The past couple weeks, I asked whether Futurama still had any fresh ideas left in the tank – if it could surprise with anything but variations on past glories.

Then along comes an episode that shows, Futurama not only has new ideas to give us, it has Big Ideas.

Big Idea science fiction is what I call that brand of sci-fi that starts with some huge, wild, what-if idea (What if time kept slipping forward at random? What if there was a world of pure mathematics disconnected from physical form? What if you created a simulation of the entire universe, including a simulation of yourself creating a simulation of the universe?) then explores all the varied effects and permutations that idea could have. And in “Lords of the Ring”, Futurama doesn’t come up with just one Big Idea, but two.

Granted, neither idea is strictly new within the broader realm of science fiction. Ring-shaped planets and lab rats developing intelligence and their own civilization: they’ve been done before, and this ep doesn’t try to hide that they’ve been done before. It drops blatant name references to the Ringworld books and to the Rats of FIMH NIMH.

But that still leaves plenty of room for novelty, because unlike those literary works, when Futurama explores a Big Idea, its focus is on all the sight gags, wordplay, and absurdist humor those ideas have to offer. And the answer, here, is a lot.

The rat society is a wonderful place to visit for an episode: where they’re just enough like humans to lull you into a sense of complacency, so when they suddenly do something ratlike, it always gets a laugh. Them turning the lab experiments around on the humans is also a hoot, and I won’t deny that the occasional rodent pun got to me.

And just when you think maybe the rat jokes have been stretched too far, they switch to jokes about how a chase scene would work on a ring-shaped world, using the weird physics involved to create some memorable slapstick stunts (though they don’t explain why the extra gravity only affects Fry’s pants).

The result is quite a fun and inventive outing. I’d definitely put it among the best of the Hulu Revival episodes … which, admittedly, only puts it on par with an average episode from the Fox Era of the show. But average by the standards of Fox Era Futurama is still pretty good!

Stray Observations:

• Adding to the inventiveness of the episode was having a couple places where they changed up the animation style. The Steamboat Willie travel montage was fun, and the rats’ origin story drawn to look like Medieval tapestries gave a wonderful bit of a visual flair to the proceedings.
• The Professor’s absentmindedness being cranked up a few notches was a hoot. Then they dropped it almost immediately, despite it being the impetus for the adventure … but then it turned out that was the point, as going on said adventure was what got the Professor’s mind active again. So I’ll give it a pass.
• I assume Cubert is still waiting to get picked up at the Chess Reenactment. Maybe they’ll just leave ’em there the rest of the season.
• “Professor, you seem strangely knowledgeable about scientific concepts such as ‘air’ and ‘gum’. Plus, you’re wearing a labcoat. And you’re called ‘the Professor’.”