Star Trek the animated series

[CorporalCaptain]

I love TAS. My favorite eps are One of Our Planets, Yesteryear, and Time Trap. All of which I would love to see turned into movies.

I consider those three the first-class episodes, too ("One of Our Planets Is Missing," "Yesteryear," and "The Time Trap").

"Beyond the Farthest Star" isn't far behind. It's exciting and overall very good, and it has some outstanding parts, but I cringe when the alien electricity laughs maniacally.

 

[JeffinOakland]

I like TAS. I consider it "Star Trek Lite". Not really ST in my book but still fun. My favorite episodes are the one where the crew are put in a zoo and the one where they find the incredibly old derelict spacecraft.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I don't have the Concordance. But here are the airdates as listed on the DVD set.

Season One
“Beyond…” – 09/08/73
“Yesteryear” – 09/15/73
“One of Our Planets is Missing” – 09/22/73
. . .

Everything but "Beyond . . ." matches, which would seem to indicate that TAS had its Los Angeles market debut a week after its debut in other markets, but the actual airdate schedule was otherwise unchanged.

Interesting.

I can't help but remember an episode of Mork and Mindy, in which Mindy's aspiring politician relative was given his "equal time" on a Saturday morning.

 

[UnknownSample]

"Beyond the Farthest Star" was the first one NBC aired and it was a great start. The story wasn't too juvenile and I loved the music. Thanks to audio tape and the limited number of cues, I quickly had TAS music memorized and would "play" it in my head on bike rides. It was great to be a kid.

I'd have to say my other favorites were "Yesteryear" and "The Lorelei Signal."

I played music in my head on bike trips, too. Like, say, the Sgt Pepper album in sequence. I could "play" the animated theme right now. My head's filled with music. I don't even need to have heard a song in years...

 

[Tallguy]

I don't even need to have heard a song in years...

I just can't imagine going years without hearing the TAS theme.

 

[UnknownSample]

The TAS theme always seemed like the TOS theme sort of "backwards", to me.

 

[johnnybear]

It's a sort of childs version of the main theme somehow to me with all those pings at the beginning!
JB

 

[Kor]

I've always liked The Slaver Weapon, Beyond the Farthest Star, and Yesteryear.

Kor

 

[Green]

Wow, this has got me so hyped for the Blu-ray.

 

[2takesfrakes]

"The Infinite Vulcan" is my favourite, but the best of them was "Yesteryear." Mark Lenard was awesome and it's NO surprise that STAR TREK kept bringing him back, whenever possible. Having him in "Yesteryear" is such a highlight, for me, because of him ... I just wish that it wasn't so cliché to heap praise on this episode, because it's certainly worthy of it. The rest of The Animated Series - which I own - is very charming, very cute, but also very overrated. It's more STAR TREK and that's ALWAYS a good thing - cant' get enough of this franchise! But it's also surprisingly boring, despite it's many virtues and that almost overrides them all, honestly.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

It's more STAR TREK and that's ALWAYS a good thing - cant' get enough of this franchise! But it's also surprisingly boring, despite it's many virtues and that almost overrides them all, honestly.

I think our attention spans have shortened since 1973. But also, TAS may have had some pacing and repetition issues, and maybe that was caused by the re-use of too few frames to save time and money.

 

[tomswift2002]

Wow, this has got me so hyped for the Blu-ray.

Hopefully CBS will release the Blu-Ray separately. So far the Blu-Ray has only been announced for a release in a giant box set containing TOS, TAS and the TOS movies.

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Star-Trek-50th-Anniversary-TV-and-Movie-Collection/22345

 

[Indysolo]

I played music in my head on bike trips, too. Like, say, the Sgt Pepper album in sequence. I could "play" the animated theme right now. My head's filled with music. I don't even need to have heard a song in years...

Sounds like this guy.

Neil

 

[F. King Daniel]

My favourite episodes are "Magicks of Megas-Tu" (the most insane episode of Star Trek ever made) and "The Time Trap", which kicked off my lifelong love of Starship graveyards.

 

[GSchnitzer]

According to the Concordance, the Los Angeles airdate for "Yesteryear" matches the above, but the airdate for "Beyond . . ." was not until December 22nd.

This suggests that the series debut was simply delayed one week in the Los Angeles market. I wonder if somebody who has both the DVD set and the Concordance might compare the rest of the airdates.

The animated series wasn't delayed by a week in Los Angeles; it premiered on the same date as it did for the rest of the country. But in Los Angeles, "Yesteryear" was aired that first week as the premiere since Takei isn't in that episode. Angelenos got "Yesteryear" *again* a second time the following week with the rest of the country. Angelenos didn't get to see "...Farthest Star" until it aired nationwide as a rerun in December.

 

[2takesfrakes]

I think our attention spans have shortened since 1973.

With all due respect, blaming the audience may work for George Lucas, in defining why the prequels sucked ("Oh! They had such expectations that they weren't ever going to be satisfied, no matter what was done"), but it doesn't quite cut it, where TAS is concerned. Even in Live Action, exposition is death. Nobody wants to do it. But time constraints demand that shortcuts be taken in the narrative, to speed the story along, so, it's a good thing that The Shat's so hammy in his delivery, that he makes some of the exposition in TOS sound interesting.

For being a cartoon, TAS is mostly about exposition and watching characters' mouths go up and down. And where there is action, it's shown in the most static way possible, as you've already mentioned. Entertainment's first obligation is to not be predictable, or pedestrian. There's nothing about that approach to drive anyone's imagination, particularly a young person's. Yes, audiences are impatient, now. They don't want to wait til near the end of the movie to get a really good look at the monster. They expect to see it right out of the gate, in all its glory, demonstrating everything it's capable of. In so-doing, they may well be "cutting off their nose to spite their face," however, that doesn't alter the fact that entertainment's obligated to not be boring.

 

[KirkusOveractus]

TAS was the first version of Star Trek I ever saw, watching it around 3 or 4 years old! One of the episodes that stuck in my memory was "The Eye of the Beholder" from watching it then. Parts of it just stuck in my memory (and when Nickelodeon started to air it in the 1980's, I started to watch it then and the first one I saw was..."The Eye of the Beholder"!)

Some parts of TAS had even had crossed in my mind with TOS, with me sometimes thinking that there was an episode of TOS where Kirk has "Kirk is a Jerk" on his uniform! But alas, it was actually "Practical Joker" from TAS.

Now I have to get my DVD set back out of TAS and watch! It was a present from my wife and daughter when it came out, and I love it!

 

[Shawnster]

So, when did you first see TAS?

I was born in '71 after TOS initial run ended. I checked Bjo Tremble's Concordance out of the library again and again and again in the late 70s or early 80s. I'd read a few of Alan Dean Foster's "Logs." I knew TAS existed, but I never saw it. I had given up on ever seeing it. So, I was tickled when Nickelodeon aired TAS in 1985. I was a teen and seeing new "Trek" on TV.