Production
David X. Cohen states in the episode commentary that he was eager to write this episode in part because it was something that had been discussed since the very beginning of the show. They had wanted to show that there was a larger conspiracy that had brought Fry to the future and notes on more than one occasion that this was something that had been planned since the pilot. Creator Matt Groening also notes that they had planned to hold off on using time travel plot lines until the series was better established. Cohen jokes that perhaps they should have explored this plot point earlier however since at the time the episode commentary was recorded it had become clear that the series would be ending. Cohen also thought it was important that the episode explored Fry's option of returning to the past and the question of whether he was happier in the past or in the future.
This episode contains a scene which re-enacts events from the pilot episode, "Space Pilot 3000", after they have been changed by the events of this episode. The episode is so similar to the pilot that the Animation director even jokes that the animators charged their time twice for the parts that were taken from the pilot. In actuality, some of Billy West's lines in this episode are taken directly from the voice track for the pilot, specifically Fry's lines as he enters Applied Cryogenics.
Read more about this topic: The Why Of Fry
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The problem of culture is seldom grasped correctly. The goal of a culture is not the greatest possible happiness of a people, nor is it the unhindered development of all their talents; instead, culture shows itself in the correct proportion of these developments. Its aim points beyond earthly happiness: the production of great works is the aim of culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)