Is the animated series a good sequel to the original series?

Well I guess what most people mean by canon is whether or not those events happened in the Star Trek universe, and with regards to TAS it's obvious based on later shows that some of them such as Yesteryear definitely happened. So the burden of proof then rests with the people who refuse to accept TAS as part of the continuity.

 

Which is ultimately for the creators to decide, not the fans. I mean, sure, we can choose to accept or disregard anything we want in our personal continuities, but that's not going to have any effect on what the creators of future Trek productions choose to do. If the writers of Star Trek: Discovery wanted, say, to do an episode featuring Starfleet Cadet Arex or M'Ress, or Carter Winston or the Vendorians, or the Delta Triangle or the Skorr or the Vedala or the Dramians, they would be perfectly free to do so. Absolutely nothing would prevent it. CBS fully owns every concept and character from TAS (with the exception of the Kzinti, Slavers, and other Known Space elements from "The Slaver Weapon," which belong to Larry Niven), so they're completely free to use them if they want to.

Which is why the unending fan arguments over TAS's canon status are such a complete waste of time. Canon, by definition, is what the creators choose to do. And Trek creators have been including at least minor elements from TAS all along, from the implicit Caitians in The Voyage Home to the "Yesteryear" allusions in "Unification" (which came out during the time that Roddenberry's supposed "TAS ban" was in effect, proving how toothless it actually was) to the Klothos in DS9 and so on. All the fan battles over TAS's "canon status" have no bearing on the fact that the actual makers of canonical Star Trek have been treating TAS content as fair game the whole time. Roddenberry was the only one who wanted to exclude it specifically, and by the time he imposed the "ban," he had no real power to enforce that preference anyway -- except on the tie-ins, ironically enough, and that was only for a few years.

 

If there's one episode from TAS that can be considered canon, it's this one. DC Fontana, the writer of this episode had mentioned in a Trek magazine article that Roddenberry thought of it as canon (perhaps because it was written by a TOS staffer). You can see what JJ Abrams borrowed from it to portray Spock's early years from the 2009 film and the TOS episode 'Journey to Babel' made first mention of Spock's pet. I was awesome to have Mark Lenard on as the voice of Spock's father.

Fontana also mentioned there was concern from some at animation studio that the network would object to the idea of a Saturday morning cartoon portray the death of a pet but was considered to be well handled and suitable for child viewing.

I think it's a standout story for Trek in general and certainly one for Saturday morning television.

 

Franchise-wide, canon is problematic as a concept, because we're always seeing continuity errors, retcons, science errors (how big is the galaxy is ST5), and scale errors (how is the inside of a TOS shuttlecraft larger than the outside, how does a 78-deck shaft fit inside the 1701A).

I'd just say If you're enjoying a TAS episode, then it's happening. If you're not, it's so much artwork.

 

Good luck with that. I don't think you'll succeed. I know I'd like to do it, but no matter what I try, I just can't. I have enough 1970s Saturday morning TV on DVDs to recreate entire mornings. Everything from Filmation to Hanna Barbera to Krofft. Plus In the News, Schoolhouse Rock, Time for Timer and other interstitials. I just can't get "into the groove" even when I'm watching them. Like you wrote, we're not the same people we were back then and even if we were, those memories are more romanticized and less like the reality of the time than we like to admit. I look at TV Guide issues from back then and I'm stunned that what I thought was an era when I watched TV from morning until night had many hours when there was nothing I would want to watch. To be absolutely honest, I find it much more enjoyable to recall the memories than to try to relive them.

And DVDs? Why not the Blu-ray set?

 

It continues the the five year mission, but does not end it. Watch TOS, TAS and then watch TMP.

 

I think it's neat that we can collect and curate what amounts to a personal museum now to preserve our TV memories. And you make some good points. I do remember the early Seventies as a time when there were some shows I really liked, but only four channels coming in on the antenna. And if you were home all day with nothing to do, there would be long stretches when TV was painfully boring. With no home video and no Internet, I would work on my hobbies, listen to music, or read a book. It was a living hell.

I have a modest TV set, just a 32-inch, 720p widescreen. Well-mastered DVDs look very good on it. The TAS DVDs look beautiful and they're paid for. The TOS-R DVDs look almost like Blu-rays on my TV, but I bought the Blu-ray set for the choice of fx. I also bought the complete Blu's for Lost in Space and The Twilight Zone, shows where I wanted the best of the best. But with TAS, the DVD is already giving me a vastly sharper picture with better color than I had in 1973, and it feels like enough.

DVD releases vary widely in picture quality. I have the first season of The Office and again, on my TV set, you would swear it's in true HD. At the other extreme, a DVD release can look annoyingly soft, practically blurry.

 

"Is the animated series a good sequel to the original series?"

Heck yeah! There has never been a subsequent Star Trek that was as much like TOS as TAS was.

 

Canon... a difficult concept.

I saw a blooper reel in which Jonathan Frakes tripped and fell flat on his face when walking onto the Enterprise-D bridge. It was on screen, so it's canon.

Kor

 

TAS, New Voyages /Phase 2 and STC are great seasons 4 and 5 of TOS

 

Didn't show up on tv, so it's not. But you knew that.

 

I thought he did a shoulder roll.

 

I think it probably did. It was airing as reruns a lot during the mid 80s on Nickelodeon, a children's channel in the USA. I knew a lot of kids that were watching it then.

 

TAS is fun, but hit-or-miss much like TOS. If one is looking for a proper story about the end of the five year mission: I would recommend Star Trek Annual #2 (DC Comics, first run) by Mike Barr and Dan Jurgens.

 

Yes. I think so, too. The holodeck is a good example. I also love that many of the original actors (Sans Koenig, except his writing) voiced the series.

SailorLadyGaga, this is a good little read about it:

http://www.tor.com/2013/11/20/these...hy-star-trek-the-animated-series-was-awesome/

 

To me TAS is season 4 of Star Trek. It's got good episodes and bad ones but I still maintain that a bad episode of Trek is usually better than most crap on television,.

 

Seconded! As far as I'm concerned, that's the way the 5YM ended.

 

I like how it tied together "The Cage", "City...", "The Doomsday Machine" and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

 

That Mike W. Barr knows his stuff, huh?

 

Personally I've always thought of TAS as years 4 and 4 of the five year mission taking place after the events of years 1-3 seen in TOS. Your mileage may vary.