astronomy

The Man Who Came to Be Dinner

The Man Who Came to Be Dinner is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Man Who Came to Be Dinner rather than just read about it. In short: "The Man Who Came to Be Dinner" is the tenth episode of the twenty-sixth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons, and the 562nd episode of the series. The episode was directed by David Silverman and written by Al Jean and David Mirkin.

Key takeaways

The Man Who Came to Be Dinner belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Man Who Came to Be Dinner to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Man Who Came to Be Dinner from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

"The Man Who Came to Be Dinner" is the tenth episode of the twenty-sixth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons, and the 562nd episode of the series. The episode was directed by David Silverman and written by Al Jean and David Mirkin. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on January 4, 2015. In this episode, the Simpson family is transported to the home planet of Kang and Kodos where they are to be eaten. The episode received mixed reviews.

Plot The Simpsons go to Diz-Nee-Land (a parody of the theme park Disneyland). After a long journey, they dislike all of the rides they visit, and decide to go to "Rocket to Your Doom", a just-opened queue-less ride which was not on the map. They get in and it immediately transforms into a spaceship. At first, the family is skeptical, but a screen appears with Kang and Kodos on it telling them that they are being taken to their home planet Rigel 7. At the planet, Kang and Kodos take the Simpsons as exhibitions to a zoo. After a while, the Simpsons are informed they must choose one of them to be dined in a ritual. Everyone votes for Homer to be sacrificed — even he changes his vote from Bart to himself after seeing the other votes — but he gets rescued by some hippie-looking Rigelians who believe that eating other sentient species is wrong. After an excessive party, he gets on another spaceship only for one that also pleases all desires, but he realizes he will not enjoy it without his family and goes back to rescue them. The Rigelians decide to eat the rest of the family and glaze them over giant plates with some lettuce and tomato. When Homer offers to be eaten instead, he gets put on a similar plate with the Rigelians now refusing to spare the others. The Rigelian Queen then eats Homer's severed buttock and gets fatally poisoned. It is revealed that the Simpsons are all fatally toxic to eat due to the fast food diet they eat with Lisa being considered the most toxic due to her vegetarian diet. Following the Rigelian Queen's death, the Simpsons are sent home on a spaceship that resembles the interior of the original starship USS Enterprise. They set course to Earth, but after a call from Grampa, the family decides to go anywhere else but home. The credits happen over a montage of several images spoofing Star Trek TV and film franchise scenes all the while set to Star Trek's closing theme by Alexander Courage.

Production The episode was originally scheduled to air on May 19, 2013 as the season finale of The Simpsons season 24, but was replaced by "Dangers on a Train". As a result, the production code is older compared to the rest of season 26. Just prior to the broadcast of the episode, Al Jean and David Mirkin wrote on Twitter that the episode (which had been produced in 2012 and was originally set to air on May 19, 2013) had been held back because it was being "seriously considered" for adaptation into a sequel film of The Simpsons Movie, as the episode was "very cinematic;" they cited a similar sequence of events that occurred earlier in the show's run with the episode "Kamp Krusty." Jean also stated that he was sure reasons the episode both could and would not work as a film would occur to those that viewed the episode and later expanded that there was the fear of the potential film being considered "not canonical" with the TV series and the potential backlash of overcoming it by using a "memory wipe".

Reception The episode received an audience of 10.62 million and a 4.7/13 rating/share in the 18-49 demographic, making it the most watched show on Fox that night and the show's highest rating since the twenty-fifth season episode "Steal This Episode." Dennis Perkins of The A.V. Club gave the episode a "D+" rating, criticizing the unrealistic nature of the episode. Perkins said "It would be a lot easier to make the case that The Simpsons still has value if the people behind the show seemed to give a damn. But an episode like 'The Man Who Came to Be Dinner' is a product of such slapdash, breezy disregard for what makes The Simpsons The Simpsons that it functions as a dispiriting signpost to the show's hastening irrelevance." In contrast, Tony Sokol of Den of Geek gave it 4.5 stars and called it "a singular highlight."

Cultural references The episode’s title is a reference to the play The Man Who Came to Dinner, later adapted into a 1942 film. The spaceship disguised as an amusement park ride is based on an episode of the 1960s sci-fi series The Outer Limits called "Second Chance". The performance by the Rigel Seven boys’ choir is a homage to the choir sequence in the Steven Spielberg film Empire of the Sun. A flashback from the fourth season episode "Homer's Triple Bypass" shows the young Homer in the chorus. The producers remarked in commentary they did that scene as homage to the same film.

References

External links

"The Man Who Came to Be Dinner" at IMDb

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Man Who Came to Be Dinner

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Man Who Came to Be Dinner claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Man Who Came to Be Dinner before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Man Who Came to Be Dinner ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Man Who Came to Be Dinner

In research: The Man Who Came to Be Dinner appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Man Who Came to Be Dinner in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Man Who Came to Be Dinner is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2015 American television episodes, Disney parodies, Disneyland, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Man Who Came to Be Dinner outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Man Who Came to Be Dinner in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Man Who Came to Be Dinner means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Man Who Came to Be Dinner out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Man Who Came to Be Dinner in simple terms?

Why does The Man Who Came to Be Dinner matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Man Who Came to Be Dinner?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Man Who Came to Be Dinner.