Star Trek: The Animated Series, The Complete Series
c. 1973-1974

It’s no secret that it was kind of a chore for me to get through Star Trek: The Original Series. It took me a year and a half to watch all three seasons, which maybe doesn’t sound like a lot to some of you, but as a frame of reference, I can watch three seasons of television in a week or less, if I put my mind to it. By the end of the series, I had certainly developed affection for the characters on TOS, particularly Spock and McCoy (you can’t spend that much time with a show and not develop some sort of attachment to it), but it nevertheless regularly put me to sleep. In fact, I began using it for that very purpose. The BEEP BLOOP sound effects, Kirk’s speechifying, the increasingly poor writing and special effects, the cheesy music, and what felt like an exceedingly long run-time, were all very soothing for me. I was relieved by the time I came to the last episode, and also proud of myself. With all of this in my mind, you can imagine that I wasn’t very thrilled to watch Star Trek: The Animated Series, which featured the same writing staff, and almost all the same (voice) actors. It had only been four years since the cancellation of TOS. How much would TOS influence TAS? Would watching this series be just another step I would have to take in my quest to conquer the entire Star Trek canon? Would I even enjoy it?

Much to my surprise, the answer was ‘yes.’

Gene Roddenberry disowned this series from ‘official’ canon, but I honestly can’t understand why he did so. I found it quite delightful. Many of the issues that I had with TOS were resolved in TAS. And even though saying so might get me shot in some circles, I believe that The Animated Series was much more conceptually successful than its predecessor. The twenty-two minute run-time freed up the plots from unnecessary filler and the tendency towards gratuitous philosophizing. There is no dragging, no boredom. Just imagination. TAS also managed to do what TOS seemingly couldn’t and provided Lt. Uhura with some actual storylines that made me believe for the first time that this was a universe where men and women were equal. But the thing that really made TAS so enjoyable for me was the very fact that it was animated. I fully admit that one of the reasons I could never fully enjoy The Original Series was the poor special effects and cheap set design. I grew up during the dawn of the Golden Age of television, when The X-Files was king, popping out what was essentially cinema quality work twenty-two times a year. I have high standards. The animation of TAS fully eliminates that problem for me. There’s a certain headspace you enter when you watch animation, where the rules of reality don’t exist, and suspension of disbelief is that much easier.

I do recognize that the above concern is a fairly personal one (and hey, this is my review, so yeah), and that it might very well be my issue alone, but I know for a fact that because TAS was animated, it was able to commit to episode concepts that would simply have been impossible for a live-action television show. It’s just as easy (and costs just as much money) for an animator to create a person as it is for them to create an elaborate spaceship made out of living flowers, for example, as is the case in TAS‘s first episode, “Beyond the Farthest Star.” Other neat concepts that would have been impossible on TOS (and if not ‘impossible,’ they still would have turned out super shitty): In “Yesteryear,” Spock travels to the past to rescue his younger self from danger. Creating both Young Spock and the Vulcan city of ShiKahr was much easier, and turned out much better than it would have in TOS. “The Ambergris Element” took place largely underwater and involved vast quantities of freaky looking aliens and an underwater city. TOS was never good at aliens. No matter how hard it tried, they always ended up looking like people in makeup. And we can’t forget about “The Counter-Clock Incident,” which involved aging the entire crew of the Enterprise backwards. Completely and utterly impossible with 60s technology (still really hard today, in fact).

With that said, I do recognize that TAS had some major flaws. Like its predecessor, TAS‘s main obstacle to creative freedom was its budget. Especially towards the end of its run, The Original Series was plagued by an ever decreasing budget and the constant threat of cancellation. Considering both of those factors, it’s really not very surprising that TOS‘s best episodes were in Season One. Both of these problems also afflicted TAS, although they manifested themselves a little differently. TOS was infamous for re-using musical scores written for other episodes, a practice which is almost unheard of in today’s TV climate, where shows employ their own composers and each episode has it’s own score or soundtrack, but The Animated Series took this recycling policy to a new, and frankly ridiculous, level. Certain images were used over and over, the most egregious being a shot of Spock standing over his computer terminal and then turning his head sideways as he speaks to Kirk. Visually, this shot is unique. Since we don’t often get to see character profiles in animation, the fact that it is used over and over multiple times in every episode becomes obvious fairly soon to even the most oblivious viewer. To save money on voice actors, the show overuses the talents of Majel Barrett (Nurse Chapel) and James Doohan (Scotty). Both actors have very distinct voices, so it was never difficult for me to recognize them. Again, distracting. But the most ridiculous use of recycling was of the incidental music: the same themes, over and over and over and over. By the time I hit the last episode of the series, my annoyance levels were threatening to overwhelm any enthusiasm garnered by the story. And yes, even though animation allowed for way cooler stories than had been previously possible in TOS, the quality of the Filmation animation isn’t always the greatest (though I maintain it has a sort of tacky seventies charm going for it).

The Animated Series was welcomed back into Star Trek canon after Roddenberry’s death, but really, it had already made its mark. Some details and concepts introduced in TAS were used elsewhere in the ST universe: the films, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine . . . It told us that the ‘T’ in James T. Kirk was for ‘Tiberius.’ It gave Spock’s mother a last name (Grayson). It invented the holodeck decades before TNG would use it. According to Memory Alpha, some of Sarek’s dialogue from “Yesteryear”, and young Spock being bullied by Vulcan classmates, are given homage in the 2009 feature film, Star Trek, almost word for word. And then there’s “Kirk is a Jerk,” which isn’t really canon and never comes up again, but I wanted to mention it here because I think it’s hilarious. TAS was canceled even sooner than TOS. After a very short run-time of only twenty-two episodes, during which time viewers were inundated by repeats of episodes they’d already seen, TAS was put to bed. But it lives on via the glories of DVD. Probably a lot of you disagree with many things I’ve said here, and I don’t really blame you. This all might very well be nonsense as I’m very drugged up right now and sick, and in about a minute or so, after I click ‘publish,’ I am going to be asleep in my bed, so just do me a favor and rent this series from Netflix, and THEN come back here and yell at me. I’ll make sure to get up out of my sickbed and read your comments, because you are all special flowers, and I appreciate you as human beings.

Which is just another backhanded way of saying LEAVE ME COMMENTS.