Revisiting Star Trek TOS/TAS...

Good luck with that, I think Pioneer made those old fashion laser disck players. Weren't they about 12" disks?

 

Several companies made laserdisc players, but Pioneer made ones that played both laserdiscs and DVDs.

I'm still open on the matter of what kind of player.

 

Once Upon A Planet **

Ouch. At heart is a decent story---the Keeper of the Shoreleave planet has died and the planet's replication computer wants to break loose---but I found the writing a bit sloppy and redundant and the episode as a whole feels really truncated. It feels like numerous scenes are missing from the story. Too bad because I remembered this being better.

Part of the problem, of course, is that while they try to take the story into a different place it just doesn't come off as well as the superb original TOS episode, "Shoreleave," from which the TAS effort is spun off from. Decent idea, but disappointing execution.

I might catch flak here, but am I the only one who isn't an M'ress fan? The idea of a catlike alien crew member is interesting, but Majel Barrett's voice work here, particularly with the added purring sounds, is really annoying. It just seems like such a cliched and lazy way to vocalize the character. But, of course, guest character voice acting in TAS was very hot-and-miss.

 

And M'Ress was one hot miss!

 

I, too, can appreciate some tail, but not that kind.

Even as an adolescent this just didn't click for me.

 

Just finished reading the ADF adaptation. This will probably continue to be the same with all the episodes---the ADF version feels like a complete story without feeling like there are scenes missing. ADF backs that up by often fleshing out scenes with added bits of dialogue and more detailed action.

The print versions also allow me to see the live-action characters in my mind with a live-action setting as opposed to watching the stiff animation. That alone earns the story one more star.

The story itself, in print or onscreen, is okay, but suffers because it doesn't really go anywhere much different from the original TOS episode. Yeah, the planetary computer develops a mind of its own, but it isn't all that malevolent and in the end is rather easily dissuaded to abandon its plans.

 

Amen to that! I was VERY annoyed at that "improvement". I can't for the life of me figure out why they did that!

 

Was the decision made by someone unfamiliar with the source material, who didn't really know what he was doing?

 

Don't worry, Warped9, I'm not gonna' "jump on your case". You actually raise some valid concerns I have as well. Yes, I am bit of a nut for M'Ress, but as presented in the animated episodes, I openly admit there were shortcomings.

You see, when the series debuted in 1973, I was just short of 11 years old and didn't really notice M'Ress. I was a Spock fan at the time (still am). It wasn't until 1982 when I reconsidered the character, after I had seen the film that some could debate screwed me up, "Cat People". Suddenly I remembered the felinoid comm' officer and I gathered what materials about her that I could. But there was precious little. There were the rough recreations of the "character study" cels in the Star Trek Concordance and the snippets of prose Alan Dean Foster devoted to her in the ST Log adaptations. But without access to footage from the actual show, neither video or even audio, my memories of M'Ress became distorted.

When it returned to the airwaves during the mid 80s on Nickelodeon, I had a bit of a rude awakening. Part of it was the inconsistent sloppiness of her drawings, but like you, what really grated was the forced, cliched performance of Majel Barrett. Obviously, I had totally forgotten about her voice! Ugh! I'm not sure now what I "heard" in my mind's "ear" during those "dry years", but it wasn't that!

How would I do the character differently? I'm not sure. It's possible another actress could perform the lines injecting "purrs" and throaty "growls" just as Majel did and yet have them "flow" more believably, without them sounding so stilted or cliched.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

Not a fan, no. But 90% of that is the voice.

I've often wondered if we could get a "fan dub" project going where we get some decent fan-actors to create new voices for the 63-some parts that Our Heroes had to sit in for. I'm sure there are exceptions. (I really liked Doohan's Governor Wesley.) But M'ress, Arix, and The Guardian of Forever would be priority one.

It'd be a heck of a lot easier to do than re-animating the whole show in CG.

 

I liked Captain Pike better than Captain Kirk, but I liked the disabled Pike in the beeping box the best.

 

Quite sometime ago I revisited TOS and began revisiting TAS as part of the same thread. But, alas, life intervened and I got derailed from that marathon viewing. So now I'd like to finish it off.

I want to pick up where I left off, watching the episodes as they appear or are arranged in the disks---it's just simpler and TAS doesn't really show much if any difference from episode to episode as it progresses. As such I think they're arranged in broadcast order which will be much like I saw it originally.

But I was also reading the Alan Dean Foster adaptations after each episode to give me more of an overall feeling for the individual stories.

Recapping...

 

One of the interesting things about TAS that set it above the usual Saturday morning fare was some of the subject matter. In "Yesteryear" they not only mention (and show) the death of a pet but also reference the death of a child (the young Spock) and a parent (Spock's mother, Amanda). This was heady stuff for Saturday morning television back in the '70s. In "Albatross" McCoy is accused of mass murder in supposedly causing a plague on an alien world. In "Pirates Of Orion" a Starfleet crew is left for dead after being attacked and then later the Orion commander attempts suicide and tries to take Kirk and the Enterprise with him. In "Jihad" the alien Skorr wants to launch a "holy war" on the galaxy.

While some of the stuff in the episodes didn't come across well or as intended a lot of the stories and ideas would have been welcomed in TOS. There really aren't many TAS episodes I wouldn't have cared to see done as live-action.

Revisiting these episodes and re-reading these adaptations rekindles my interest to see Star Trek return to this kind of format. In more recent years we've seen popular animated shows and direct-to-video features clearly illustrating that an animated project can easily appeal to adults as well as younger audiences. And a lot of it comes down to good writing. When I look at the Batman and Superman and Justice League animated series and other DCAU features we clearly see that animated projects don't have to feel truncated or dumbed down or half-hearted even within a constrained running time. Same with Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Do it right and people will go for it.

Despite missteps TAS really tried to do something beyond conventional Saturday morning cartoon programming. It would be cool to see that kind of vision in tandem with what we've seen can be done today.

But, please, no more fifty foot clones or other overly WTF! moments.

 

This is where I left off.

 

I thought it was more the de-evolution of the kids language and society as they were left alone for centuries. These kids were actually hundreds of years old, right?

You could assume that he had help in hiding, and maybe any records of the original Kodos DNA was either altered electronically and scrubbed from any networks. Its not like they had a body to compare with.

 

I completely agree... while reading these reviews, I was just thinking about how "Tomorrow is Yesterday" could have been/was going to be directly spun off from the time travel at the end of "The Naked Time." A serialized connection concerning all of the Earth duplicate planets and cultures leading to a bigger storyline about the Preservers could have been nice. Maybe a connection between the Kelvans and the Catspaw aliens, or a link between the Corby androids and I, Mudd.... what other kind of connections might have worked if things had been more serialized?