One day in February 2003, there was a massive disturbance in the force, as if the voices of millions of geeks suddenly cried out in anguish. They’d just learnt that Matt Groening’s animated science-fiction series, Futurama, had been cancelled in its fourth season by the bigwigs at Fox Television.

The off-the-wall television show originally ran for a respectable four seasons between 1999 and 2003, but was never as much of a hit as Groening’s other show, The Simpsons. Everyone knows The Simpsons’ catch phrases, but quoting Futurama sound bites identifies you as part of a cult.

Much like The Simpsons, Futurama is a collage of intertextual jokes, sight gags, snarky one-liners, dextrous wordplay, pop culture parodies and random silliness. But its spiteful, subversive sense of humour, wacky characters and nerdy science-fiction references meant that it wasn’t exactly destined for mainstream success.

Well, Futurama is back for a sixth season, thanks to the fanatical following and strong DVD sales it has accumulated over the years. Though the show’s creators made four straight-to-DVD feature films in 2008 and 2009 (collectively known as season five), Futurama is finally making a welcome return to the self-contained 20-minute episode format.

The new season reunites most of the original creative team responsible for Futurama. David X Cohen — executive producer and head writer for the original four series — and Matt Groening are back at the helm.

Most of the voice actors have also returned, including Billy West, who voices multiple characters include Fry, the Generation X slacker who awakes 1 000 years in the future after being cryogenically frozen, Fry’s doddering great great great nephew, Professor Farnsworth, and the incompetent crustacean surgeon, Doctor Zoidberg.

Katey Sagal is back as the Cyclops mutant, Turanga Leela and John DiMaggio reprises the role of the larcenous, foul-mouthed robot Bender (piece of trivia — he also voices Marcus Fenix in the Gears of War videogames).

To date, three episodes of varying quality have been released in the US. The first and best of them plays to Futurama’s strengths by riffing on absurd science-fiction stories with a convoluted plot about wormholes, robot doubles and stem cell science. The next episode features a number of great one-liners from the cowardly, obese space captain, Zapp Brannigan, in a story about a death star (!) bearing down on the earth.

The third episode is the worst of the bunch: it tries a little too hard to skewer up-to-the-minute cultural trends such as Twitter and iPhone mania and fails miserably. In the past, Futurama would seldom turn its sights on targets quite as easy as Apple fanboys. Like most journalists, I love a bad pun, but a singing boil called “Susan” is groan-worthy even by my standards.

Continuing a trend that started in the feature films, the writing in Futurama season six is far coarser than it was in the first four seasons. Though mild smut and scatology have always had a place in Futurama, the new series occasionally reeks of the sort of boorish gross-out humour better left to Family Guy.

If you’re a Futurama fan who has watched the first four seasons dozens of times, it’s also hard not to be impatient with the amount of time season six takes to introduce its characters to a new audience. Another quibble I had with the new episodes is that these familiar characters all too often act out of character.

The writers have painted themselves into a tight corner by setting up a romance between Leela and Fry in the movies. Fry’s inept courting of Leela and her brutal rebuffs made for far better comedy than their cheeseball relationship. Hopefully, they can find a way involving a plot about clones or parallel universes or time travel or some such to untangle that mess.

Futurama season six trailer (YouTube):

But those problems aside, Futurama season six also recaptures many of the things that made the show great in the first place. All three episodes fire off barrages of one-liners, background jokes and cultural allusions at such a rapid rate that you can’t possibly get them all on a single viewing.

And the plot lines beat new shapes out of ridiculous ideas from sources such as Star Trek, Star Wars, Forbidden Planet and The Twilight Zone. They are still wonderfully twisty and bizarre. Some of the story ideas Cohen has disclosed for later episodes in the season sound promising — including a parody of the Da Vinci Code and a narrative about Bender’s attempts to get “robosexual” marriage legalised.

I’m left with mixed emotions about Futurama’s return. There’s something deliciously bittersweet about a beloved television series that gets cut down in its prime, something that shouldn’t be tampered with. Firefly is all the more perfect because it didn’t last a full season, a far better outcome than turning into a 12-season bore.

And Futurama had the plug pulled on it before it settled into middle-aged irrelevance, as the once daring and brilliant The Simpsons has. One suspects that Futurama could go the same way as Groening’s other creation if the revival lasts too long. But for now, this Futurama Imperfect is a welcome addition to my weekly viewing schedule. — Lance Harris, TechCentral

Read an interview with David X Cohen
Futurama season six is screening on Comedy Central in the US, but episodes can be bought as they came out every week through the US iTunes store. There will be 13 episodes in 2010, followed by another 13 in 2011