The penultimate episode of this year’s Futurama half-season brings us the traditional Anthology-style episode, a trio of non-canon stories in different styles. This time it’s centered around books and reading and so The Futurama Mystery Liberry is presented by none other than LeVar Burton – not necessarily in his Star Trek persona, but as the long time real-life host of Reading Rainbow, the PBS children’s book show. Written by newcomer Jeanette Lim and Futurama veterans David X. Cohen and Patric Verrone, this is one of the most fun episodes of the season. While two of the parodied book series are largely unknown in Europe, they are still fun to watch and sucessfully combine a nostalgic feeling with a little science-fiction.

It’s hard to imagine that this episode is actually the first time LeVar Burton appears in Futurama because it feels like he’s shown up before on Futurama. His role as host of the three stories is played out with a lot of irony as he encourages the viewers to watch television shows based on the books and even throws some of them on the fire! The only other guest star is Neil deGrasse Tyson, who has also never been a guest on the show before and like LeVar Burton appears in a very ironic way. Their parts actually comprise only a few minutes of the tight 23 and a half minute episode, but they are welcome and show the strong pro-science and education bias of Futurama.

The first story The Mystery of the Missing Mass is billed as a Lancy Trew Adventure and is based of the Nancy Drew series of juvenile detective fiction that was first created in the 1930s and is almost an exclusively American phenomenon. It’s hard to say if the parody is actually successful from a perspective of a clueless European, but the Futurama characters have been nicely adapted to their “new” roles, especially Leela as the title character Lancy Trew. The scenery design also successfully matches the vintage period, but except slight alterations the characters themselves have not been modified much. While the story is deliberatly simple, it also has a science-ficiton element and the further the plot goes the more ridiculous it gets.

La Mystère de la Manivelle D’Or is the most successful of the three stories and looks like it was also the most elaborate to create. As a gentle parody on Hegrés Adventures of Tintin the animation style was also fully overhauled in the belgian cartoonist’s style and not only sports wonderfully designed backgrounds and sceneries, but also all the characters in the Ligne Claire style. Fry is, of course, the main character as Fry Fry – there are rumours that Fry’s quiff was actually based on Tintin’s hairstyle – and Leela was chosen to be the equivalent of Captain Haddock, whose drunkenness would actually have matched Bender better. Professor Farnsworth is, naturally, Professor Calculus and Milou, Tintin’s loyal dog, is the biggest surprise – it’s a canine-ified Zoidberg and actually very cute. Even Mom and Wernstrom make appearances and Amy, Bender and Hermes are also there as the police triplets. The story is, like the first part, simple but also mounts in deliberate ridiculousness as it goes on and ends with absolute glorious sillyness. The only drawback is the shortness, a full episode in this style would have been amazing.

The third entry Wikipedia Brown steps in a Clue feels a little bit like a repeat of the first story since it’s based on another American book series called Encyclopedia Brown that is not widely known in Europe. It casts a rejuvenated Bender in the title role and lets most other characters appear in various roles of the book series – it’s actually the most widely populated story of the three and everyone gets something to do. It’s not as vintage as the Lancy Trew universe, so the design is slightly more generic, but the detective story is more engaging and gives the characters more to do. In the same fashion as the first three stories it also ends in a sort of ridiculous non-ending again that may seem like lazy writing but feels more like the writers having too much fun.

As these three stories are all true ensemble pieces, all of the voice actors have a lot to do in this Anthology edition of Futurama. Not only Katey Sagal, Billy West and John DiMaggio are brilliant as the main characters of the stories, but Lauren Tom, Tress MacNeille, David Herman, Maurice La Marche and Phil La Marr all have a lot of fun with their alternate selves. This is especially true in the second story where the fake French accents are played up to the hilt without sounding too silly.

The Futurama Mystery Liberry is the fun, boisterous episode that this half-season needed – two great stories and a brilliant one make this one of the best Anthology episodes of the series.