Futurama: “The Six Million Dollar Mon"

Futurama: “The Six Million Dollar Mon.” Season 7, number 7 (25 July 2012), through-number: Episode 121.

Most relevant for ”Mecha-Hermes”: a “cybernetic being that Hermes Conrad” becomes after “he gradually upgraded his human organs to robot parts. The upgrades included a Cylon-eye” from the original ‘’Battlestar Galactica’’ and, in a sight-gag, a suggested Cylon penis — plus “a chest harpoon, tank treads and a multi-function arm”; for the replacement motif, cf. and contrast the prosthetics in Bernard Wolfe’s Limbo. “As he gradually loses his humanity, he becomes resentful of the fact that robots have a better ‘brain’ than he does and choses to replace his with one pilfered from a robot grave.”

Also relevant, the episode begins with Hermes in his most bureaucratic apparatchik mode, performing a performance review and getting ready to fire the most useless employee, Dr. Zoidberg, whom he dislikes. However, Hermes "determines that he is the most useless by wasting all this time on performance reviews and immediately fires himself. Mark 7G is a machine” — like the tape reader of an old UNIVAC computer — “that will be replacing Hermes at Planet Express.” After this, Hermes’s wife, “LaBarbara makes some curried goat that is so hot it burns a hole straight into Hell. Hermes gleefully eats it before going for a walk in the park with his wife. Suddenly, Roberto, the mad robot, robs them. He demands they hand over their skin and holds them up with his knife. Roberto is promptly arrested and executed, but Hermes is left feeling vulnerable. He contacts Bender as a means to get some black market, back alley surgery […] inserting a grappling hook into his chest as a means to protect himself in the future.” Hermes uses his robotic addition to get a box the Mark 7G can’t reach, but in return is outdone by the robot Bender, uses his arm to snake a drain and retrieve Professor Farnsworth’s false teeth. And here begins Hermes’s transformation into not just The Six Million Dollar Man and a Cylon, but into a large robot with visual nods to Transformers, the ED-209 in ROBOCOP (1987) — and eventually Frankenstein’s Creature in the 1931 James Whale film.”

As Hermes discards body parts, Dr. Zoidberg collects them, putting together a fleshly “imaginary friend” and a little Franken-Hermes that he uses as a ventriloquist’s dummy. Finally, Hermes becomes all robot except for his brain, and demands a robot brain. In a Frankenstein-ian touch, a dead robot is exhumed and “brain” — i.e., robotic equivalent of a CPU motherboard — extracted, with the robot turning out to be the mad Roberto. Professor Farnsworth ultimately refuses to remove Mecha-Hermes’s human brain, but Zoidberg and his dummy do so, with Little Hermes doing the cutting and taking the brain for his own head. With the “brain” of Roberto put into the former Mecha-Hermes, Roberto returns to demand flesh from Hermes and gets a slice from Little Hermes (whose pain receptors haven’t been connected), eats it — and, in the manner of the Wicked Witch in THE WIZARD OF OZ, Roberto melts from the spice of the curried goat infused in Hermes. Which returns the episode to the status quo ante, including the fully-restored Hermes insulting Dr. Zoidberg.

RDE, Initial Compiler, 18Jan19