15 Best Futurama Episodes
12. Space Pilot 3000 (Season 1, Episode 1)
The episode that started it all, Space Pilot 3000 kicked Futurama off on an awesome high note.
A simple story when compared to the rest of the series, the premiere finds Fry waking up 1000 years in the future, surrounded by aliens, robots, hover cars and a world that he doesn't understand. There, he meets Bender and Leela, and comes to terms with a new life.
Surprisingly heartfelt, it finds a nice balance between the slightly crass, wondrously strange humour that would make Futurama so beloved, and the clever drama that would occasionally surprise fans for the next 139 episodes of space misadventures.
Right from the introduction of the future, Futurama showed just how inventive, odd and endearingly silly it could be, and made its core characters likeable and fully-formed right from the get-go.