REVIEW: Archer: 1999

Almost ten years after its pilot episode "Mole Hunt" was aired, the great Archer (probably) comes to an end with Archer: 1999, its space-themed tenth season. Of all the genre-themed settings we've had over the last few years, this is the one I've been looking forward to the most. It's not how I'd have done an Archer sci-fi series - I'd have gone for a full-on Star Trek parody - but it's a great celebration of sci-fi tropes and beloved cliches of the genre. In spite of the name, there's not really any Space: 1999 elements in there (not even a single moon is blown out of orbit to become a gigantic wandering base). The main inspirations are clearly Alien - always a source of referential moments in Archer - and Star Wars, with a mix of long haul space capitalism and swashbuckling space adventure.

Not that there are no Trek elements, though. The gladiator battle in episode two could have fit in the original series with no trouble, while the alien critter in episode three, "The Leftovers," is absolutely a Cardassian vole from DS9. There are plenty of other little nudges and secret ingredients, too - there's a certain Firefly-esque flavour to a lot of the proceedings, not least in the retooling of Adam Reed's character Ray Gillette as a space courtesan. He's basically the male version of Inara, only with less poetry and more cake.

The series is set aboard the starship MV Seamus, a space freighter that is somehow both clapped out and tremendously well-equipped, co-captained by Archer and Lana after their marriage ended and they won half the ship each in the divorce. Interestingly, some of the core characters have been brought back to be closer to their "real" versions than previous iterations like Danger Island and Dreamland. While Archer's always basically the same, Lana's role has varied a fair bit the last few years, and Archer has always been pursuing her in his fantasies. Here, their relationship is very much like how it is in the series' reality. Cyril has also been brought back in line after two seasons as a villain, now in a sort-of relationship with Lana (although it gets very little attention) and acting as the ship's first mate and "space accountant."

Cheryl/Carol is basically the same as ever (down to the glue-eating) but is now the ship's crackshot laser gunner, a job which she finds incredibly boring because she's so good at it, while Pam, in her greatest transformation yet, is a huge alien rock monster of indeterminate gender, not that it's affected her personality much. The brilliant Lucky Yates has finished his stint voicing a parrot as Krieger is back, now an Ash-style synthetic human, full of android milk and just as questionably committed to mad science as he ever was in human guise.

Giving the name "Mother" and the early hints as to the Alien-esque setting, I expected Mallory to be a computer, but instead she's a sort of holographic sentience who can appear as either a ball of light or Mallory's recognisable human form. Mysteriously, she seems to be Archer's literal mother in this reality, suggesting she's a recreation of a real human rather than an AI like Krieger. She's still an alcoholic.

Archer: 1999 works as a tongue-in-cheek space adventure, happily sending up the genre while making it clear that Reed and his co-writers love sci-fi and space opera. Some elements that might have translated well to the setting are surprisingly altered. Barry is back, for example, and despite being a cyborg in the main reality and therefore an easy drop into this environment, he's now the fully robotic Barry-6, an IG-88-like killer droid. Although he's a recurring villain, he's significantly less threatening than his nightmarish Dreamland incarnation, and becomes a laughing stock by the end, which might suggest Archer's subconscious slowly moving past his hatred of his archenemy. (On the subject of cyborgs, Ray was basically one by the middle of the main Archer run, so it's kind of surprising he's completely human here.)

The series has the same pros and cons as the previous couple of seasons, only more so. Dreamland worked well by not massively altering the format from where it had been for the previous year, but playing up the setting. Danger Island through itself into the setting, making big changes to story style and worked as an adventure series, but the comedy suffered. Archer: 1999 continues this trend, with the space adventure working brilliantly and looking truly fantastic for the most part but easily being the least funny of the seasons so far. Not that there aren't laughs along the way; episode five, "Mr. Deadly Goes to Town," starring Matt Berry as a sentient weapon of mass destruction, is a solid sci-fi adventure and pretty hilarious. On the whole, though, the reliance on running gags is becoming tired and serves mostly to remind the audience of when earlier seasons did it better. It's hard to disagree when Barry-6 calls it "derivative."

The final challenge for season ten is to tie up the three-year-long Archer-in-a-coma storyline, which intrudes into the penultimate episode before taking up most of the final one. Logic pretty much goes out the window here in favour of weird visuals and call-backs. There's some exploration of the psychological cost of Archer's mental battle as he falls apart, but there's no consequence, as he simply wakes up to see Mallory in his hospital room. Still, it's a nice final scene and strangely moving, albeit equally disturbing in its oedipal way. If this is the final season of Archer as has been stated, then it's a pretty anticlimactic ending. However, Reed has suggested an eleventh season might happen, in which case a final, back-to-basics approach could help round the series off more satisfyingly. Assuming, of course, that Archer really did wake up...

REVIEW: Archer - Danger Island

Archer reaches its ninth (and penultimate) season, once again retooling the series' set-up and taking place within an elaborate fantasy within the comatose Archer's brain. After the noir-styled detective antics of season eight, this run relocates the action to the fictional Pacific island of Mitimotu in the year 1938 (for the first time ever we have a definitive dating for an Archer series!) The island is occupied by the French but is a haven for drop-outs of all nationalities, and soon ends up swarming with Nazis getting ready for WWII.

Danger Island isn't short on adventure cliches, with cannibalistic natives, a legendary idol, stormtroopers and Komodo dragons all appearing. Oh, and quicksand. I've missed quicksand. With Archer reconceived as an alcoholic charter pilot (and former US Army air commander), who co-pilots with Pam. A lot of people will see Indiana Jones in all this, but it's mostly inspired by its TV brother Tales of the Golden Monkey which came out soon after. Creator Adam Reed has confirmed that this was one of his favourite series (I don't think it's been aired in years, at least not in the UK), and the set-up is pretty much identical. Although, in Golden Monkey, it was the dog who wore an eye patch, not the hero. (You know what else was based on Golden Monkey? Disney's TaleSpin. Really.)

One thing I really like about Danger Island is the Archer-Pam relationship. There's a nice moment in an earlier season where they realise they're pretty much best friends and despite all their bitching at each other, they've always got each other's backs. That's the case here, with Pam and Archer being long-time partners and coming to the same conclusion in about six episodes. The other characters are re-jigged to a similar extent as the previous season, although some go to more ludicrous extremes. Cyril is the villain again, now the evil Nazi Fuchs (later to become UberFuchs in the story's most over-the-top development), on the island to secure the legendary idol for the Reich. Lana has gone from being African American/mixed race to now apparently being a Pacific Islander, princess of the island and determined to free her people from the French Empire even if it means siding with the Germans. Malory runs a hotel on the island, is still Archer's mother again and is basically the same character as always. Ray is refashioned as a French gendarme, a role he is perfectly suited for. No Jeffrey Tambor this year, unsurprisingly.

Judy Greer's character is, this time, Charlotte VanderTunt, on the island for her honeymoon before Archer seduces her and wrecks her life. She's as batshit crazy but for once it's actually in response to some pretty traumatic experiences instead of her inbred genes and glue habit. to be honest, as brilliant as Greer is and as funny as some of Charlotte's moments are, I'm really not a fan of what happens to the character. Archer has never been afraid to cross the line when it comes to good taste, but a lot of what happens to Charlotte is pretty horrible and too tragic to be funny.

Bizarrely, Krieger is not brought back as one of the Nazis, in spite of his legendary status as a clone of Adolf Hitler. Instead, Lucky Yates voices a macaw named Crackers, who is somehow possessed of human intelligence and acts as Archer and Pam's sidekick. One of the better running jokes is that no one can understand how a bird can act like this but it's never even vaguely explained, beyond Archer handwaving it away as "he's a parrot." Anyway, Crackers gets a lot of the best lines, and some of the best scenes involve Archer, Pam and Crackers adventuring together.

The adventure stuff is generally pretty fun, but, just like with Dreamland, there's a real drop in the quality of the comedy. Archer just isn't as funny as it used to be, and, while the new setting seems like a real winner (albeit one that's going to piss off Germans and Pacific Islanders alike), it just doesn't seem to lend itself to comedy the same way as previous years. That, or perhaps the show's just running out of steam. Nine years is a long time to keep something with a pretty thin premise going, and while the new format of changing the setting every year is helping keep it fresh, it's starting to strain. Still, I'm looking for to next year's Archer in space, something I've been asking for for years. Although I had hoped more for Archer Trek than Archer meets Alien, but still, here's hoping the final season sends it out with a bang.

REVIEW: Archer: Dreamland

Archer is possibly the best, most definitely the funniest, animated series of the 21^st century so far. Over its now eight seasons, it's moved from international espionage, through adventures under the sea and in outer space, to season-long adventures in cocaine smuggling and the PI business. And now, it's become a film noir, albeit a batshit crazy one.

Season seven ended with Archer grievously wounded, face down in a swimming pool. As we enter season eight, subtitled Dreamland, we find he has been lying in a coma for three months. In his head, he has conjured up his own fantasy world, set in 19-something (probably about 1947; amazingly, this is the least anachronistic season yet). Like the previous run, Archer is part of a PI agency, only this time, it's just him and his partner. Or at least, it was.

Following the death of the great George Coe in 2015, Archer's long-suffering valet Woodhouse has been absent from the series (although he was recast for a single season for Archer Vice). In a surprisingly touching sentiment, Dreamland is not only dedicated to Coe, but the death of Woodhouse is the driving plot point, occurring both in “reality,” and in Archer's fantasy, in which Woodhouse was previously his partner. Which is a hell of a step-up, even if he was still a heroin junkie.

The season-long arc revolves around Archer's quest to discover who is responsible for his partner's murder. It's the most coherent storyline we've yet had from a season of Archer, which was pretty all over the place even during the Vice story, but as Archer himself says, he does have a tendency to get sidetracked. Limiting the run to only eight episodes helps, of course; there just isn't room for too much meandering adventure. Archer's fantasy world is populated by fictionalised versions of various characters from the series, including all his former-ISIS chums. Some of the changes are fairly minor and predictable: Cheryl/Carol is now Charlotte Vander-Tunt, even richer than her “real” counterpart and just as unhinged; Lana is a lounge singer who you don't want to mess with, and Mallory is the owner of said lounge, the Dreamland club, and also a mob boss. Known simply as “Mother,” she slips into that role extremely comfortably.

Other characters are changed in unexpected ways. Cyril, always a dick but pretty sympathetic in a pathetic sort of way, becomes an out-and-out villain as a crooked cop. Pam undergoes a sex change, albeit with the same face and voice, as his partner Detective Poovey. Her personality is much the same as usual, albeit less sex-crazed. Then there are characters who slip into the postwar environs just perfectly: Ray is a musician for an otherwise all-black band, and Krieger is Krieger, as always. A very welcome addition to the regular cast is Jeffrey Tambor as Trexler, Mother's opposite number once again as a rival crime lord. Oh, and Barry's back, although now he's called Drake and he's more insane than ever. (Other Barry's back as well.) Seriously, his storyline comes to the fore in the final two episodes and he is absolutely terrifying.

Everything is done in Archer's signature style, with action, violence and inappropriate humour to spare, and the animation is gorgeous. Although the story is more concise, there are still plenty of bizarre non sequiturs. It's a weird set-up, all told, with the story never quite clear about how much is real or not. Everything is supposedly in Archer's head, but not only does he have flashbacks to WWII, there are long scenes that don't involve him, and involve knowledge that is kept from him. There's even a running joke concerning Poovey's fantasy involving a dozen Chinese whores (really, it's easier to watch it than to explain it), which is supposedly a fantasy in the mind of a fantasy character. Possibly, just possibly, this really is a parallel universe, which just might be born out by some of Archer's dialogue in the last episode. If so, it makes the events mean something more. Because, after all the developments and twists, there's no real resolution. I wasn't expecting Archer to wake up, but for there to be some kind of psychological resolution for him. Even after a thrilling adventure, it all feels a bit inconsequential.

Which might not matter if Dreamland focused more on humour than story. Try as it might, this season just isn't as funny as the previous ones were. While the last few seasons haven't quite lived up to the original ISIS years, they've still been pretty hilarious, while Dreamland feels a bit tired joke-wise. The adventure makes up for this, but only until that last episode, where it all feels a little pointless. Season nine has already been revealed to continue Archer's fantasy, in a new setting as Danger Island. Maybe we'll get some kind of closure with the tenth, and final, season. Or maybe there'll be a different fantasy setting with every episode. Personally, I'm still holding out for a Trek-themed “STARcher.”

This review was typed in Georgia.