Deep Space Homer

Описание: Deep Space Homer
S05E15 "Deep Space Homer"

"Deep Space Homer" is the fifteenth episode of The Simpsons' fifth season. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on February 24, 1994. In the episode, NASA is concerned by the decline in public interest in space exploration, and therefore decides to send an ordinary person into space.
The episode became the source of the Overlord meme, and features numerous film parodies, mostly of The Right Stuff and 2001: A Space Odyssey. A copy of the episode is available for astronauts to watch at the International Space Station.
"Deep Space Homer" is the only episode credited as being written by David Mirkin.
Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, and musician James Taylor both guest star as themselves in this episode.
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 Granny's position. Homer and Barney's duel 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".[1] Homer running while lying on the floor and trying to read the back of his head is a homage to the Three Stooges, particularly Curly. The TV anchor is a parody of Tom Brokaw, and is voiced by Harry Shearer. Astronaut Race Banyon is a parody of Jonny Quest character Race Bannon.
Much of the episode parodies The Right Stuff, with sequences such as Barney and Homer's training, Homer's walk to the shuttle and the shuttle's re-entry paying homage to the film. Barney sings the first part of the Major-General's Song from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance while doing flips to show how fit he is, while Homer responds with cartwheels, reciting "There once was a man from Nantucket...".
The episode also contains numerous other references to Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey: in the space shuttle, Homer floats in zero gravity, eating potato chips (this echoes the docking scene in 2001, with the use of the music piece The Blue Danube); Itchy comes out to torture Scratchy in an EVA pod much like those aboard the Discovery craft; and at the end of the episode, Bart throws a marker into the air – in slow motion, it rotates in mid-air, before a match cut replaces it with a cylindrical satellite (this parodies a similar transition scene between "The Dawn of Man" and the future sequence in the film, including the use of the famous Richard Strauss piece Also sprach Zarathustra).
Buzz Aldrin guest starred in the episode.
"Deep Space Homer" finished 32nd in ratings for the week of February 21–27, 1994, with a Nielsen rating of 11.1, equivalent to approximately 10.3 million viewing households. It was the highest-rated show on the Fox network that week.
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. "Deep Space Homer" is MSNBC's fourth favorite episode, citing Homer's realization that Planet of the Apes is set on Earth as "pure genius". In his book, Planet Simpson, Chris Turner names the episode as being one of his five favorites, saying it is "second to none", despite listing "Last Exit to Springfield" as his favorite episode. He described the long sequence that begins with Homer eating potato chips in the space shuttle and ends with Kent Brockman's dramatic speech as being "simply among the finest comedic moments in the history of television".
Both Buzz Aldrin and James Taylor received praise for their guest performances. IGN ranked James Taylor as being the twenty-first best guest appearance in the show's history. The Phoenix.com published their own list of "Top 20 guest stars" and Taylor placed eighteenth. Among The Simpsons staff, the episode is a favorite of David Silverman. On the other hand, it also contains one of Matt Groening's least favorite jokes, when Homer's face changes into Popeye and Richard Nixon while exposed to G-force.
"Deep Space Homer" is the source of the "Overlord meme", which is lifted from Kent Brockman's line and is commonly used on Internet forums to express mock submission, usually for the purpose of humor or when a "participant vastly overstates the degree of oppression or social control expected to arise from the topic in question". The term was used by New Scientist magazine, and was referenced on the February 16, 2011 episode of Jeopardy! by Ken Jennings in acknowledgment of the accomplishments of the computer Watson.
In 2014, 20 years after the production of this episode, NASA did indeed send ants to the International Space Station to conduct behavioral experiments about collective search in micro-gravity. 1pp2p30eccmcv3443