14 Great Futurama Characters In Only One Episode

The episode Love and Rocket begins with Bender arguing with The Express ship who is then programmed as a male. After a successful business trip to the Romanticorp, the Professor is able update the ship’s features, including giving it a female personality. With this new enhancement, Bender and the ship start getting flirtatious with each other and it interferes with the crew’s missions.

Much to Fry and Leela’s disapproval, the two get better acquainted and the relationship starts to grow serious. But as usual, Bender gets bored of his new love and starts dating other robots, much to the ship’s discontent. This leads her to grow jealous and insecure as she grills Bender on whether his feelings for her are genuine, as well as pestering Fry on Bender’s whereabouts. Her feelings are somewhat justified until the final act when she becomes fully psychotic.

First, she teases Leela and in doing so, crashes into a large asteroid. And then after having to escape from a deadly attack from the planet Omicron Persei 8, Bender decides then to break up with her. She takes it exceptionally bad and lets four rockets crash into her, leaving the ship to spiral out of control. Taking the break-up to heart, she flies herself into a large quasar if it means her and the bending robot can merge into the perfect quantum singularity. Her final act of madness – turning off the oxygen to kill off Fry and Leela. It could only take a team as brave and experienced as Planet Express to escape from her treachery and return her to neutral form.

In some ways, The Planet Express Ship shouldn’t be considered on this list as it (he/she) is technically present for every single episode. There’s also a mild plot hole as to why they need a Captain to fly the ship if it can easily fly itself. But Love and Rocket was the first and only time it was given an actual personality and make an engaging story out of it.

Plus, a guest star appearance from Sigourney Weaver as the Planet express vehicle, an actress who’s literally played someone prisoner to a space ship, is always welcome.