Woo hoo!! It’s back! It’s been a few years since the Forces of Darkness[1] cancelled the incredibly brilliant Futurama after just four years. And finally, after much weeping and wailing[2], and lots of DVD sales, it’s back in a bigger, better and more bonkers than ever form. Rather than a series of short episodes, we’re getting feature-length releases, which will be appearing at intervals over the next year.

This is the first, which was released today in the UK – by ordering early, I managed to get the limited edition which comes with a nifty lenticular 3D picture, which was a nice freebie. Amazon have run out of those now, so the link thingy is for the standard release.

The feature is a quite reasonable 85 minutes in length and has a plot involving time travel, scam emails, paradoxes, romance, jokes, Al Gore, and squillions of references that require at least a passing familiarity with the previous episodes. Loads of fun, and I’ll have to watch it again to pick up on the jokes I missed the first time.

There’s a pile of special features, which include the usual commentary, storyboard stuff and the like, a lecture (really!) on the numerous mathematical references in Futurama[3], and well, lots more which will probably take me a few days to watch.

This is a really nice DVD release – I’m already looking forward to the next one, which is due out in June.

[1] They work under the name of “Fox”, I believe
[2] I’m not sure if gnashing of teeth was involved, but it seems likely
[3] There are some quite serious geeks involved in Futurama….