Zapp Brannigan

Major General Webelo (later Commander) Zapp Brannigan is a fictional character in the television series Futurama, voiced by Billy West. He is also referred to (mainly by himself) as "The Zapper", "The Velour Fog", "Big Z" and "The Man with No Name". He is aparody of swashbuckling sci-fi characters such as Flash Gordon. Along with Mom, Brannigan is one of the show's main antagonists although unlike Mom it's more due to his stupidity and his infatuation with Leela than actually being evil; he tends to harass and annoy the Planet Express crew instead of doing them real harm, and in later episodes is on their side more often than not.

Profile

Brannigan is a senior member of the military of the Democratic Order of Planets (D.O.O.P.) though his title varies; he has been referred to as a "25 star General", Captain, Rear Brigadier, and "General Major Webelo". He is arrogant, incompetent, chauvinistic, cocky, vain, and painfully stupid. Kif Kroker is Brannigan's beleaguered lieutenant and personal assistant, as well as his scapegoat when things go wrong.

Brannigan envisions himself a "ladies' man", but is clueless in matters of romance. On first meeting Leela in "Love's Labours Lost in Space" she ends up having pity sex with him. He invariably mentions this encounter in later episodes. He remains convinced that Leela lusts after him and will eventually return to him, despite her (often literally) violent opposition to the idea. His overconfidence in this is such that he does not hesitate to hit on other women, even in Leela's presence. He is also frequently seen with female companions who are obviously prostitutes, or even men in drag. Brannigan has expressed on several occasions his fondness for being choked and spanked by strong women, though during an encounter with the warrior-women of the planet Amazonia ("Amazon Women in the Mood"), his personal limits were rapidly met and exceeded. After escaping and despite his pelvic injuries, he looked back on the experience fondly, sighing happily, "I had snu-snu". He takes any opportunity to brag about his perceived sexual conquests; after having sex with Leela, he says to Kif "I have made it with a woman! Inform the men!"

Brannigan's pretensions of being suave are belied by his ignorance of how to properly pronounce words such as champagne (he pronounces the silent g), bravo, encore, and guacamole (he treats the e as if it were silent and pronounces the first "a" as the "a" in cat), though, strangely, he has no problem with chutzpah or karaoke. This may be due to his "very sexy" learning disability, "sexlexia". He prizes his singing (calling himself "the Velour Fog", a parody of "The Velvet Fog"), doing a William Shatner-like version of Lola (he replaces the name Lola with Leela) to win back Leela's attention on Open-Mike Karaoke Night at an orbital restaurant. However, as with most of his self appraisals, his belief in his singing voice is ill-founded: his rendition of the song is sufficiently awful as to cause all the restaurant patrons to exit the establishment in escape pods.

Brannigan's battle tactics are impulsive, generally stupid, and almost always unnecessary. Describing his battle strategy, he says, "In the game of chess, you can never let your opponent see your pieces." He takes delight in sending his men to their deaths in pointless battles, viewing this as proof of their loyalty. Notable examples include an (unseen) battle with "killbots", a battle which Brannigan won by sending wave after wave of his own men at the killbots until they reached their pre-programmed kill limit and shut down. He employed similar tactics in defending Earth during the first invasion of the aliens of Omicron Persei 8 ("When Aliens Attack"), ordering all the ships under his command to "line up and fly directly at the enemy death cannons, clogging them with wreckage!"

Brannigan's speech is laden with malapropisms and mixed metaphors. For example, when describing the strategy, he also says "If we hit that bull's eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate." His fleet managed to destroy the Hubble Space Telescope amid heavy losses, but was powerless against the actual alien mothership (when his fleet was being wiped out by the mothership, his response was to yell "Stop exploding, you cowards!"). He has written at least one book about military tactics, titled Zapp Brannigan's Big Book of War, based loosely on Sun Tzu's The Art of War, which looks like a Dr. Seuss book with his face on it.

In "War Is the H-Word", Zapp led an attack to capture the planet Spheron I. He failed to realize how pointless the attack was, despite his speech that, "It is a barren wasteland with no natural resources or any strategic value." He even reveals that no one knew anything of the planet's culture, and didn't know what the inhabitants looked like, but merely stated that "We can only assume this: they stand for everything we don't stand for. Also, they told me you guys look like dorks!". When one soldier asked why they were expected to fight and die to conquer the planet, Brannigan replied "Don't ask me: you're the one who's going to be dying!" It was later revealed that the planet they were attacking was actually the inhabitants' home planet, and the humans were in fact the "evil" invaders.

He once provoked an invasion of Earth after leading a military force to storm the embassy of Doctor Zoidberg's home planet, Decapod 10 (in "A Taste of Freedom"). Later, he was duped by the Decapodians into handing the codes for the Global Defence Network to one of their agents, poorly disguised as "Hugh Man". This led to their easy conquest of Earth, for which Zapp then blamed Kif.

Brannigan briefly served as captain of the luxury space cruise ship Titanic, which ended up destroyed after he altered the direct, safe flight plan for an indirect, more challenging one, believing that in doing so "we might just get some kind of gravity boost, or something". He was indifferent to the danger posed by comets ("the icebergs of the sky") and black holes ("that blackish holish thing") — at least, until they actually become dangerous to him. This episode also shows Zapp transferring the blame for the incident to Kif (again), giving him the Captain's badge, and disappearing in a small escape pod. The incident serves to illustrate the apparent cowardice of the monumental space "hero". Brannigan, thanks to his exaggerated or ill-won conquests, is considered a hero by the general populace (such as Amy Wong's parents) and government, frequently praised (even Leela was initially "thrilled" to meet him), but anyone who is around Brannigan too long begins to see him for who he really is and rapidly develops an extreme dislike for him.

Brannigan was once dismissed from the DOOP for his role in destroying DOOP's new $400 billion headquarters ("Brannigan Begin Again"). While showing off, Brannigan used his ship's tactical laser (set on Hyperdeath™) to cut the ceremonial ribbon to inaugurate the new station. He accomplished this, but did not deactivate the laser in time to avoid destroying the station. He is later reinstated with the help of Leela, who lied in court to prevent him from returning to work at Planet Express.

Brannigan is extremely sexist, and believes that women are weak and inferior fighters. In "War is the H-Word", when Leela tried to sign up for the army at the start of the war to protect Fry and Bender, he prohibited it, claiming that having women on the battlefield served as a distraction for his soldiers. In the episode "Amazon Women in the Mood", he walked in on Kif, and learned that he was crying "like a woman". In "Three Hundred Big Boys", when talking about his conquest of the Spider planet, he claimed that the enemy was "weak and woman-like on the battlefield".

Brannigan's Law

Brannigan's Law states that one cannot interfere with an undeveloped planet, a parody of the Prime Directive from Star Trek. Brannigan himself does not pretend to understand it, he merely enforces it, and even fails to uphold it on at least one occasion. Brannigan's Law is officially called Directive B10.8:1. According to Brannigan, "Brannigan's Law is like Brannigan's love: hard and fast".

Ship

The Nimbus: BP-1729 is the flagship of the Democratic Order Of Planets (DOOP) fleet, under Brannigan's command. The Nimbus is an extremely large vessel, capable of blockading or besieging entire planets single-handedly, and of transporting armies large enough for the pacification of the planet, all without the aid of support vessels. It is a parody of the Enterprise from Star Trek: The Original Series. At one point the Nimbus was destroyed by the Decapodians and was either rapidly rebuilt or replaced by another ship that had been renamed, similar to the destruction and replacement of the Enterprise, NCC-1701, with the NCC-1701-A. It was again severely damaged in Bender's Big Score, only to be repaired within the month and return fully operational in The Beast with a Billion Backs. Brannigan's quarters aboard the Nimbus (which he refers to as his "lovenasium") are garishly decorated in velour and contain a hovering heart-shaped bed, hanging over which is a portrait of him in a pose mocking Aaron Shikler's posthumous portrait of John F. Kennedy.

Military triumphs

Brannigan is widely revered in military circles for his numerous defeats of 'hostile' alien species. However, almost all of these victories tend to come from using excessive force to subdue lesser opponents, such as when he "defeated" the Kill bots by "Exceeding their kill limit by sending wave after wave of men to be killed by them" also:

• Carpet bombing Eden 7 ("Brannigan Begin Again")
• Defeating the pacifists of the Gandhi nebula ("Brannigan Begin Again")
• Conquering the Retiree People of the Assisted Living Nebula ("Brannigan Begin Again")
• Single-handedly defeating the "weak and womanlike" Spiderians of Tarantulon 6 ("Three Hundred Big Boys").
• Driving the native population off the planet Spheron 1 ("War Is the H-Word").
• Defeated the Killbots in the Auctlian system ("Love's Labors Lost in Space").

Movies

Zapp Brannigan has appeared in all 3 Futurama movies to date (and it is confirmed that he will appear for the fourth). In all of them he is seemingly killed only for it to be later revealed that he's still alive.

In Bender's Big Score, Brannigan is initally the leader of the large squad that attempts to take Earth back from the Scammers. Almost immediately after the battle begins Brannigan begins annoying Kif thus causing Kif to go flying into one of the golden Death Stars. This destroys the Death Star but also destroys the Nimbus' engines causing the ship to go plummeting down into Earth. The squad is immediately taken over by Leela. Although the film leaves Brannigan's final fate ambiguous it's confirmed in the following movie that he survived.

Production

Zapp Brannigan is voiced by Billy West, though he was originally intended to be voiced by Phil Hartman. Hartman insisted on auditioning for the role, and "of course, just nailed it" according to creator Matt Groening. However, due to Hartman's death, West was given the role. On the Futurama DVD commentary, Groening reveals that Zapp's character and mannerisms were established in Billy West's original audition for the character, and any similarity to Phil Hartman or his other well known cartoon characters (Lionel Hutz and Troy McClure), is simply coincidence. On the other hand, in an interview for the web site TV Squad, Billy West states that his Zapp Brannigan is an imitation of Hartman and also "modeled after a couple of big dumb announcers I knew".

Brannigan is a highly negative play on the Star Trek captain James T. Kirk, played by William Shatner, as he shares many superficial similarities to Kirk, such as his interest in the opposite sex, appearance, position, and mannerisms, while, humorously, his reactions and deeper qualities are in direct opposition to those of Kirk's, (he is stupid, uncharismatic, a poor leader, extremely cowardly, is despised by women despite his boasts to the contrary, and has deep contempt of the advice of his assistant), and is frequently faced with situations similar to those Kirk faced in Star Trek, upon which he immediately proceeds to do the opposite of what Kirk did. The creators of the series envisioned Brannigan as being similar to what Shatner himself would be like as a starship captain. On the DVD commentary of Zapp's first appearance, the creators describe him as being "40% Kirk, 60% Shatner", and that the initial premise for the character was "What if the real William Shatner was the captain of the Enterprise instead of Kirk?" In the episode "Amazon Women in the Mood" the DVD audio commentary describes Zapp Brannigan's reinterpretation of "Lola" as a spoken word song is a reference to what William Shatner did with "Rocket Man". Brannigan also wears a girdle to appear thinner ("Brannigan Begin Again") and in another episode nearly loses his toupee, seemingly a parody of similar accusations aimed at Shatner. As a reference to the fact that Shatner got fatter as Star Trek progressed, the writers originally wanted Brannigan to be fatter in every scene throughout the course of the episodes in which he appeared. Unfortunately, since he started out fairly fat and appeared in a lot of scenes in "Love's Labours Lost in Space" (Brannigan's first episode), towards the end of the episode, he was so fat that he was difficult to draw. The writers decided to drop the joke, to make it easier on the artists and also because much of the staff was eventually disgusted by how fat he became. However, this does seem to occur in Brannigan, Begin Again, when the severe gravity of a planet causes his belly to burst from his girdle; he asks an unaffected Leela, "Let me ask you a serious question, Leela: Does the company that made your bra make a girdle as well?"