‘Other Space’ on Yahoo Screen a sweet, nutty confection

Let the word go out across the galaxies, as in scrolling type against a background of stars, that all eight episodes of Paul Feig’s delightful new science-fiction comedy, “Other Space,� are available now to stream and binge on — or to savor slowly, bit by bit, like delicious candy, via Yahoo Screen. Like candy, it is sweet, and sometimes sticky or nutty or surprising.

Feig’s last and only other TV creation — the now-legendary “Freaks and Geeks� — ended back in the Clinton administration. He has since become a busy director of television and movies, including “Bridesmaids,� “The Heat� and the upcoming “Ghostbusters� remake/remodel.

Set in the 22nd century on a poorly equipped, inexpertly manned starship lost in a neighboring universe — entered, as if by a tunnel or, in a competing metaphor, a toilet — “Other Space� originated several years ago at NBC, where it languished for many seasons until the rights reverted to Feig.

Like “Freaks,� it’s cast mostly with young actors, chosen more for character than typical TV glamour — just the sort of misfit crew the earlier series would lead you to expect. Indeed, it’s a show that Sam Weir and his friends, fans of sci-fi and comedy, might themselves grow up to dream up.

It offers “I’ll tell mom� sibling rivalry, romantic longings, institutional satire and physics as farce (as when, in one episode, time passes more slowly for characters on a planet’s surface than it does for those on the ship). It’s a little gross at times, though, by contemporary standards of grossness, fairly modest. It has structural integrity: Characters develop; later episodes will give context to what seems merely absurd in early ones.

Karan Soni is the awkward and enthusiastic Stewart, who has been given the captaincy of a space cruiser, called the Cruiser, on the strength of a “fart-sneeze� maneuver in a space academy simulation — as well as authority over Karen, his coldly ambitious sister (Bess Rous), and fretful former babysitter Michael (Eugene Cordero).

“Don’t appease him, Stewart,� Karen says of Michael. “Would you hug a baby just because it cried?�

Also on board are Stewart’s old crush Tina (Milana Vayntrub), his reluctant navigator; Neil Casey as Kent, his reluctant science officer, with a strange origin story; and Conor Leslie as the hot, visual embodiment of the ship’s computer, who “started out as a hospitality bot on the inaugural Hooters space shuttle and then I got sold ... in a package deal with some elliptical machines.�

Feig’s own generation is represented in what for many will be the dream-reteaming of Joel Hodgson and Trace Beaulieu from “Mystery Science Theater 3000.� Hodgson, in a wig that makes him look a little like the adult Bill Mumy — Will Robinson in “Lost in Space� long ago — is the ship’s radiation-addled engineer. As in “MST3K,� Beaulieu voices a robot with attitude, introduced with a joke referencing author Philip K. Dick and the original title of “Blade Runner�: “Can’t you see I’m dreaming of electric sheep here?�

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