Futurama: 10 Things It Did Better Than The Simpsons
4. Science-Fiction Done Right
If you watch only a handful of episodes of The Simpsons, you will find that it is a treasure trove of pop culture references. The creators clearly have a love of Stanley Kubrick's work and pretty much whatever is popular at the time. It's fun and entertaining, but Futurama has an edge in one department: science-fiction.
Because the series is based in the future, it has the unique opportunity to spoof, parody, and pay homage to every sci-fi property ever made... and that's exactly what Futurama did.
An entire episode was devoted to classic Star Trek, even featuring the voice talents of every member of the series who was still alive at the time. They even killed a Redshirt and covered half-a-dozen other references in that one episode.
Other references include tributes to Isaac I, Robot, Soylent Green, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes, H. G. Wells' Time Machine, and much, much more. It's fair to say that The Simpsons could have worked in many of these references had the series been based in sci-fi, but Futurama holds that advantage, which is one of the reasons the series was so beloved by fans of the genre.