Daydream Believer is the first half of the eleventh episode of season 1 of My Life as a Teenage Robot.
The episode was produced in 2002 and premiered worldwide on February 16, 2003 in the United Kingdom and in the United States on November 21, 2003.
Summary[]
Jenny wants to experience what it is like to dream, so Dr. Wakeman creates and installs a dream chip for her. Jenny's enthusiasm with her new ability to dream causes her to abuse the chip’s function. She soon gets stuck in dream mode and begins sleepwalking, unknowingly causing mayhem in the process.
Plot[]
Do Teenage Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?[]
Daydream Believer (2002) begins as Jenny awakens from Sleep Mode. She hears Tuck yelling from next door and bursts into his room, as does Brad. Tuck then laughs and tells Jenny that he was having a dream and that a monster wasn't really in his room. Brad explains what dreams are, as Jenny stares at him in confusion. The entire day, Jenny is curious about dreaming and wants to experience dreams herself.
After Jenny questions her mother, asking her if she can possibly dream, Mrs. Wakeman creates a protype device that will allow Jenny to experience dreams while she is in sleep mode. Once Jenny falls asleep, her dream chip is activated, and she dreams of meeting Don Prima in a mysterious wonderland.
Dreams Come True[]
That following morning at school, Jenny excitedly tells Brad about her dream, but he seems rather annoyed, telling her it is more interesting to have a dream than it is to hear about someone’s dream. Now addicted to dreaming, during class Jenny forces her dream chip to switch on her dream mode. She begins to sleepwalk and talk, having a dream about the history lesson that is being taught. Suddenly, she awakens from this dream to find that everybody in class is laughing at her.
Later on that day, Brad sees Jenny playing in the school water fountain and realizes she is in her Dream Mode yet again. He wakes her up by spraying her with water from the fountain. Concerned, he asks Jenny to keep her dream mode off for a while, since she seems to be losing touch with reality. She angrily accuses him of being jealous and walks away, refusing to take his advice.
A Walking Nightmare[]
On her way home, Jenny yet again turns on her dream mode and enters a 1930's-like cartoon world. Due to this, she does not see the speeding truck heading her way. As the truck driver falls asleep at the wheel, Jenny is knocked into a power line, causing her Dream Mode to break. She begins to see monsters, thinking they are real, and proceeds to destroy the nearby deli. After Tuck notices and tries to get her attention, she sees him as a “goat boy” and chases after him. Tuck hides at the very back of an alleyway, and Jenny begins to hold up traffic, which she assumes are more monsters.
Tuck runs into Brad and tries to tell him what happened. Nora Wakeman, being one of the people stuck in traffic, suddenly sees Jenny and approaches her. However, Jenny sees her mother as Medusa and attacks her as well.
Jenny is about to attack Brad, Wakeman, and Tuck when they hide inside a bus and try to figure out a way to snap Jenny out of her bad dream. Brad states that they need a distraction upon gaining an idea. They look to Tuck and decide to disguise him in a strange-looking costume of random junk so that he appears normal in Jenny’s dream world. However, Jenny notices he is acting weird as Brad sneaks around and tries to reach the fire hydrant behind them to spray Jenny with water, hoping to awaken her.
Wake-Up Call[]
Suddenly, just as Jenny picks up Tuck, after the "disguise" failed to fool her, the water from the fire hydrant manages to break the dream mode’s spell. She awkwardly tries to apologize, now knowing that she shouldn’t have forced her dream chip to work while she was awake. As Dr. Wakeman works on repairing and removing her dream chip, Jenny is miserably stuck in Dream Mode as the episode ends.
Quotes[]
- Brad: Well I guess you can't really understand dreams unless you've had one...
- Jenny: (speaking gibberish in her dream) That banana is larger than soup.
Trivia[]
- This episode and its partner episode, This Time With Feeling (2002), are both about Jenny wanting to experience human things, experiencing them, and end with Dr. Wakeman removing them.
- Like most episodes of the series, this episode premiered in a handful of countries before the United States.
- This episode premiered in the United Kingdom on February 16, 2003.
- This episode premiered in Australia on May 23, 2003.
- This episode premiered in Mexico on July 11, 2003.
- This episode premiered worldwide after Saved by the Shell (2002) and Tradeshow Showdown (2002), although is chronologically before them.
- The dream mode in which Jenny saw Brad, Tuck, and Dr. Wakeman is inspired by Dr. Seuss's art style.
- Goof: When Jenny is waking up, from her point of view, she can see her feet. But when she is seen sitting in the bed, the sheet is covering her feet.
- When Jenny got the electric shock that trapped her in Dream Mode, the Dream Chip's arrow was pointing to Off instead of On.
- One of the background characters is actually an illustration of Carlos Ramos.
- This episode, which had many similarities to Dr. Seuss, coincidentally premiered in the United States the day the live-action Cat in the Hat movie (2003) premiered in theaters.
- The gibberish that Jenny and Don Prima speak during Jenny's first dream is similar to the "backwards-talking" that was a staple of the dream sequences in David Lynch's TV series Twin Peaks (1990-1992 ; 2017).
- Mrs. Wakeman's line "What do androids dream of? Electric sheep?" is a reference to Philip K. Dick's Sci-fi novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (1968).
- "Daydream Believer" was also the name of the third #1 hit of The Monkees (1967).
- Although Dr. Wakeman removes the dream chip at the end of the episode, Jenny is seen dreaming again in the episodes Love 'Em or Leash 'Em (2004) and Mama Drama (2005).
Production Notes[]
- Although this episode premiered in the United States on November 21, 2003, it was actually produced in 2002 according to the credits, as with every other season 1 episode.
- This episode was finished in October of 2002.[1]
- This episode (and every episode up to This Time With Feeling) was added to the United States Copyright Office on December 13, 2002.
- This episode was finished in October of 2002.[1]
- This episode's production code is 102-021.[2]
- The first draft of this episode's script is dated July 11, 2002.
- The second draft is dated July 15, 2002.
- The script was finalized on July 16, 2002.
- The second draft is dated July 15, 2002.
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