Review: Futurama “Lords of the Ring”
Overview
The crew crash-lands on a mysterious world inhabited by intelligent rats.
Our Take
During the eighth season of The Simpsons we had a bit featured in the Treehouse of Horror called “The Genesis Tub” which saw Lisa Simpson grow an advanced civilization started by gestating a simple organism over time when then saw Lisa come toe-to-toe with said civilization. That’s pretty much what we get from this week’s episode of Futurama just mixed in with a dash of Interstellar and you’ve got the basic premise of “Lords of the Ring”. Now four episodes into its Hulu run for Season 14, Futurama delivers a straightforward pop-culture homage that hits close to classic comfort food territory, even if it doesn’t entirely reinvent the wheel.
The crew ends up crash-landing on a strange, uncharted planet inhabited by a society of intelligent, civilized rodents—leaving Fry, Bender, and Leela to figure out a way home while dealing with the locals. While looking to find a gizmo to kick-start their downed ship, Farnsworth is left to be a test subject for a rampant disease that one of the crew finds a cure for due to a random act of testing on animals.
That said, the episode isn’t without its charm. The animation team at Rough Draft Studios turns in solid work, capturing the grand scale of the circular space station and the comical way in which our long-lost species made this place their home.
Ultimately, “Lords of the Ring” isn’t aiming to be an all-time emotional powerhouse like “Jurassic Bark” or an inventive format-breaker. Instead, it serves as a reliable, mid-season sci-fi romp that gives the core trio plenty of room to bounce off each other. It gets the job done, delivers a handful of laughs, and keeps the engine humming smoothly.
