In the aired pilot, Fry’s first introduction to the future has him meeting with the one-eyed Leela and being assigned by a computer to another lousy delivery job. It’s much more in line with this show’s vision of the future: one that looks impressive and crazy on the surface, but where everything is basically structured the same. Humanity might now have the ability to travel the stars and cure all sorts of once-terminal illnesses, but working-class guys like Fry are still stuck doing the same dead-end gigs.
The other recurring joke the show had planned, which you can see much more of throughout the pilot, is the idea that futuristic technology will be just as malfunction-prone as technology in the present. “We were going to have all this cool technology like they have in ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Star Wars,’ but it was going to malfunction like technology always does,” Cohen explained. “So, you know, we’re going to throw those sliding doors in but they’re going to hit you in the head.”
Since then, “Futurama” has constantly played around with viewer’s expectations of the future, revealing everything about the 31st century to be surprisingly mundane and annoying. Even the cool stuff, like getting to visit alien planets and travel across galaxies, quickly loses any sense of awe behind it. For Fry and the rest of the crew, amazing things like visiting the moon are soon treated like just another job to do. It’s not exactly a depressing view of the future — humanity’s still alive, after all — but it’s not a particularly optimistic one either.
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