Hubert J. Farnsworth
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This television-related article describes an aspect of the series in a primarily in-universe style. Please help rewrite it to explain the fiction more clearly and provide non-fictional perspective. |
| Futurama character | |
| Hubert J. Farnsworth | |
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| Species | Human |
|---|---|
| Planet of Origin | Earth, specifically Hell's Laboratory, Manhattan, New New York City, New New York |
| Job | Mad Scientist and owner of the Planet Express Delivery Company. Professor at Mars University |
| First Appearance | Space Pilot 3000 |
| Voiced by | Billy West |
Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth, or simply "The Professor" (born April 9, 2841, New New York City, New New York, USA) is a fictional character appearing in the animated television series Futurama, voiced by Billy West.
The proprietor of the Planet Express delivery service for which the main characters work, the extremely elderly Professor Farnsworth is the great (×30) nephew and originally described as the only living relative of Philip J. Fry, one of the series' central protagonists. Later developments in the series show this not to be the case, specifically Farnsworth's clone, Cubert and Farnsworth's son, Igner.
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[edit] Character history
The Professor is a mad scientist, which he has admitted to being on several occasions. The creators of the show named him after electronic television inventor Philo Farnsworth,[1] giving him the same first name as University of California Philosophy professor Hubert Dreyfus, of whom early writer and producer Eric Kaplan is a former student. He is a senile, deranged, and unpredictable old man who is both a maniac and a genius. He has a gift and a passion for the creation of doomsday devices and atomic supermen and is a danger to himself, his employees, and the universe in general. He has put at least one parallel universe in peril with his inventions.
The Professor teaches at Mars University and has worked for Momcorp on several occasions, but he currently spends his time inventing ridiculous devices and coming up with suicidal missions for his crew. While at Momcorp, he fell in love with the CEO, Mom, only to leave her and Momcorp when she decided to weaponize his "Q.T. McWhiskers" toy, an anthropomorphic cat toy that shot rainbows from its eyes. What he's a professor of goes unexplained as he demonstrates mastery of whatever field of science is plot convenient at the time. This reaches its apex in Bender's Big Score, where he shouts, "I can wire anything directly into anything! I'm the professor!"
[edit] Characterizations
The Professor is characterized by his catch-phrase "Good news, everyone!", frequently followed by very bad news or a semi-suicidal mission; he somewhat acknowledges this in The Beast with a Billion Backs. On the very few occasions he has good news he opens with "Bad news, everyone!" then before the good news sinks in, he gives a "Good news" comment. Another is his exclamation of surprise, "Sweet zombie Jesus!" (although this phrase is sometimes censored in syndication). Though not a catchphrase in general, he often says "Wha?" when unaware of the situation, or when someone questions a statement he has just made, showing his senility. Early on in Season 1, the catch phrase "I am already in my pajamas..." was partially developed, but it never caught on. The Professor often makes mutually contradictory statements just moments apart; this happens especially often when briefing his employees, with the prevailing second statement canceling a much more reassuring first sentence. For example, in "The Sting", he tells the crew their mission is to collect "ordinary honey." When Leela remarks that it doesn't sound so dangerous, the Professor responds angrily, "This is no ordinary honey!" He has the same blood type as Amy Wong, as heard in The Series Has Landed.
The Professor has a tendency to enunciate his /wh/ sounds, and frequently hypercorrects his /w/ sounds to sound like /wh/ as well, e.g. "Whell, let's get started."
[edit] Age and "Death"
The Professor is one of the oldest human beings living on earth (excluding those who have been cryogenically frozen or are kept alive as heads in jars), a title he acquired after the events of the episode "A Clone of My Own", in which it was revealed that upon turning 160 (which he claimed was his 150th Birthday), all humans are collected by the "Sunset Robot Squad" and sent to live out the rest of their days in isolation aboard the gigantic "Near Death Star" (a pun on the Death Star). He mentions to his crew that he is actually 160 years old, and has been lying to protect himself. After his crew rescues him, Farnsworth returns to Planet Express to resume the life he originally had before being removed by the Sunset Robot Squad. In "Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles" his age is stated to be 161, and after swimming in the fountain of aging, reports that he is "Even older! Huzzah!". His clone Cubert Farnsworth took control of Planet Express claiming the Professor had himself declared legally dead for tax evasion reasons. The Professor denies this allegation, claiming "you take one nap in a ditch at the park and they start declaring you this and that!" In Bender's Game he stated that he is currently 165 years old.
He also has a genetic disease called "wandering bladder" and seems to have narcolepsy, as he often falls asleep at random moments, although this could just be due to his age.
[edit] Relationships
The Professor rarely worries about the safety of the crew, viewing them as a means to an end, as evidenced in the first episode. After remarking that he was looking for a new crew for his intergalactic space ship, he was asked "What happened to your old crew?" His response was "Oh, those poor sons-of-b—but that's not important! What is important is that I need a new crew!" Farnsworth's employees later discover that their predecessors died while gathering honey from Space Bees ("The Sting"). The Professor issues his new crew the previous crew's career chips from a manila envelope labeled "Contents Of Space Wasp's Stomach" ("Space Pilot 3000"). By definition, neither mad science nor senility requires a distinction between Space Wasps and Space Bees.
He quite frequently sends his crew on dangerous missions even when he has the foreknowledge that they will probably not make it back alive. His missions are typically those other delivery companies won't take, such as serving subpoenas to mob-controlled worlds or casual deliveries to virus-infested planets. Even the commercial that he had produced for his company makes several remarks to this effect, including "When other companies aren't crazy or foolhardy enough…" and "Our crew is expendable, your package isn't." (The former shows a crewman running through a minefield and the latter shows him being carried away by a giant bird.) In one episode when the crew and his ship are sent off to war, he immediately tries to hire another crew, going so far as to assign them similar character roles; he is clearly surprised to be interrupted by his old crew returning, exclaiming "Oh God you're alive! I mean, thank God you're alive." and sending the applicants away with advice to "Come back in three days, a week at most." Even his familial relationship to Fry doesn't do much (if anything) to dampen the glee with which he assigns particularly difficult and deadly delivery missions. When asked about the nature of his delivery "business", Farnsworth once clarified that he viewed his company more as "a source of cheap labor, like a family." He also frequently covets his employees' organs and blood; he once mentioned that he keeps Amy around for this exact reason. In one episode, it is shown that he tries to get Hermes to kill himself in a way that wouldn't damage his liver because "other people need it".
Not only is the Professor a direct descendant of Fry's older brother Yancy, Jr., but also, due to the time-travel paradox in Roswell That Ends Well, which made Fry his own grandfather (and as such his own brother's grandfather), the Professor is the logical direct descendant of Fry himself, albeit this information is never stated.
It was established in the episode "Mother's Day" that the Professor was once Mom's lover, as well as an employee. However, they could not maintain their relationship due to Mom's craving for power, prompting them to break up (this reportedly happened three times in their relationship). It is speculated that the failure of their love made Mom the bitter woman she is today. When Mom took control of all the world's robots to cause an uprising, her sons Walt, Larry, and Igner attempted to get the Professor to seduce Mom and retrieve the remote for the robots, but they ended getting back together briefly instead, but they broke up once more when Mom learned the Professor was (initially) using her. It was revealed in the film Bender's Game that the Professor is the father of Mom's youngest son Igner, ironically, the one that the Professor despises the most.
[edit] Finances
The Professor claims to have created Planet Express to fund his experiments, though the company is frequently on the verge of bankruptcy. This is highlighted in "Future Stock", where Hermes shows a pie chart of their income, the larger portion of it (approximately 65%) showing an $8 bank error in their favor. This is mostly due to the incompetence of Fry, Bender, and Leela who have few reservations about abandoning their deliveries if they are distracted by personal problems, endangered by various space hazards, or simply bored. In Futurama: The Game, which may not be considered canon, the Professor laments that the crew never remembers to charge anyone for the deliveries. Despite what would seem to be a setback, the Professor is still very capable of funding his experiments as well as paying for the inevitable repairs after the experiments go awry. The Professor states and/or implies in both "A Clone of My Own" and "Anthology of Interest I" that he has a vast fortune saved up, though his senility and occasional insanity casts some doubt on his actual financial situation. It is reasonable to believe that he is at least wealthy enough to not need Planet Express, considering his long career working directly under the richest woman on Earth, his vast collection of doomsday devices and deadly pets, and his many scientific achievements, including being essentially the father of all modern robots, an accomplishment that implies extensive and continuous royalties.
[edit] Achievements
Professor Farnsworth, while sometimes seen as a laughingstock in the scientific community, has pioneered many important inventions, including the design of all modern robots and the meta-particles capable of converting Dark matter into useful energy. Farnsworth has also received many honours. For stopping global warming and Richard Nixon ("Crimes of the Hot"), Nixon awards him the Polluting Medal of Pollution (which spews smog). He also received the Academy of Inventors award for stopping the giant trash meteor from destroying New New York City ("A Big Piece of Garbage"). He also invented the first robot to qualify for a Boat Loan ("A Clone of My Own"). Additionally in this episode it is revealed that he invented the Planet Express Ship's dark matter engines which, rather than moving the ship through the universe, moves the universe around the ship. It is presumed he performed work on the ship to make it run again after dark matter was rendered inert in Bender's Game. His "Smell-O-Scope", which detects scents throughout the universe and is one of his most prominent inventions, has been used in many important situations. In the film Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs, Wernstrom mentions that Professor Farnsworth is a recipient of the Fields Medal, which is awarded only to scientists under 40 years of age.
[edit] Production
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Professor Farnsworth is voiced by Billy West, who also voices Fry, Dr. Zoidberg, and Captain Zapp Brannigan. His design is considered to be somewhat similar to a combination of Mr. Burns and Grandpa Simpson from Matt Groening's other series, The Simpsons.[2] However, his thick glasses and lab coat give him the general distinction of a professor.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ M. Keith Booker. Drawn to Television: Prime-Time Animation from the Flintstones to Family Guy. pp. 115–124. ISBN 0275990192.
- ^ Gates, Anita (1999-01-24). "Groening's New World, 1,000 Years From Springfield". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9800EFD61530F937A15752C0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2. Retrieved on 2008-06-13.
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