If the animated series had been the fourth season

Would it of went of well?

 

Maybe...if someone else other than Fred Freiberger was producing it.

 

There were a few great ones, a few awful, and the majority were okay.

Pretty much like most Trek series.

 

It would have been notorious as the season of sequels.

• The Trouble With Tribbles
• I, Mudd
• Shore Leave

That's three times as much as any other season to date!

Possibly also City On The Edge Of Forever but that is more of a framing device for the main story, which itself is more like a prequel to Journey To Babel. But it's a classy tale so I don't mind so much

 

For some TAS was the fourth season.

 

I'm okay with that; I thought the short series was fun and it's still quite watchable, not like some fanfilms who falsely claim to be a 4th season in completing the five year mission.

 

And your opinion?

 

It may of

 

Personally, I do count the two seasons of TAS as the fourth and fifth years of the five-year mission.

 

If you've never tried mixing TAS into a rewatch by stardates, I want to say that it can be a really interesting perspective. (I used a formula and the production and air date orders to figure out stardates for episodes that did not have one.)

 

One day I want to do a TOS/TAS rewatch by stardate. I made a list by stardate some years ago. The real hiccup is “The Magicks Of Megas-Tu” coming at the very beginning I believe.

 

Magicks stardate 1254.4 works okay-ish as is. I discount WNMHGB as being in the United Earth (UE) Stardate system, then shortly after that episode and about a year and a half before Mudd's Women, they changed to the Federation Stardate system and reset back to 0000. Aside for the TAS bridge design and character familiarity, this would put Magicks about 80 stardates or about 29 days (where 1000 stardates is one Earth year) before Mudd's Women.

Another option is to have stardates affected by location in the Galaxy, so, the closer to the center, the lower the stardate. I can see this fudging for few days, but not years. YMMV

The last option is to declare the logged stardate as a misprint and change the first digit to 5 making it Stardate 5254.4 (more in line with its companion episodes). Mudd's Passion is Stardate 4978.4 and The Time Trap is Stardate 5267.6. Additionally, this new date does not interfere with TOS episodes. This is my preferred option at this time.

 

I skipped this episode on my last re-watch for other reasons, but I threw out the stardate entirely when making my list and used the formula I had for episodes without a stardate to get 5573, between the "Infinite Vulcan" and the "Terratin Incident." Using a stardate of 5254 would put this episode between "Beyond the Farthest Star" and "The Time Trap." Either one seems to fit just about as well, since this whole episode is one that just doesn't fit well in my opinion anyway.

Perhaps the fact that they are so close to the center of the galaxy does affect the stardate in some major way, but one that we would not see in most if any other episodes (maybe Voyager might encounter some time disconnections like this, but they did not seem to.)

Also, while I did treat "BEM" as the last epsiode in my list, 7403 seems to close to TMP for me, and I think it should be treated as an error. (It probably was using a fan system that would refer 1973 and the month of March.)

EDIT: That should say 1974 and the month of March regarding the stardate.

 

TAS was even worse with Stardates than TOS. Production staff: "It's a cartoon for kids; who cares."

 

Dare I bring up the copious appearances of reel to reel tapes in TAS? That's always an anachronism that brings me out of the "futuristic" show!

 

Going to have to partially disagree with you there. Every TAS episode has a stardate, and they all start with 5 or 6, with the two exceptions listed here and another error in "The Time Trap" that is probably just an omission of numbers. That's really not bad for something that got started a few years after the original had stopped.

 

Really? That's it? You create a topic and your only opinion is a 3-word "dunno"? LOL

 

It seems pretty likely that if there had been a fourth season, Nimoy wouldn't have been in it. He wasn't happy in season three, and while he would have been under contract, Paramount might well have let him leave Trek if he moved across to Mission Impossible (as happened).
So with or without Freiberger, there would be a Spock replacement, either another Vulcan, or maybe a Data type character, but hated by the Nimoy fans either way.

 

My take on this is there could only have been a fourth season IF things had gone better during the previous three.

 

My thought was TAS and TOS combined. Several issues:

1. the stardates are not in sync with either broadcast nor production orders. Wild swings.
2. Most are grouped in the middle of the stardates for TOS season 3.
3. TAS episode Stardates of 1254.4, 3138.3 and 7403.6 are "out there". Also, that's a span of 6.15 years (assuming 1000 stardates equal one solar year.)
4. I like to explain the physical changes of the sets like in engineering plus the second door on the bridge would come and go when combined with TOS.
5. Two of the TAS stardates are 4 or less stardates (~one day) between episodes.
6. Mudd's Passion is bumping up to the two months (164 stardates) needed for The Paradise Syndrome. Plus more time would be needed to tow and repair the ship.