A Clone of My Own

"A Clone of My Own"
Futurama episode
The Professor's clone, Cubert Farnsworth
Episode no.	Season two Episode 10
Directed by	Rich Moore
Written by	Patric M. Verrone
Production code	2ACV10
Original air date	April 9, 2000
Opening caption	"Coming Soon To An Illegal DVD"
Opening cartoon	Ko-Ko Needles the Boss (1927)
Season two episodes
November 1999 – December 2000 I Second That Emotion Brannigan, Begin Again A Head in the Polls Xmas Story Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love? The Lesser of Two Evils Put Your Head on My Shoulders Raging Bender A Bicyclops Built for Two A Clone of My Own How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back The Deep South Bender Gets Made Mother's Day The Problem with Popplers Anthology of Interest I War Is the H-Word The Honking The Cryonic Woman
List of all Futurama episodes

"A Clone of My Own" is episode ten in season two of Futurama. It originally aired in North America on April 9, 2000. It marks the first appearance of the recurring character Cubert Farnsworth.

Plot

Professor Farnsworth receives word from Mars University that they are revoking his professorship. When he arrives before the university's professors, he reveals all their secrets until he realises it was his 150th birthday party. After he sees a short film summing up his life, Farnsworth becomes concerned with his own mortality. He decides he needs to name a successor. The Planet Express staff each expects one of them will be named, including Fry, but Farnsworth reveals that his successor will be a 12-year-old clone of himself, Cubert Farnsworth.

Cubert decides that being an inventor is not an appealing career choice. He makes cutting remarks about the Professor and his inventions, which include a time travel machine and a translator which turns words into an incomprehensible, dead language (French, despite this being used in the show before). A depressed professor makes a recording over Bender's soap operas telling his crew that he has been lying about his age; he is actually 160, the age when robots from the Sunset Squad take people away, never to be seen again. Under cover of a thunderstorm, a Grim Reaper-like hooded robot arrives, and takes the professor away while he says good-bye to everything in sight.

The crew set off to rescue the professor, and find the Near-Death Star, the Sunset Squad's base of operations. The crew sneak in with Fry dressed up as the professor with Cubert on his back posing as a hump to make him look "old." They even brought a jar of Cubert's blood just in case. They locate the professor, who is unconscious and hooked to a life-support system. The robots discover the crew who then race back to the Planet Express Ship, Professor Farnsworth in tow.

As they reach the landing pad Cubert is knocked unconscious, but they make it onto the ship in one piece. When the ship takes off, the robots open fire, damaging the engines. A reawakened Cubert announces that he knows how to fix the engines, and the crew make their escape. It is revealed the dark matter engines do not move the ship, but instead move the universe, allowing the ship to go faster than the speed of light. Safely back on Earth, Cubert tells the professor that he has decided to follow in his footsteps.

Broadcast and reception

In its initial airing, the episode placed 84th in the Nielsen ratings for primetime shows for the week of April 3-9, 2000.

Continuity

• In this episode Cubert is named as the professor's heir. However, in "Anthology of Interest I" it is revealed that if Leela were a little more impulsive, she would have been named as his heir for being so unimpulsive.
• Professor Farnsworth describes the French language as incomprehensible and dead; however, Bender is later able to speak fluent French in Insane in the Mainframe without confusing anyone, though this could have come from Bender pretending to be insane in order to stay at the robot asylum. French is also spoken by the Professor's gargoyle, Pazuzu in Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles.
• When showing Cubert his smelloscope Professor Farnsworth calls it "my award-winning smelloscope." He wins the award in the end of A Big Piece of Garbage.
• In this episode, Leela is shown as lacking depth perception. However, in most other episodes, she always seems to have it, despite being a cyclops. A notable exception to this is in "Space Pilot 3000" where she states she does not have good depth perception. In the following episode, "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back", she sings "They said I probably shouldn't fly with just one eye", before being hit by a pneumatic tube capsule.
• Farnsworth reveals that he lied about his age, even though in "Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles", there is a machine used by the spa coordinator and Farnsworth that can exactly calculate anyone's age.

Censorship

• In New Zealand airings, the following edits were made :
  • The scene of Farnsworth confessing on the video that he taped over Bender's soap operas to record the goodbye message, followed by Bender yelling, "You bastard!" was cut.
  • The scene of Bender calling Cubert a "bed-wetter" after Cubert says that robots cannot keep secrets was cut.
  • Leela's line, "We can't, you bastard! No one knows how it works!" is missing the "You bastard!" part.

External links

• A Clone of My Own at the Internet Movie Database
• "A Clone of My Own" at The Infosphere.