(S01E07) I'm going to start with Billy West's take on this episode, because he says exactly what I loved about it. I'll just put it in in transcript form (from the interview I did with him a in June):

BW: I loved it, because of the people made out of the water, it just looked so cool. It was a real killer; I loved that one. What a thing to say about an episode: "Well, he drinks the emperor."

JK: Well, that just says to me that with a Sci Fi cartoon, you can go in any direction you want.

BW: Right, but you notice that they have their roots in pure Sci Fi. Like drinking the emperor. That's like Ray Bradbury kind of stuff.

JK: Even though they have the crazy characters, they still try to root themselves in traditional Sci Fi literature.

BW: It just semed endless, what you could do.

"Endless". That's just about the perfect term for it.

Think about the beauty of Futurama. It's a pretty well-known assumption that cartoons can put their characters in situations that live-action shows can't. Kenny can get killed on South Park every week, for instance, and he can come back like nothing ever happened. But imagine what you can do when you are producing a science fiction cartoon. Just being free from Earth's bounds allows the cartoon's creators latitude that's only slightly smaller than the universe itself.

"My Three Suns" is a great example of this. The planet of Trisol (three suns... get it?) is the show's first example of what can be accomplished once the Planet Express folks leave our solar system. In fact, Matt Groening and David Cohen mentioned on the DVD commentary that the idea, of a planet inhabited by people made of water where Fry drinks the emperor, was one of Groening's earliest ones; it was going to be the second episode until the powers that be decided to keep things close to home to start.

The other thing you can do is have robots spew lines that would seem subversive coming out of a human's mouth, especially a live human's mouth. "OK, Fry, grab a Kleenex for this one, 'cause there's no God and your idiotic human ideals are laughable!" is one of the things Bender says to get Fry to cry out the emperor. Fry's response is priceless: "Phew! That's a load off my mind."

Other notes:

• This is the first time we see Elzar, which is the year 3000 equivalent of Emeril. For some reason, I thought Emeril didn't start kicking it up a notch on TV until 2000 or 2001; the fact that this episode was done in 1999 means the big E has been with us for a long time (I can't wait to see their take on Rachael Ray in 2008).
• "Good news, everyone!" has already become a catchphrase by now, so much so that they make fun of it by showing Bender bracing for the bad news as soon as he hears Farnsworth utter those words.
• When the organ dealer in Little Neptune tries to sell Fry on getting gills, he tells our "hero", "Yes, gills. Then, uh, you don't need lungs anymore, is right?" I love Fry's response: "Can't imagine why I would." Ah, good ol' moronic Fry.
• The "Refreshing Crack" vending machine. No more needs to be said.