Futurama's David X. Cohen Turned His Star Trek Pet Peeve It Into A Character
The central joke surrounding Dr. Zoidberg (Billy West) on the sci-fi sitcom "Futurama" was established early on. Set in the early years of the 31st century, "Futurama" features a rogue's gallery of aliens, robots, mutants, and talking severed heads living alongside its relatively recognizable human characters. Zoidberg is a bipedal lobster-like alien who regularly issues drugs and surgically slices into the employees of Planet Express. In some of Zoidberg's first scenes, way back in 1999, he can be heard saying things like "Now open your mouth and let's take a look at that brain" or diagnosing his human patients with strange, fish-sounding diseases like fin fungus. He can sever and reattach limbs without much issue, although he doesn't always put them in the right place.
The gag, of course, is that he's a bad doctor. Being a space alien — specifically a Decapodian — Zoidberg doesn't seem able to grasp the biology of the mammals he works with. As the show continued, Zoidberg himself would reveal more and more of his own unsettling biology. It seems he has a freshwater stomach and a saltwater stomach, he can shed his carapace, he squirts ink, and has no problem ripping out his own internal organs to throw at attackers.
In 2013, "Futurama" co-creator David X. Cohen took to Reddit to field questions from his show's fans. In that lengthy exchange, Cohen revealed that Dr. Zoidberg's inability to understand human physiology stemmed from a very real anxiety he had while watching "Star Trek" as a child. One might look at the grumpy Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) and wonder how the half-human-half-Vulcan Spock (Leonard Nimoy) felt about a non-Vulcan operating on him.
Flip the species, and that notion points to Zoidberg.
Physician, Heal the Bay
A fan first asked Cohen about where he conceived of the name for Dr. Zoidberg. Cohen revealed that he drew the name from "Zoid," an unreleased puzzle game that he had worked on back in the 1980s. An online Lost Media wiki compared "Zoid" to the popular 1981 Taito arcade game "Qix," and that Cohen hoped that Brøderbund, the company behind "Where In the World is Carmen Sandiego?" would purchase and develop it. Once the name "Zoidberg" was established, Cohen pointed toward the character, keen to use Zoidberg's alien species specifically to address his "Star Trek" problem. He wrote:
"[W]hen Matt and I were first working on the premise of the series, we thought it would be useful to have a doctor on the crew. My idea for Dr. Zoidberg was based on something that always bugged me about the original 'Star Trek.' Namely: I always thought that if I were Mr. Spock, a Vulcan, I would not feel very comfortable having a doctor of another species operating on me. So the idea was that Dr. Zoidberg would be knowledgeable only about the bizarre anatomy of his own species."
Once Zoidberg's biological cluelessness was established, the character could expand to be even more revolting. Not only was he a bad doctor, but eventually he was also massively impoverished. He lived in a dumpster and ate garbage. He smelled bad, his body was riddled with parasites, and he never had any romantic prospects. Dr. Zoidberg went from being a scary, clueless lobster to being utterly clueless and pathetic in every possible way. For Cohen, this was great character development.
Character (ulp) growth
Of course, Dr. Zoidberg's evolution from a one-note caricature into a multi-joke walking pity party is, Cohen estimates, a great way to write. Start small then, in Cohen's words, "pile on." He wrote:
"It was only later that Dr. Zoidberg took on the deeper (?) aspects of his personality ... being lonely, poor, smelly, pathetic in every way. Once we started down that path, it seemed funny to keep piling it on. As a side note, that's a pretty good way to get an animated character going. Start with a one-joke character that people can understand, then add on later if and as the show continues."
This has happened with most of the characters in "Futurama." At first, Professor Farnsworth (West) was merely a doddering old fool. Later in the series, he would prove to be immodest, horny, half-mad, and perhaps a little too fond of making doomsday devices. Fry (West) likewise started the series as a clueless, slobby twentysomething, barely able to handle even the most basic tasks handed to him, whereas now, Fry is ... well, he's no longer in his 20s.
Of course, given that Zoidberg is a terrible doctor who smells bad, a secondary question arises. Why does the Professor keep him employed at all? That question can be answered in a separate /Film post, explaining that Zoidberg and the Professor are involved in a secret, decades-long yeti-adjacent pact.