Tripping the Rift: S01E07: 2001 Space Idiocies

This episode brought us two firsts to the series. This episode marks the first time that there wasn’t a fly by of the Free Enterprise or Jupiter 42 to start the show. 2001 Space Idiocies is also the first time that Six had sex during an episode. Its not as big a deal as when Xev of LEXX finally got it on, since its assumed the Six is always having sex, but it’s still a nice piece of trivia. Thanks to kamisama103 for pointing it out.

As stated earlier, the show doesn’t start in space. It starts at sunrise on the primitive planet Kubrickia. And just like in the opening scene of 2001 A Space Oddesy a black monolith appears over the village and piques the curiosity of the locals. And just as the villagers make their way to the monolith it falls on its back. Or onto Chode I should say. No worries though, being a mollusk, he doesn’t have to worry about being crushed, and being a cartoon helps too. Just as soon as falls over, Chode lifts it back up and puts it in its proper upright and locked position.

Chode was hired to place that monolith on the planet, by some mysterious stranger, with a silhouette and voice that is obviously Bobo, in a dark underground parking lot. But Chode is a man of principle, and wouldn’t take the job unless he had proof that what he was doing isn’t evil. A cheque for $5000 was all the proof he needed. After Chode completed his job, him and Gus left the planet on their shuttle. They would have used the transporter, but its broken. The Jupiter 42 is becoming more and more like the busted-ass Free Enterprise every episode.

Back aboard the ship, Six is very skeptical about the job Chode completed. Even more soon once discovering that his client was clearly a Dark Clown. Six believes in all the Star Trek crap about primitive species being allowed to develop on their own. She says it’s the prime directive. That’s not the case on Chode’s ship! The prime directive for his crew is to save his ass. And he even puts up signs reminding everyone. Six has Bob zoom in on the planet to show Chode what dark scheme Bobo has planned:

When the village chieftain touches the monolith, the things rapidly grows to the size of a skyscraper. At the top of the monolith is a huge Bobo, who claims to be the new god of the Kubrickians. After his troopers needlessly kill a few of the natives, they conceded and worship Bobo as their god. Their new place in life is to mine precious metals for their lord.

Chode is outraged at what he sees. He orders the ship to turn around and go back to the planet. Six is pleasantly surprised with Chode and thanks him. Not so fast there, Six… Chode realizes that Bobo is gonna make a fortune off of all the mined gold, and all he got was $5000. So he intends to go back to the planet, steal all of the recently mined gold and then kick Bobo out. Six is disappointed, but figures its for the best of the Kubrickians. The crews plan is to sneak down onto the planet in disguise. Chode will go down as a slave overseer, Six a sex slave, Gus a work slave and T’Nuk a beast of burden. Whip will stay on the ship. Yeah that’s it, leave Whip in charge, nothing could possible go wrong with the slacker in command!

Down on the surface, Six starts investigating ways to take out the monolith. She befriends the troopers, and gets them to reveal some information on the monolith. Okay she really became the whore of the camp, and had a line of troopers outside her tent waiting their turn. But she still got the info she needed!

Elsewhere, Chode, Gus and T’Nuk wasted no time in stealing the planets gold and loading it into their shuttle. After they get most it of they take a break, and decide to meet back up with Six. Well its doesn’t really go as planned. T’Nuk becomes a sex queen on the planet, because the Kubrickians have a sectaped fetish, and runs off to be worshipped by the locals. Soon afterward, the chieftain arrives to ruin her fun. He deciedes that she will be offered to Bobo as a wife, since she is the most “beautiful” woman on the planet. T’Nuk taps Gus to be her flower girl for the wedding ceremony.

Chode clunks a trooper and steals his clothes, hoping he could sneak into the monolith. But it’s no surprise that he’s spotted and captured immediately. Chode soon meets up with T’Nuk and Gus in Bobo’s chamber. Gus tries to scare Bobo by saying that Whip is up on the ship now, targeting the monolith for destruction. Bobo decides to go up and investigate for himself and orders the crew thrown in a cell.

Whip is enjoying his time as captain of the ship, by throwing a huge party. I don’t know how all those teens got onto the Jupiter 42 in the middle of nowhere, but they did. There’s beer bottles, chicks, and more booze all about the bridge. Aside from a few hookups its not too exciting, until Bobo arrives. Bobo comes disguised as a Jamaican, and offers to deejay the party. Whip does a half-assed check to make sure the deejay isn’t a dark clown, and when he thinks Bobo isn’t, lets him put in his music disk. Bobo puts the disk in the drive and the party erupts into dancing and lights. All this sadgeezer can say is about that scene is, “my god its full of stars!”

Meanwhile, Six frees the rest of the crew from the prison cell and takes them to the main reactor for the monolith. Using some of Gus’s circuits they set up a remote control bomb to destroy the reactor and monolith once they get back onto the ship. When they try to leave the reactor room, Bobo shows up to stop their escape. He pulls out his lightsaber, about friggen time we saw that again, and threatens Chode. A challenge that Chode accepts. In a very unusual show of chutzpah, skill and speed Chode defeats Bobo my breaking his nose and kicking him into a wall.

The crew arrive back on the Jupiter 42 to find it trashed from the party. Chode is pissed, but first he needs to blow up the monolith. He orders Bob to set off the explosives. But Bob is gone. He was replaced by Hal when Bobo put in the fake music disk. My brother predicted the presence of a HAL 9000 like computer as soon as he heard the title of the episode a few weeks ago. I owe him 5 quid. Hal is a “program that doesn’t do anything”, which makes T’Nuk feel that he’s a product of Microsoft. Whenever given a command, Hal will not perform the function and will reply “I’m sorry but I can’t do that Dave”. Which really sucks ’cause the ship is entering the atmosphere of the planet and will burn up shortly!

It looks bad for the crew. But it the confederation to the rescue. Commander Adam shows up and blasts the monolith to pieces and tows the Jupiter 42 to a safe orbit. once the confeds show up, Hal hightails it out of the computer system, leaving Bob back in charge. With the monolith destroyed, one might think Bobo is dead, but I think we’ll be seeing him again. Death doesn’t seem to be much of a problem for that dark clown.

As it turns out, Six contacted the confederacy for help with her bra communicator. Which is strange since she doesn’t wear a bra. But either way they showed up and freed the Kubrickians amd leave a white monolith behind as a monument to their liberation. But just like the dark clown monolith. This one too grows in size becoming a huge time-square like advertisement. Confederation sales associates exit the monolith and start trying to sell crap to the locals. The confederation introduces a new form of slavery of the Kubrickians, wage slavery!

So that’s it. It wasn’t a laugh-out-loud episode. But I enjoyed all of it. So the episode was a lot like an episode of Futurama, in that regard. Six had some cool poses, which made for some nice screen grabs. I really liked Whip’s party, and Jamaican Bobo. I’d also like to give nods to the braver Chode and the use of the cool sci fi satire.

I’d rate this episode a good 28,763 out of 10.

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Tripping the Rift reviews are © 2005 Ryan Bechtel.
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Tripping the Rift names, characters and everything else associated with the series are the property of CineGroup. Chris Moeller, Chuck Austen Film Roman, CineGroup, and the Sci Fi Channel.