Star Trek TAS (1973 - 1974)

The Animated Series was largely a follow-up to TOS, which ended in 1969, using, to a large extent, the same characters and time frame of the original 5-year mission; in fact, this is the closest we got to a 4th season of the original show. It's somewhat of a shame that this batch of 22 episodes is largely considered non-canon in the Trek mythos (there are exceptions: Capt.April, introduced/depicted in the last episode, The Counter Clock Incident, is now regarded as the actual 1st captain of Enterprise NCC-1701 and Kirk supposedly acquired his middle name 'Tiberius' in the episode Bem).




I suppose this attitude of dismissal may stem from the approach of regarding animation as a different universe from the live action stuff - a less realistic universe, maybe. But, in spite of many comments dismissing this series as aimed at children, there's no degradation in script quality or thought-provoking ideas. De Kelley was quoted as saying "...most of the scripts were not written for children. They are adult scripts and some of them are very good..." In fact, the main difference, for me, was less use of violence or brute force to get the ideas across as the stories progressed. So, in some ways, this series adhered even more to Roddenberry's concept - the use of our minds and powers of speech to address various problems, cosmic or otherwise.

Indeed, some of the episodes (The Time Trap) fairly preached a sense of higher morality that humanity should follow. Since all the regular actors of the original (except Walter Koenig) returned to voice their characters, there was very little reduction in quality even in the acting dept. The show also utilized the talents of many of the same writers, such as David Gerrold, Samuel A. Peeples and Stephen Kandel, as well as D.C. Fontana, who solicited the other writers. Koenig even had a script produced (the episode The Infinite Vulcan). There was a Writers Guild strike at the time, but writers were not prohibited from writing for a half-hour animated show.





Of course, many point to the limited animation (by Filmation) as the reason for the lack of dynamic action, which might explain the less violence and why some viewers find the show to be slightly boring (still, these animated episodes were expensive for their time, at $75,000 each). Filmation was clever in reusing the same stock poses and movements of characters, placed over some impressive background paintings. The obvious advantage to the show was in depicting landscapes, huge spacecraft and giant creatures which were not possible on the original series, as well as ideas such as shrinking the crew (The Terratin Incident).






James Doohan voiced a multitude of other characters besides Scotty (Doohan was close to being overused), as did Majel Barrett. Even Nichelle Nichols & George Takei got into the doubling-up act; you heard Takei as a Klingon in one episode and Nichols as a god in another.

But, they did bring back a few key actors for guest roles - Mark Lenard as Sarek, for example (in Yesteryear), Stanley Adams as Cyrano Jones (More Tribbles, More Troubles) and, of course, Roger C. Carmel as the conman Harry Mudd, in episodes which functioned as sequels or follow-ups to original series episodes (More Tribbles, More Troubles and Mudd's Passion), but these actors were not credited (stock credits at the end of each episode). We also revisited the Shore Leave planet in Once Upon a Planet.



Chekov (and Koenig) seemed to be away on leave in these episodes (oh, yes, budget cuts!); instead, we saw the feline M'Ress and the extra-limbed Arex as part of the bridge crew. One bit of progressive evolution involved a more aggressive approach by the female characters: Uhura took command in one episode (The Lorelei Signal) without so much as a by your leave and Nurse Chapel even karate chops the scoundrel Mudd in Mudd's Passion - so much for non-violence. What a difference just 4 years makes - clear evidence of the female liberation movement - right here in Star Trek!