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Futurama, the vastly underrated comedic science fiction series made a triumphant return in 2007 with the straight-to-DVD movie “Bender’s Big Score.” Successfully integrating many of the show’s familiar themes with a fresh, jam-packed plot, the movie remains consistent with the series while expanding on it considerably.

The story begins as Professor Farnsworth’s faithful crew consisting of Fry, Leela, Bender, Zoidberg, and Amy are duped in turn by a small group of alien internet scammers. Bender even downloads a virus which makes him fully obedient to the scammers. Farnsworth tries to get a handle on the situation by calling a meeting in which he himself gets scammed out of ownership of Planet Express. To make matters worse, the alien scammers soon discover a binary code that will allow them to travel through time.

According to the geeky science fiction lore that the series is well-known and loved for, time travel is inherently dangerous to the very fabric of the Universe due to the high potential of creating unresolvable paradoxes. Of course, the alien scammers’ desire to capitalize on time travel coupled with Bender’s typical disregard for order and stability results in wanton abuse of the time travel system.

In addition to the problems associated with the alien scammers and treacherous time travel, familiar subplots are woven into the story. Fry’s love for Leela is explored yet again, as is Fry’s desire to return to his own time in the 21st century. The friendship between Fry and Bender is put to the test as well.

In the midst of all this, a large number of the series’ recurring characters make appearances in the movie. There’s Leela’s pet Nibbler, Scruffy the janitor, Zapp Brannigan, Kif Kroker, Mr. Panucci, Fry’s dog Seymour, Hedonismbot, the head of Richard Nixon, and still others (even Hypnotoad makes an appearance.)

The end result of all this is a movie that is a sure hit with fans of the series, and despite having a plot that derives much from the TV show, it can still be enjoyed as a standalone feature by those who have little or no familiarity with it.