Leela (Futurama)

Turanga Leela is a fictional character from the animated television series "Futurama". Leela is spaceship captain, pilot, and head of all aviation services on board the "Planet Express Ship". Throughout the series, she has an on-again, off-again relationship with Philip J. Fry, the central character in the series. The character, voiced by Katey Sagal, is named after the "Turangalîla-Symphonie" by Olivier Messiaen. She is one of the few characters in the cast to routinely display competence and the ability to command, and routinely saves the rest of the cast from disaster. However, she suffers extreme self-doubt because she has only one eye and grew up as a bullied orphan. She first believes herself an alien, but later finds out she is the least-mutated sewer mutant in the history of 31st-century Earth. Her family (particularly her parents' accent and "outcast" status) parodies aspects of pollution and undesirability associated with industrial New Jersey when compared with New York City.
Fictional character biography.
Turanga Leela was born to Morris and Munda, two mutants who live in the sewer deep under New New York City. The mutant doctor who delivered Leela remarked that she was "the least mutated mutant ever born". When Leela was still an infant, her parents gave her up to the Cookieville Minimum Security Orphanarium with a note written in mysterious symbols to suggest that Leela was an alien, so that she would have a better life than a typical mutant. 
For the first three seasons of the series, Leela hopes to meet another member of her race of one-eyed aliens. In the episode "A Bicyclops Built for Two", Leela meets Alcazar, a cyclops who convinces her that he and she are the last two members of their extinct race, only to discover that he is a shapeshifting impostor. Leela's parents' plan for concealing her origins works well until an industrial accident caused by environmentally irresponsible Bender brings Leela and her friends into the New New York City's sewer system where for the first time Leela meets her parents and discovers that she is not a cyclopean alien, but is actually a sewer mutant.
In the episode "The Problem with Popplers", Leela's family name, Turanga, was used for the first time. The episode "Less Than Hero" establishes that among Leela and her parents, their family name is placed before the given name.
Character development.
Leela's orphan upbringing and mysterious origins have helped fuel the development of her character over the course of the series.
Despite her strong-willed nature, she often feels self-conscious about her distinctive appearance, and at one point elects to have surgery to give her the appearance of having two normal-sized eyes, though she later has this reversed. Leela's single eye hampers her depth perception and is sometimes exploited for comic effect, for instance, in the episode "The Problem with Popplers" it is suggested that she actually "is" crashing into billboards every time in the opening credits, though it typically does not interfere with her ability to pilot the "Planet Express Ship" (beyond crashing into the odd billboard) or her mastery of martial arts. She is very athletic and in great physical condition, with most males (of any species) unable to match her in physical combat.
Originally a career placement officer for new defrostees at a cryogenics lab in the year 2999, Leela quit her job after meeting Philip J. Fry, a defrostee from 1999, and Bender, a high-tech, job-deserting, girder bending robot. Together they are employed as the crew for Planet Express, an intergalactic delivery business run by Fry's distant relative, Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth. Leela serves as captain of the "Planet Express Ship", proving herself to be a skilled officer and often rescuing her less-talented coworkers from peril.
Leela is an avid environmentalist. In "Love's Labour Lost in Space", Leela and crew are sent to Vergon 6, a planet that is about collapse because of mining. Her mission is to save the animal inhabitants of the planet. The mission winds up unsuccessful because of a small animal Leela finds only one of because he ate the rest of the animals. This animal, who she names Nibbler, becomes her pet for the remainder of the series. Her environmentalist beliefs resurface again in "". Despite her love of animals and nature, she embarks on an Ahab-like quest to kill a space whale in the episode "Möbius Dick".
Character creation.
Conception.
Though the series described Turanga Leela as a one-eyed alien in its first episodes, "Futurama" creator Matt Groening and executive producer David X. Cohen had in mind that she would turn out to be the child of sewer-dwelling mutants before the series was pitched to executives. The mutants later revealed to be Leela's parents appear as background characters in the season 2 episode "I Second That Emotion", providing an early hint at her origin. Later in the series it is revealed that her parents had given her up to an orphanage (styled an 'orphanarium') in order to give her a chance at living a normal life on the surface, passing her off as an alien due to her relative lack of distinguishing mutant features. According to Groening, the cyclopean but otherwise comely Leela subverts the science-fiction cliché of glamorously perfect female heroines.
An early file Groening compiled on Leela lists some of her intended qualities: "strong-willed, opinionated, gentle (when not fighting), gives orders, unlucky in love, loves weapons, loves animals". Katey Sagal describes her as a "tough, strong career girl who just can't get it together in the rest of her life...she's vulnerable and hard at the same time".
Name.
Her family name plays on "Turangalîla", the Sanskrit title of the 1948 "Turangalîla-Symphonie" by French composer Olivier Messiaen. The "Turangalîla-Symphonie" has four cyclical themes; its title can be roughly translated as "love song". Her given name, Leela (/ˈli.laː/), is the word for lilac in many Indo-European languages (such as French, German, Italian, Dutch and Swedish). Leela (same spelling) was also the name of a companion of the fourth Doctor Who (played by Tom Baker) of whom makes cameo appearances in episode 103 (Mobius Dick) and episode 111 (All the Presidents' Heads).
Design.
Besides her oversized single eye, Leela's other distinctive features include her purple hair tied in a ponytail by a black hair tie and relatively tiny nose. The ponytail was included so that Leela, like the other main characters in "Futurama" and Groening's other cartoon "The Simpsons", would be recognizable in silhouette. During the many stages of character design, Groening decided to give Leela a large nose just for fun, but the animators resisted the idea, believing that it was unnatural. The animators ended up drawing Leela with a small nose based on Groening's original drawing of Leela, which he references as his "idea of a sexy babe". Animator Gregg Vanzo notes that the artists also had initial difficulties drawing facial expressions and moods for Leela because of her single eye. Leela's usual clothing consists of a low-cut white tank top, leggings and boots. Groening intended Leela to be portrayed as attractive and sexy, but had to instruct the animators to de-emphasize exaggerated aspects of their original design that were too "racy". However, Leela is still considered attractive and sexy, even beautiful by several such as Fry and Zapp Brannigan. What Leela calls "this thing I wear on my wrist" (referred to in another episode as a "Wrist Lojackimator") is capable of minor plot conveniences as needed.
Casting.
Katey Sagal provides the voice of Leela. Sagal immediately wanted the role when she was asked to audition for Groening. She is one of the few primarily live-action actors in the "Futurama" cast. In an interview, Sagal said: "This is acting, but a different type of acting. You're not using your whole tool here—your body and physicality—but it's challenging that way. The animation work is really unusual. I don't have the same experience doing it as the people I work with." Sagal notes that she found out years after accepting the part that someone else (comedian Nicole Sullivan) had previously been cast as Leela but the creators had decided to replace her. She also notes that she does not change Leela's voice much from her own natural voice but she does try to make it a little higher-pitched.