Star Trek: The Animated Series (Review)

Originally Published on Stream Video With Us and Photon City News

Synopsis: As the unofficial fourth season of Star Trek, The Animated Series picks up with the crew of the U.S.S. Enterpise and follows them on their ongoing voyages throughout the final frontier.

Review:

Be honest: You know somebody who loves Star Trek.

Not just somebody “who watched it when they were a kid”, or “really enjoyed the 2009 remake”. Somebody who lives, breathes, and exists at least partially because Star Trek is in the world. They’ve seen all 11 12 films. They’ve watched every series. They even read the Shatnerverse novels at some point.

What they know that you don’t know (besides the entire Klingon language) is that Star Trek almost died. Twice.

Star Trek: The Original Series (or TOS) was cancelled by NBC in the 1960s because of low ratings. When Paramount went looking for some way to capitalize on the massive success of Star Wars, they revived Star Trek as a film franchise, which turned out to be rather successful. That was in the 80s. Before that, in 1972 Filmation decided to fill the gap with a relatively unknown animated version, simply called Star Trek: The Animated Series.

It never found an audience and was cancelled after two seasons, but not for lack of trying.

I decided to follow in the footsteps of the last column by finding something associated with this weekend’s big-screen release. And while I haven’t finished the series yet, or seen the accompanying Star Trek Into Darkness, I can say that The Animated Series is an eccentric mashup of everything trekkies love. Plus, it’s a cartoon.

Luckily, the original cast all reprise their roles (save for Chekov – more on that later) and the storylines are very authentic to TOS. An early adventure sees the Enterprise caught in a mysterious cloud that devouring anything in its path. The episode captures that same feeling of science and philosophy TOS is famous for. I particularly enjoyed seeing Spock initiate a Vulcan mind meld to communicate with the creature, and hearing Kirk defend his decision to destroy the cloud while still protecting the Prime Directive.

Of course, if things like “Vulcan mind meld” and “Prime Directive” sound like geek-speak, this probably isn’t for you

For everybody else, there’s plenty to enjoy. Spock interacting with a younger version of himself, in an attempt to save himself from being written out of existence, is fun (even if the time-travel science is underdeveloped). Tribbles make an appearance in the aptly-named “More Trouble with Tribbles.” And one episode finds the crew back at the amusement park from TOS episode “Shore Leave.”

Unfortunately, warp-drive isn’t always initiated. A few episodes feel somewhat pointless and tend to drag through their 24-minute air-time. Also, Funmation had a tendency to cut corners on production. While being animated gave the show freedom to “boldy go where no man has gone before,” it also gave the studio freedom to boldly re-use as many shots as possible.

Plus, Chekov was replaced by an alien. They claim it was for budgetary reasons, but the show literally kept every other (and more expensive) original cast member. Keep this in mind: Chekov was Russian, it was the 70s, and kids are easily influenced. Not cool, man.

Speaking of kids, you’re probably better off steering them away. While I won’t argue that “The Loreli Signal” (an episode about a planet of women who seduce men and then steal their youth) is particularly edgy, the overall show is very sciency and dry. Unless your kid is old enough to understand these things, or is just a serious Star Trek nut (in which case, way to go!), their ADD won’t keep them sitting for long.

But, if you love Star Trek, and have a venn diagram on your wall of all the ways classic Kirk is better than new Kirk, The Animated Series should make you feel right at home.