Futurama Season 11 Finds The Show Once Again Pitting Science Against Faith

The writers’ room of “Futurama,” its fans know, is loaded with PhDs. Show co-creator David X. Cohen once bragged that his show has 50 years of Harvard education in one room. They are all mathematicians and physicists and have a great deal of knowledge about science and the history thereof. It’s clear that they invented Dr. Banjo as an analog for right-wing would-be intellectuals like Glenn Beck who stage their ignorance as merely another form of intelligence. The Professor, the writers’ avatar, speaks openly about his scientific discoveries, and Dr. Banjo steps forward to calmly explain that measurable facts aren’t really facts and that all scientific ideas can be debunked through specious reasoning. 

In “Rage Against the Vaccine,” the Professor does indeed invent a vaccine, but the public is suspicious and refuses to get it. The Professor’s rival, Dr. Wernstrom (Herman again), also has a vaccine on the market, and they bicker over whose is better. “Futurama” parodies some of the more widely spread vaccine conspiracies. The magnetized skin produced by Wernstrom’s vaccine is a feature, not a bug. The Professor calms the crowd by assuring them the tracking chips hidden in his vaccine are totally safe.

The solution to Explovid-23, it seems, rests with Hermes (Phil LaMarr), who feels that there might be a religious solution to the disease. Hermes goes to New Orleans and investigates voodoo magic hoping there’s a cure. The rage virus, he feels, might be a low-level form of zombie infection. After a trek down the bayou with a robot skeleton (!), Hermes finds a voodoo shack run by an old romantic rival, Barbados Slim (DiMaggio). In the back is where all the voodoo magic lies. Well, it’s where there’s a fully functional virology lab. 

That’s using voodoo!