. The rest of the group finds him, and insist that Mildred is indeed Fry's grandmother. Fry realizes to his horror that he is now his own grandfather.

The Professor gives up on noninterference as they are running out of time to get back to their time. The crew storms Roswell Air Base and steals the microwave dish. Fry and Leela rescue Zoidberg from an alien autopsy while the Professor grabs Bender's body. As the crew leaves Earth's atmosphere, Bender's head falls off the ship and they are forced to leave it behind in 1947. Back in the 31st century, Fry laments the loss of Bender, until he realizes that his head must still be where it landed in New Mexico. The crew returns to Roswell's ruins with a metal detector where they find Bender's head, untouched by wear, and reattach it to his still-mangled, hovering, "UFO" body.

Production

The writing team came up with the idea for this episode when they were planning the three plot lines for "Anthology of Interest II". As the idea developed they eventually had so much material for it that they broke it out as a separate episode. The reason the concept was originally under consideration for the "What if..." scenario was that when Groening and Cohen originally created Futurama they decided there would not be any time travel; however they changed their mind and decided to go forward with the idea. The writers did not want to create a situation that would leave fans wondering why the Planet Express crew could not simply travel through time on a regular basis. For this purpose they chose to have it occur unintentionally during a supernova as that was deemed to be a suitably rare occurrence. Futurama has returned to the theme of time travel twice since; in Futurama: Bender's Big Score, although the cause of time travel is different, and in "The Late Philip J. Fry", which involves a time machine that can only travel forwards in time – to specifically avoid creating a paradox.

In this episode, director Rich Moore used screen position and character movement to mimic the time travel aspects of the plot. In the planning stages it was decided that actions that played to screen left would represent events from the past or a setback to the plot. Likewise, screen right indicated progress or moving past their problems.

Broadcast and reception

The episode won an Emmy Award in the Outstanding Animated Program (Programming Less Than One Hour) category in 2002, marking Futurama's first win in this category. Rich Moore also won an Annie Award for "Directing in an Animated Television Production" in 2002 and in 2006, IGN ranked the episode as the sixth best Futurama episode. In 2013, they reassessed the list and upgraded it to third best. In 2001, executive producer David X. Cohen noted that this was one of his favorite episodes of the series. Sci Fi Weekly gave the episode an "A" grade and noted that it was "a half hour of pure entertainment". Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club gave the episode an A.This episode is one of four featured in the Monster Robot Maniac Fun Collection, marking it as one of Matt Groening's favorite episodes from the series. Claudia Katz, producer of Futurama, has also stated that this is one of her three favorite episodes of the series. In 2013, it was ranked number 5 "as voted on by fans" for Comedy Central's Futurama Fanarama marathon. Although the episode was well received by critics, it continued to do poorly in its time slot. The original airing was in 83rd place for the week with a 3.1 rating/5 share.