From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Simpsons episode
"Deep Space Homer"
Episode no.	96
Prod. code	1F13
Orig. Airdate	February 24, 1994
Show Runner(s)	David Mirkin
Writer(s)	David Mirkin
Director(s)	Carlos Baeza
Couch gag	The family runs to the couch, only to find a fat man sitting on it. They squeeze in to the left of him.
Guest star(s)	Buzz Aldrin as himself James Taylor as himself
DVD commentary by	Matt Groening David Mirkin Mark Kirkland David Silverman
SNPP capsule
Season 5 September 30, 1993 – May 19, 1994
Homer's Barbershop Quartet Cape Feare Homer Goes to College Rosebud Treehouse of Horror IV Marge on the Lam Bart's Inner Child Boy-Scoutz N the Hood The Last Temptation of Homer $pringfield Homer the Vigilante Bart Gets Famous Homer and Apu Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy Deep Space Homer Homer Loves Flanders Bart Gets an Elephant Burns' Heir Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song The Boy Who Knew Too Much Lady Bouvier's Lover Secrets of a Successful Marriage
List of all Simpsons episodes...

"Deep Space Homer" is the fifteenth episode of The Simpsons' fifth season. It is also the source of the Overlord meme.

Contents 1 Synopsis 2 Trivia 3 Cultural references 4 External links

At work, Homer and all employees are ordered to participate in the Worker of the Week award festivities. Everyone who participates, except Homer, already has a medal, but Mr. Burns gives the next Worker of the Week award to an Inanimate Carbon Rod. Homer is infuriated that the rod wins the award, and feels dejected that no one likes him. He turns to the TV for solace and ends up on a channel that is broadcasting a live space shuttle launch, which he finds extremely boring. The batteries fall out of his remote control so that he cannot turn off the TV. Bart helps him out by unplugging the TV.

NASA learns that its Nielsen ratings have declined. Concerned about declining popularity, they decide to send an "average Joe" into space. Their rationale is that the public is tired of seeing "clean-cut, athletic go-getters". They turn on the TV and come across a pair of blue collar comedy programs. Homer telephones NASA to complain about the "boring space shuttle launches". By the end of the conversation, the NASA researchers determine they have found their man. But when they arrive at Moe's, Homer thinks he is in trouble and blames Barney for making the prank call. When Homer realizes what NASA's proposal entails, he steps in and takes credit for the call.

NASA takes both Homer and Barney to Cape Canaveral to train to become an astronaut. They pit the two in competition against one another as they can only take one to space. With a NASA alcohol ban, the training goes well for Barney (he even does a backflip and sings the opening lines of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Major General's Song"), but the future is grim for Homer when he learns that Barney has been chosen to go on board with Buzz Aldrin and the fictional astronaut Race Banyon. However, when Barney has a toast with the people at NASA, he drinks what he thinks is champagne, then goes berserk and fastens himself to a jet pack. After taking off, Barney's jet pack fails, and he bounces off the roof of a pillow factory and onto the road, where he is run over by a marshmallow truck. The champagne Barney drinks turns out to be non-alcoholic. A scientist declares Homer the default winner of the competition, and he goes up into space with the two other astronauts.

In spite of Homer being chosen to go into space, he is very nervous about going. He runs from the space shuttle and talks with Marge on the phone, and she says that Homer ought to take advantage of going into space. He agrees, and gets into the Corvair space shuttle, with its name a reference to the car that was widely considered to be unsafe. The launch is also a Nielsen ratings smash. When on the shuttle, Homer smuggles potato chips ("Careful! They're ruffled.") on board. He opens the bag, but is unaware that they will clog the instruments. His appetite seems to save the day as he flies after the chips to the tune of The Blue Danube, maw first, but he flies into an ant farm, destroying it, sowing panic across the world as the ants are set free thanks to Kent Brockman's rather premature assessment of the situation.

Although James Taylor comes in to make a performance, the disaster continues on board, with Kent Brockman reporting that the space shuttle has been taken over by the ants. The ants destroy the navigation system. Luckily, James Taylor offers to help, by suggesting that they blow the debris out the front door. The astronauts do, but Homer breaks the shuttle's door handle. However, he uses a rod broken from the shuttle to seal the door shut. They return to Earth, landing at a journalist convention.

Although Buzz Aldrin declares Homer the hero, the press see the rod as being a hero. The rod is then featured on magazine covers and is given its own ticker-tape parade. Back at home, Homer is disappointed that he did not get as much respect as the rod, but the family honors him for his achievement, saying that Homer is only one of a handful of people who get to go into space.

• Homer opening a packet of potato chips in space has a possibly coincidental similarity to an incident on the Gemini 3 spaceflight when John Young smuggled a corned beef sandwich on board. He and his crewmate Virgil Grissom each took a few bites, but were reprimanded for it after returning to Earth, as the crumbs could have damaged the electronics. However, on board modern space shuttles it is safe to bring such things on board as they mostly drift up to the filter eventually and do not damage the equipment.
• This episode was featured in the film Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, directed by David Mirkin, who also wrote this episode.
• According to the DVD commentary, NASA loved the episode, and astronaut Edward Lu asked for a copy of it to be sent on a supply ship to the International Space Station. The DVD remains there for astronauts to view.
• The NASA "Worm Logo" is used in different scenes of the episode instead of using the traditional "MeatBall" logo.
• There is a Popeye parody when Homer is in the centrifuge. His chin looks bigger, and he says "I can't stands no more".
• There is another joke in the shuttle at blast-off. When they are heading up Homer's face morphs into Richard Nixon's. This is a reference to the movie Airplane II: The Sequel. On the DVD commentary, Matt Groening states that he does not like this joke.
• Matt Groening was not a fan of the idea of Homer going into space, thinking it was too big a story to recover from. Therefore, to make the story believeable, the writers went to an unusual amount of trouble to make the selection and training process which led to Homer's inclusion in the program was at least plausible by the show's normal standard. There are references to the absurdness of the concept in the reporters constantly asking "Is this a joke?" during the press conference. They also tried to tie in the opinions of the family and Homer's fear to make the emotional journey behind an outlandish plot realistic.

• A number of elements in the episode, particularly during Homer and Barney's training phase, reference the film version of The Right Stuff; Homer even comments at the end that he has "the right... what's that stuff?"
• The X-ray machine used at the power plant is a parody of a similar (futuristic) machine in the film Total Recall.
• The two blue collar TV shows the people at NASA watch are Home Improvement and Married... with Children.
• In the scene where the family arrives at Cape Canaveral, the car is a parody of The Beverly Hillbillies, with Marge sitting in Grandma's position.
• The song Barney sings to prove his sobriety is the "Major-General's Song" from The Pirates of Penzance. Homer retorts with the first line of an obscene limerick.
• Homer and Barney's duel (cut in syndication) is a reference to the classic Star Trek episode "The Gamesters of Triskelion", complete with one of Star Trek's fight themes (originally from the episode "Amok Time") and the NASA administrators betting on the combatants in "quatloos".
• The episode of Itchy & Scratchy featured is titled "Scar Trek: The Next Laceration", a reference to Star Trek: The Next Generation. The music at the start of the scene parodies the theme from the original series.
• In the Itchy & Scratchy episode, Itchy bursts out of Scratchy's stomach in a parody of the Alien from the film series of the same name.
• There are several references in this episode to Stanley Kubrick´s film 2001: A Space Odyssey:
  • In the Itchy & Scratchy cartoon, Itchy comes out to torture Scratchy in an EVA pod much like those aboard the Discovery. The scene itself also parodies David Bowman attempting to retrieve Frank Poole's corpse.
  • The scene when Homer eats the free-floating potato chips echoes the opening space scene, with both the music (The Blue Danube) and Homer and spinning chip resembling docking spacecraft.
  • At the end of the episode, Bart throws a marker into the air; in slow motion it rotates in mid-air, before a jump cut replaces it with a cylindrical space station. This parodies a similar transition scene between "The Dawn of Man" and the future sequence in the film.
  • In the same sequence, Homer appears as an embryonic form floating in outer space, echoing Bowman's rebirth as the "Star Child" at the end of the film.
• The fictional astronaut "Race Banyon" (and his appearance) is an homage to the character Race Bannon in the cartoon series Jonny Quest.
• The space shuttle is called "Space Shuttle Corvair", after the ill-fated Chevrolet Corvair.
• Under the effects of g-forces during his centrifuge test, Homer morphs into Popeye, even muttering "I can't stands no more!"; later, during launch, similar G-forces cause him to morph into Richard Nixon (a reference to the movie Airplane II: The Sequel).
• Homer hopes that his crew will not be sent to "that terrible planet of the apes", only to suddenly remember the film's ending; he then performs Charlton Heston's final scene in the film ("You maniacs, you blew it up!").
• Kent Brockman's concerns about giant ants forcing humans to work in their underground "sugar mines" references the film Empire of the Ants.
• During reentry, while the other astronauts hum the tune from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" to calm themselves down, Homer sings the song from a Golden Grahams commercial.

• "Deep Space Homer" episode capsule at The Simpsons Archive