Star Trek: The Animated Series

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liza_longoria

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Has anyone seen the Star Trek cartoons? I haven't. Are they good? I've heard that they used scripts from the original series that never got produced cause the show got cancelled.
 
I saw a few episodes when I was a kid. It was always aired in obscure times in my area and never caught an episode from start to finish. It was very much like the live action show. There was also a "Planet of the Apes" show that aired around that time too.
 
Actually, there's a two-year difference between the Trek & Planet of the Apes toons.

Star Trek, co-produced by Filmation & Paramount, aired for 2 seasons on NBC from 1973-75.

Return to the Planet of the Apes, produced by DePatie-Freleng, essentially replaced Trek on the NBC SatAM sched in 1975, but was cancelled after 1 season. Rights to Planet are held by 20th Century Fox, of course.
 
Yes, I can still remember seeing some episodes of the show when it first broadcast. One episode is my favorite "first generation" Star Trek episode. Larry Niven took one of his "Known Space" short stories and turned it into a Star Trek episode. He totally deleted the standard Star Trek background and had the characters operating in his. No Klingons, the Kzinti are the bad guys. One major change was to have Spock play the part of the Pierson's Puppeteer that was in the short story, McCoy took the part of the main human, and Kirk doesn't appear at all. It was hilarious for a Niven fan. I would love to have seen Roddenberry's reaction.
 
The fact that ANY Saturday morning shows lasted more than one season is amazing itself. It happened very rarely, especially towards the late 60s and throughout the 70s.

One thing I know about the show is that Walter Koenig did not reprise his role. That was because Filmation ran out of money to pay for one more actor (it was very low budget). Koenig did get to write one episode, though.
 
Let's not forget that the animated Star Trek series was not only Filmation's only hit program for NBC, but for all the trekkies out there, it also "resumed" the 5-year mission of the starship Enterprise, after it was halted for 4 years. The program even picked up an Emmy in 1974, if you can believe that. It's on the animated Star Trek series DVD. If you see it, check it out- you won't regret it.
 
I never saw it but I thought it had fame of being bad and not being canon.

Also the second season had half the episodes of season 1 and only 22 total. not to mention that shows back then only got one season usually but that one season was 65 episodes....
 
Its discussed constantly. From the wikias it seems Roddenberry did have degrees over creative control, but the conclusion I'm reaching is that he was upset about the limitations of the animation.

Roddenberry originally established its canon if its onscreen, but then apparently the animated show was confirmed out of canon while Roddenberry was alive.

Then things that occurred in the animated series started to become acknowledged in official Trek sources. Star Trek's official website if you hold that in any regard treats the animated series as canon.

Like the show or not, it featured all the original cast members except Chekov and writers of the original series also worked on it. You think fans would be all over it since its basically a fourth season of the original series.
 
I don't know about Roddenberry being upset about the limitations of the program's animation. Keep in mind, there were budget constraints for animated programs, back in 1973. According to the Star Trek: The Animated Series DVD features section, while Filmation was putting the program together, Roddenberry was around to offer his consultation on the program, especially the part when the studio was behind schedule getting the show ready for broadcast. He stepped aside and allowed the studio to continue working on the program without further interruptions, but still returned to offer his insight. It was a complicated process, but with both Paramount and Filmation working together on the program, Gene Roddenberry had to be involved. Walter Koenig did contribute an episode of the animated program to begin his career as a writer, which in a sense compensates for Filmation's limited budget preventing him from contributing to the program as an actor. Only six episodes were made in late 1974, because back then, the program was becoming increasingly expensive to produce. Find out more info about the program by going to your local public library and look up the book, The Encyclopedia of Daytime Television by Wesley Hyatt, published by Billboard Magazine.
 
Yeesh, am I one of the few who saw this show on TV? Guess that Trek reboot-movie-thing will do better than I thought...

Anyway, Nickelodeon used to air reruns of this show through the 80s (and IIRC in the early 90s as well), plus it also aired briefly on TV Land's "Super Retro Vision Saturdays" lineup around 2000. As noted, it was quite low-budget----Chekhov was replaced with a new alien character. Still, it was an enjoyable show (and more maturely written than "teenagers solving mysteries/playing bubblegum rock music" norm of the time :-p ).

-B.
 
Don't forget that Walter Koenig, a.k.a. Ensign Chekov, contributed to the animated Star Trek series by writing an episode of the program, which aired in the 1973-74 season, which started a writing career for him. I believe the alien character you're referring to is Lt. Arix.
 
I thought the series was considered non-canon. There were several eps that featured elements outside of Trek norm (for the day). But, it seems that many elements of the animated series are sneaking into canon. Caitians appeared in ST4 (inside the Federation council). And characters like M'Ress and Arex (Chekov's replacement) have made several appearances in the books.

A side note - James Doohan did a lot of the voice work for the series. He did outstanding work.
 
I missed the series when it originally aired, but was able to see it when Nick at Nite TV Land had a retro-Saturday morning cartoon schedule about 10 years ago. It actually had good shows with not just Star Trek, but Fonz and the Happy Days Gang as well. It even included bad shows, especially the awful The Brady Kids series. Strangely, the network aired only half the episodes of each series and the retro-Sat. lineup was only there for a few months. I eventually got to see the rest of the Trek Animated episodes once the DVD set came out. I pretty much enjoyed it. Episodes like "Yesteryear", "One of Our Planets Is Missing", "The Lorelei Signal", "The Infinite Vulcan", "The Terratin Incident", "The Slaver Weapon", and "The Counter-Clock Incident" were the highlights for me. There may be questions in regards to canon with TOS, but it was of good quality nonetheless, even better than the Voyager spinoff series.
 
I've seen the entire series (I own the entire series on DVD), and yes the series is really good. I highly recommend that you buy the entire DVD TV series collection, which is saying a lot since I'm NOT a STAR TREK fan.
 
1. Only one episode of the animated series was/is considered to be cannon. The episode that tells the origin of Spock is cannon. I should also point out that ST:TAS is the first appearance of the holodeck rec room, which was later introduced in ST:TNG.

2. McCoy was not in the Larry Niven "Known Space" episode. Spock,Sulu, and Uhuru were the only crew members featured in that episode.
 
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