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Futurama’s love letter to one of sci-fi’s biggest fandoms is a surprisingly dark commentary on the evolution of fandom as a whole.
For a nominally goofy and frequently heartwarming comedy, Futurama is oftentimes a surprisingly dark look at a possible future for the human race. Even when compared to how entire societies were wiped out by casual intervention, the show features some dark ideas, including a reveal in Season 4, Episode 11, “Where No Fan Has Gone Before,” which is otherwise one of its many love letters to classic sci-fi, as it showcases how a fandom could become a religion and what that means for the world.
In “Where No Fan Has Gone Before,” Fry reveals himself to be a massive fan of Star Trek, and the rest of the Planet Express crew are horrified at this, as in the ensuing years, Star Trek has become a forbidden topic of discussion. Learning that all the remaining copies of the show, as well as most of the original cast, has been exiled to a distant world, Fry recruits his friends and the last remaining member of the cast on Earth, Leonard Nimoy, to go on a mission to find them. However, their eventual discovery of the cast — all restored with new bodies — is complicated by the revelation of Melllvar, a powerful energy being who has become a massive Trekkie after finding the copies of the original series.
The episode is a light-hearted and ridiculous love letter to Star Trek, which was a clear inspiration for Futurama, but the explanation for why the series was exorcised from society is horrifying. As explained to Fry, Star Trek fandom grew exponentially over the years, with the cult status of the original series expanding in the ensuing centuries. By the 23rd century, the imagery, vocabulary and customs of the fandom evolved into an actual religion. This set off a chain of nationalistic events, including the resurgence of a Nazi Germany — patterned specifically after the Nazi world from Star Trek. This set off the deadly period of the Star Trek Wars, which aren’t to be confused with the mass migration of Star Wars fans, known as the Star Wars Trek.
The spread of the Star Trek belief system grew swiftly enough that the governments of the world united around a brutal plan to contend with them by executing the Trekkies, throwing many of them into a volcano. It’s a dark and ridiculous moment from a series that often mines absurdity for laughs, but the actual consideration of the consequences are staggering.
In essence, an actual fandom grew in such a way in Futurama that the world had to respond with ruthless efficacy. While this is Futurama, where the world has been destroyed, the cast murdered and all of reality threatened on a semi-regular basis — the fate of the Trekkies is still a shockingly grim turn that forms the basis of Star Trek’s legacy in the Futurama universe.
Even the Star Wars fandom has been hinted to have suffered serious conflict and tragedy with the rest of Earth at some point in Futurama, with Season 6’s “Lethal Inspection” seeing the Planet Express crew taking part in a reenactment of an Earth/Sith War that, according to Hermes, resulted in the deaths of 98 million people, indicating to a cemetery that stretches beyond the horizon. Two of the biggest sci-fi fandoms, at least in the world of Futurama, no longer exist on Earth in part due to their actions and the conflicts they ended up involved in.
It’s a particularly dark view of the potential effect of fandom for something like Futurama to take, especially as it also highlights the meaningful purpose stuff like Star Trek and Star Wars can have on people, with Fry talking about the joy and the lessons stories like that gave him growing up. However, the show also clearly has some grimmer thoughts about the ways fandoms can mutate and evolve.
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