“When are we, Inspector?”

Justin’s rating: A bit redundant and repetitive, don’t you think?

Justin’s review: When Community aired its third season in 2011, this pop culture-infused show tossed in a throwaway gag involving “Inspector Spacetime,” a British scifi parody of Doctor Who that quickly becomes the favorite of Abed.

Despite only appearing in very brief and sporadic clips in the NBC sitcom, Inspector Spacetime gained a cult following with a fan-expanded universe — and nobody was a bigger fan than the Inspector himself, Travis Richey. Richey raised over $25,000 in crowdfunding to create a web series around the character, although he couldn’t call it “Inspector Spacetime” because the lawyers at NBC had no sense of humor whatsoever.

Thus, 2012’s Untitled Web Series About a Space Traveler Who Can Also Travel Through Time. The six-part series clocked in at a little over 18 minutes in total and follows the Inspector and his companion Piper as they visit Second New Old Earth Seven and come face-to-face with Circuit Chaps and “Boyish the Extraordinary.”

Richey’s lopsided mouth and emotionally earnest nature makes for a wonderful Inspector, and I understand why the Community, er, community latched onto him so strongly. While he couldn’t use the specific references (like Blorgons or Constable Reggie) from the show, the spirit of this parody is alive and kicking in the web series.

And a parody it truly is. This lampoons Doctor Who’s baked-in silly design with a character who’s even more outlandish and special effects that are even cheaper. It’s the kind of experience that you’ll truly enjoy if you are a fan of that show with a good sense of humor (unlike NBC lawyers) but will be baffled if you’re unfamiliar with the source material. It’s kind of debatable if Doctor Who can even sustain a parody, which leaves this web series to skate a thin line between pointlessness and cheeky fun.

There are a lot of rapid jokes amid all of the knock-off references, but what this series loves to do the most is get bogged down in over-explaining and over-analyzing certain aspects. That also works to chew up some of the runtime and save the budget. So I hope you like people standing in a single location for each of these segments while jawing about.

Ultimately, this is an appetizer for a follow-up course that has yet to materialize. A second season and a movie — with Mayim Bialik, Robert Picardo, and Sylvester McCoy — seemed to fizzle out along the way, which is a shame, if only for the fact that “Expect the Uninspected” is a killer tagline. So this is pretty much as far as we go on this journey.

Perhaps a true sequel exists, just not in this when. Or where.

Intermission!

• “No spoilers” sign
• “We are in the year three-thousand-million, and this is Second New Old Earth Seven.”
• Circuit Chaps: “INTEGRATE!”
• Optic pocketknife
• Sworn enemy != arch-nemesis
• “You must flee faster than you’ve ever fleed before!”
• Please stop questioning fate
• “This looks like the room of a very old child.”
• EVIL CONSTABLE
• I like the pointless running scene
• GOOD BOYISH
• The ol’ switcharoo