Turanga Leela aka Turanga biography

Real biography: Life Story

Leela was born into the society of subterranean mutants who live in the sewers beneath New New York, forbidden to come aboveground because of their genetic abnormalities. Leela was "the least mutated mutant ever born," her eye being the only difference between her and a normal human; her parents deposited her on the steps of the Cookieville Minimum Security Orphanarium in order to spare her the degrading life of a mutant. Leela's mother (calling on her education in Exolinguistics, a field which does not presently exist) attached a note to Leela's blankets in an alien-like script, which translated from alienese, reads "Your parents love you very much"; she stated that, if her degree in the subject was worth "diddly-poop", it would convince the head of the orphanarium that Leela was an alien, as opposed to a mutated human. Her parents closely monitored her youth, periodically intervening to protect her from falling down stairs, leaving birthday presents for her, etc. Leela finally discovers that she and her parents are mutants in the episode "Leela's Homeworld," which came as a surprise as she, too, believed herself to be from an unknown alien species. However, Leela's parents appear briefly in an earlier episode that first includes the sewer mutants as a concept in the show.

As a child, Leela often had to endure childish bullying from other orphans, mainly because of her being a cyclops, as well as for her dental braces. As a teenager, still feeling the torment of being a cyclops, Leela trained in Arcturan Kung-Fu, succeeding despite the misogyny of her teacher, Master Phnog. She developed a lasting crush on a fellow orphanarium inmate, Adlai Atkins. They would later meet as adults, after he had become a successful cosmetic surgeon.

As an adult, Leela could be seen as a very attractive woman, except that she has only one eye, the apparent reason for her lack of relationship experience. Leela's first mentioned job was a Cryogenic Counselor, through which she meets Fry. After Fry convinces her to break from the bonds of her job, Leela becomes a Space Captain at Planet Express, piloting the aptly named Planet Express Ship. She is physically very strong.

Due to having a single eye, she lacks stereoscopic vision and therefore has problems with depth perception. In spite of this, she seems to have no difficulty in flying the Planet Express Ship (other than colliding with billboards on a weekly basis in the show's opening sequence). Only Cubert Farnsworth seems to question Leela's ability to fly a spaceship with a single eye (A Clone of My Own). However, in the episode "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back", Leela says "They said I probably shouldn't fly with just one eye." during Hermes's song on the glories of bureaucracy. This lack of depth perception was also comically commented on in the episode "A Bicyclops Built for Two", in which a fictional cyclops was estimating the distance of a missile aimed at their planet. He guesses 'A trillion miles?' less than a second before the missile strikes.

Leela's armband receives no more of a concrete name than her repeated description of it as "this thing I wear on my wrist", and is capable of whatever small things the plot demands. It apparently has a tracker called a "wrist-lojackamator" ("How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back"). In "The Luck of the Fryrish", whilst searching through Old New York, Leela states "If we get bored looking, I've got Tetris on this thing". In "The Problem with Popplers", it scans materials to determine if they are edible or not. In "Spanish Fry," it carries an emergency cosmetic laser. It speaks twice and has a female voice. In most episodes, she wears the armband on her right arm, although in one shot in "Space Pilot 3000", she is seen having it on her left arm. In Bender's Big Score the armband receives email, and also contains tissues.

Leela is also known to have a very nosy personality, though this often proves a positive attribute, as her tendency to meddle with Fry's affairs often saves his life. Also, despite her tough-as-nails attitude, Leela is prone to adorable creatures. This tendency, on the other hand, is usually more of a burden to her crew; in the episode "The Sting", she took a deadly queen space bee larvae which injured Fry and put Leela in a coma for two weeks.

Leela has an odd-looking pet named Nibbler, which she found on the planet Vergon 6, in the episode "Love's Labours Lost in Space". She finds Nibbler adorable and loves him very much; what she does not know is that he is actually part of a wise, ancient, sophisticated race known as the Nibblonians, and is an undercover ambassador.

In the episode "Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch" Leela holds Kif's ungloved hand and transfers her DNA to him. This results in him becoming pregnant with her children. However, in Kif's species, biological mothers apparently are considered secondary to the father's smizmar, who is in this case Amy; thus she is considered the "real" mother of Kif and Leela's numerous tadpole-like offspring. (At least one of the offspring has only one eye.)