"Cold Warriors" received generally positive reviews from critics, who enjoyed its emotional ending and felt that it recaptured the feel of the show's original run.
Fry catches the common cold during an ice fishing trip, though the rest of the Planet Express crew are unaware of what the disease is as it was eradicated 500 years ago.
Later, egged on by his brother Yancy, he decides to enter a science competition judged by Buzz Aldrin in which the winner's entry will be launched into space in a satellite.
Bender, who is immune to biological illness and forced to take care of the sick crew, becomes exasperated and breaks through the quarantine after being sneezed on by Zoidberg, spreading the virus across Manhattan.
Believing that a vaccine can be created using a sample of the original virus, Farnsworth plans to extract it from Fry by grinding his body into a paste, thereby killing him.
The crew escapes the city and finds the satellite containing the experiment, now encased in ice on Enceladus, with a flashback revealing that Gedgie's project won the competition, to the disappointment of Fry's father.
As the Professor uses Gedgie's virus sample to create a vaccine, and Manhattan is set back in place and its residents are inoculated to stop the outbreak, Leela tells Fry that he should be proud of himself for saving millions of people, no matter what his father thought of him.
From June 5 to 6, as part of its "Countdown to Futurama" event, Comedy Central Insider, Comedy Central's news outlet, released two preview materials for the episode; concept art of Fry's guinea pig dressed up in astronaut's clothing,[3] and storyboards of a scene featuring Leela trying to escape the quarantined Planet Express building.
With the combination of showing for the first time a real closeness between Fry and his dad and what happens when an epidemic breaks loose in the future, it also broached some interesting new ground."