The series with the most colons in the title by far returns to [adult swim] tonight with an episode entitled “Comic-Con Air,” so naturally the cast of NTSF:SD:SUV:: was on hand during that event last week to talk about the third season of the popular police-procedural spoof, which goes even more bonkers than it has before. Creator and star Paul Scheer says we’re in for “Time travel, aliens, Karen Gillan, people, talking, action, cars, SUVs… San Diego?” He adds that the series has taken away some of the self-imposed rules at this point. “The first season was a real procedural, the second season we tried to explore our characters, and this season we’re just branching out, trying to have fun.”

As mentioned, former Doctor Who companion Karen Gillan, hiding her famously bald head from us under a very convincing red wig, told us her character is named Daisy and “she’s a geeky gadget girl. She’s into all that stuff and she sort of heads up that department.” She definitely feels right at home with the crazy situations week to week, but says that NTSF is wholly different simply by the way one has to play everything. “If you play everything straight, it’s kind of even funnier because the things you’re doing are really ridiculous, but it’s a very different experience.”

NTSF began as a direct parody of shows like CSI: Miami and other hyper-intense policiers, but as those series have faded away, NTSF has continued to shine. “The storylines get crazier and crazier as those shows start to end, so we’re going to have tons of fun with that,” says co-star Brandon Johnson. “Even if they go out, people sort of got the genre enough that we can continue to parody them.” June Diane Raphael adds, “The parody of procedurals is, of course, still there, but now it’s also a little bit more. Insane things just happen and we don’t worry too much about the form anymore.” Scheer jokes that he is personally responsible for CSI: Miami going away. “David Caruso’s afraid of my puns. He’s like ‘I can’t keep up with Paul and his puns. I’m out of here.'”

As the series branches out from police procedurals, it’s delving more into the science fiction, as evidenced by an upcoming episode, co-written by series regular Martin Starr, which parodies the John Woo film, Face/Off. Raphael describes how she was worried when she read it that it might not work. “I was reading it and Martin’s playing Paul and Paul’s playing Martin and it was so hard to follow in script form because the characters names were the same and so I just thought, “well, this won’t work,” and it ended up being my favorite episode.”

Starr himself found it difficult to gauge his performance playing somebody else. “It was uncomfortable trying to be Paul. It was my idea. But it was fun taking my sunglasses on and off.” He did praise Scheer’s performance as his character, though. “He did a good job as me. It was all just making fun of blogs and riding bicycles.”

What everyone seems to be most excited for fans to see is an episode they shot in London, featuring a myriad of famous guest stars. Scheer marvels that they were even allowed to do it. “We convinced [adult swim] to let us go to London. We’re a low-budget show and they flew us overseas and we got to shoot with some amazing people over there.” What sorts of amazing people? “I’m a big fan of that show Luther with Idris Elba and we got his boss, Saskia Reeves, and she’d never done comedy and she was amazing,” Scheer adds. “We got Anthony Stewart Head and Julian Barratt from The Mighty Boosh. Colin Salmon was great. They were all just up for it. In L.A. we just offer parts to people, but the people in London were the first people who really read the script and said ‘yes, I like this, I will do it.'”

To see all of the insanity, be sure to tune into NTSF:SD:SUV:: Thursday nights beginning tonight at 12:15am only on [adult swim].