Credits Director : Various Starring : Billy West, Katey Sagal, John Di Maggio Our Score :

By Sean Lynch

After year's of the average punter having to take whatever the hell the mindless studio executives decided to shove down our throats at the movies and TV, we've finally entered an era where the fans can fight back.

''Family Guy'' was famously brought back from the dead thanks to DVD sale, ''Snakes on A Plane'' was given a green light thanks to some nerds of the Internet - and it seems a mixture of both has helped give birth to the reinvigorated ''Futurama''.

''Bender's Big Score'' is the first of four direct-to-DVD Futurama adventures, essentially, a way of saying thanks to the fans for not allowing the series to die after it was dumped by the Fox network a few years back. Whether they made the right move is completely up to you!

The flick (it's not so much a movie as it is four connected episodes mashed together) follows the Futurama crew (Fry, Bender, Leila, etc) fighting to save Earth in an epic battle against nudist alien Internet scammers (you know the ones: "Click Here To Enlarge Your Man-Hood", "Invest In An African Bank"). It’s nearly Christmas 3007 when evil naked aliens launch a cyber-attack on the Planet Express and make a shocking discovery: the secret of time travel, mysteriously tattooed on Fry’s butt cheeks.

Using their devious nudist software to control Bender, the aliens send him through history where he has run-ins with the likes of Al Gore, Coolio (yep, apparently he is still alive) and the foul mouthed comic Sarah Silverman.

You're pretty much in one of two camps when it comes to any spin-off show: Better or Worse than it's parent series. There are many who feel ''American Dad'' is far superior to the broad absurdist comedy of ''Family Guy'', and the same seems to go with those who enjoy the intellectual standards of ''Futurama'' over ''The Simpsons''.

For mine, while I always knew there was something cool about ''Futurama'' (the look of the show was always superior to ''The Simpsons''), there always seemed to be something lacking: out-and-out-laughs. And while I'm still pretty happy to stand my ground on that opinion after watching ''Bender's Big Break'' that the series has kept it's blandness, it doesn't stop this first DVD feature from being one damn entertaining bit of animation.

The plethora of in-jokes regarding Futurama's axing from TV deliver most of the laughs here, while the Time-Travel story works a treat (takes me back to the days of trying to puzzle together all the interconnected moments of ''Back To The Future''!) - and most importantly - it looks great.

By no means the hilariously glorious return it probably should have been (sometimes it's more appropriate to just let shows die a natural death) but certainly something which will keep the die hard and semi-regular fans extremely happy.

...Now if we can only get ''The Bob Morrison Show'' back on TV

As this is essentially a episode made for fans, thanks largely to the fans, no expense has been spared when it come to the DVD extras included here. There are more than you can poke an R2-Unit at.

In addition to the never-before-seen movie, there's also a fairly insightful and funny commentary from Matt Groening and David X. Cohen, cast members Billy West (is it just me or this guy does pretty much every animated voice... ever?), John DiMaggio and Phil LaMarr, director Dwayne Carey-Hill and writer Ken Keeler.

The ''Futurama'' folk continue their love affair with Al Gore with the animated promo for ''An Inconvenient Truth'' a real highlight.

There's a bunch of other stuff as well - character and design sketches, a math lecture - but the real draw card has to be the full 20+ minute episode of Everybody Loves Hypnotoad. Why? You know nothing is going to happen - but you simply can't look away: such is the power of the Hypnotoad.

Well worth checking out.