When The Original Series slinked off the air after their third season in 1969, Trekkies faced a decade of drought in the 1970s, with no real hope that they would be delivered of more gems from the Great Bird of the Galaxy. Gene Roddenberry wanted desperately to believe that Star Trek was a thing of the past*, and so tried to make a grand introduction into the world of feature films with Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971)**. A series of pilots—including the infamous Questor Tapes, which permanently soured the relationship between he and Leonard Nimoy—came and went, but all would be (forgiven?) when the crew of the starship Enterprise made their (triumphant?) return in Robert Wise’s*** Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).
But that isn’t the only new Trek we got in the 70s. Filmmation—they of He-Man, Fat Albert, and The Ghost Busters (not the one you’re thinking of)—managed to cut through the studio redtape and produce 22 episodes over 2 seasons…
And somehow, against all odds, the show isn’t the worst! With many of the more classic writers coming back to the fold, I would say the writing of TAS (as it has come to be called) is several notches above the dregs of TOS’s season three.
The animation is… well, it’s fine. It’s exactly what you would expect from a Saturday morning cartoon in the early 70s, which would mean it’s production value is just a notch or two below that of season three, as hard as that may be to imagine. One of the surprising budget cuts is in the arena of performers. Nichelle Nichols and George Takei play a number of characters, but Majel Barrett and James Doohan sometimes play three or more characters apiece during a single episode (aside from Scotty and Christine Chapel). Some of them have such distinct voices that it’s hard not to hear the essential Suluness or Uhuraness of several supernumerary characters. Doohan acquits himself well, but I think that’s largely because his most famous character is obscured by a dialect.
Ultimately, The Animated Series probably gets a bit of short shrift in the Trek canon. Once Roddenberry could get his crew of intrepid space heroes on the silver screen, he viewed these twenty-two shows as apocryphal, and Trek fandom altogether largely followed suit. Even I hadn’t managed to watch them until the entire series was released on DVD in 2008****.
It’s been a few weeks since I finished my rewatch of the show, and I must say… it’s not that bad. Sure “The Infinite Vulcan”***** ends in a bewildering fashion, and “More Troubles, More Tribbles” is a pale imitation of its great progenitor, but even the run-of-the-mill episodes here are rescued by the blissfully shorter half-hour format. Had “The Magicks of Megas-Tu” run for an hour, it would have felt like an eternity. As it stands, just as the episode begins to wear out its welcome, its already over.
And there is a truly great episode in the mix! “Yesteryear” brings back the Guardian of Forever****** for a story where Spock reckons with his childhood, and painting a fairly touching story about losing a pet. Trust me, it’s better than I’m describing.
For Trek fans out there, I would say The Animated Series is worth a look, with some marshaled expectations. You’re not going to get the original cast (sorry, Chekov) all back together again, so a few more hours in the one, true 23rd century isn’t too bad of a deal…
Besides, it makes Robert April’s first tour as captain of the Enterprise (semi) canon in its series finale. Nothing wrong with that…
*And not what it ended up being: the first, last, and only line of his obituary.
**I mentioned this during the season 3 blog, but, if you haven’t seen it… Whew. It’s every bad instinct Roddenberry ever had, minus all of the things that made Star Trek endure long after his death.
***There is little doubt in my mind or in the historical record that the author of the film is actually Mr. Roddenberry himself, regardless of what the auteur theory might tell us.
****I did manage to read a few of the episode novelizations by Alan Dean Foster over the years, and I found them… pretty weird. Which, in all fairness, makes them pretty faithful adaptations of the source material.
*****It is nice that Walter Koenig managed to get a gig out of this, writing the episode, when Chekov was unceremoniously omitted from the cartoon in favor of the admittedly visually interesting (read: could never have been done with any degree of belivability on the live-action show) Caitian, M’Ress, and Edosian, Arex.
******That they weren’t sued into oblivion by Harlan Ellison is no small miracle.