Who knew Threshold would be more watchable in animation?
Watching The Animated Series For The First Time
- Thread starter TRON JA307020
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Depends on the shot. Around about 1976-7, Filmation started incorporating rotoscoped movement sequences traced from live-action film of acrobats and the like, so you'd get fluid animation of things like Tarzan jumping down to the ground, Batman somersaulting, the Lone Ranger and Tonto racing off on horseback, or the like, interspersed with the usual stock shots of a static head pose with only the mouth and eyes moving. (As a kid, I would memorize the oft-recycled movements and act them out myself.) And I think I previously mentioned how Blackstar and Flash Gordon used physical 3D miniatures with drawn-on outlines to create animation cels for fluid 3D spaceship/vehicle movements, the same way the Heavy Metal movie created the landscape flyover in the Taarna sequence.
Anyway, it's always puzzled me that Americans are far more critical of the limited animation in '60s-'70s American cartoons than they are of the equally limited and recycled animation that's always been commonplace in anime imports from Japan, even to this day. Anime often uses the same kinds of animation-saving tricks Filmation used -- long, slow pans across static backgrounds, characters motionless except for their mouths, characters shot from behind as they talk so even their mouths don't have to be animated, etc. Yet for some reason, nobody complains about it the way they do about Filmation doing the exact same things.
It had it problems for sure. But I did enjoy the space battle. Also Kirk pushed a giant Tribble out of his chair twice. That hilarious imagery alone was worth it for me. Lol
Who knew Threshold would be more watchable in animation?
I always wanted Tuvok to say on the bridge as they were leaving orbit: "It would be interesting Captain to return to that world in a hundred years and learn what crop had sprung from the seed you and Lt. Paris planted today."
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Haha. I like the silly little music they used from the animated series when the slug children of Paris and Janeway slither into their hole....Who knew Threshold would be more watchable in animation?
In Evangelion, Gendo Ikari giving long lectures with his hands clasped in front of his mouth and his glasses blanked over by dramatic glare. One single frame, with a slow zoom in for the duration of the whole speech.
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At the start of TMP, we have Will Decker as Captain (though his shoulder insignia has only two solid bars suggesting he was only on Commander rank?) and who was to be his First/Executive Officer? Commander Sonak was coming aboard to be its new Science Office, no mention of Executive Officer, so maybe not him. Scotty was the only other one of Commander rank on the ship, but he seems to be charge of the Enterprise Refit from Starfleet Engineering and not the ship's Chief of Engineering; maybe I'm wrong and he's supposed to Executive too but too busy with the engineering problems. When Kirk "demoted" Decker to Commander and made him Executive Officer, there seems to be no downstream bumping suggesting that there was no Executive Officer assigned to the ship, unless Lt. Cmd. Sulu or Lt. Cmd. Uhura was to be the Executive Officer but I doubt it if full Commander Sonak is coming aboard? Chekov had the rank of Lt. (or Lt. j.g. in early promo's?), so, definitely not him. Pre-TMP Executive Officer options:
- no one;
- Sonak;
- Scott;
- Sulu;
- Uhura.
After TMP, who takes over the Enterprise? Probably not Kirk since he is still an Admiral and Chief of Starfleet Operations. Not Spock since he just got "re-instated" as a Commander. Probably one or more new Captains and Executive Officers until the Enterprise is assigned to Starfleet Academy as a training vessel under Captain Spock in TWOK. I can see Scott, McCoy, Sulu, Uhura and Chekov serving on the refit Enterprise between TMP and TWOK, but by the start of TWOK, Kirk, Sulu and Chekov are not assigned to the Enterprise. And who's the Executive Officer of the Enterprise at the start of TWOK? Don't know. YMMV
.
We can't really assume that, because the implication in TWOK (made overt in the novel, I think) was that the crew had been apart for some time and had reunited for Kirk's birthday training cruise.
No, Kirk was demoted to captain's rank for the V'Ger mission, as you can see in his insignia. I figure that was the tradeoff Nogura demanded for giving him the ship back.
TMP: Admiral Kirk saves the Earth and they demote him.
TSFS: Admiral Kirk saves the Earth and they demote him.
TUC: Captain Kirk saves the Federation and they retire him.
I guess Starfleet was rewarding Kirk with what he really wants at the time: the Enterprise, the Enterprise-A, and a cabin on a mountain.
Haha. I like the silly little music they used from the animated series when the slug children of Paris and Janeway slither into their hole....
Yeah. Chakotay covering his eyes at the same time the music played. Perfect.
Have you seen the torrential flood of bad animation in the decades since TAS? From more horrendous Hanna-Barbera crap, to the endless, cheap syndicated series famed out to Korean studios (take your pick), all the way to the awful Flash animation shows of the early 2000s. The point being every decade of televised animation has more crap than quality, but TAS' edge has always been story and being faithful to TOS.
The same compliant can easily be applied to Robotech, The Real Ghostbusters, every Hanna-Barbera series ever produced, Voltron, most Marvel cartoons of the 80s and 90s, and don't get me started on the discount, faux-John Williams music Dinletir and Venable "composed" for Star Wars:the Clone Wars cartoons. Common practice.
I remember when people (you know.... PEOPLE) were bagging on the animation in Star Wars: Rebels. I asked them (again... THEM) what was better. And they started telling me about PIXAR MOVIES. I was all like "OK, go watch some Strawberry Shortcake 3D or some of the other stuff that is in the same price point as Rebels and then we will have an actual conversation." That's like saying "The FX in TOS were garbage!" "Compared to what?" "2001: A Space Odyssey." Ummmmm...
For all the crap the TAS gets for it's limited animation they skip over the fact that the likenesses are pretty terrific. And the robot grain ships and the Huron are some of my favorite Trek ships ever.
OTOH, while they had MORE music it's shocking (these days) to hear how much of TOS is tracked.
For all the crap the TAS gets for it's limited animation they skip over the fact that the likenesses are pretty terrific. And the robot grain ships and the Huron are some of my favorite Trek ships ever.
Well. Let's be fair. They had about 30 minutes of music composed for TAS. And it's GREAT music. You may find Clone Wars repetitive, but it isn't literally an hour or even two spread over many seasons of episodes.
OTOH, while they had MORE music it's shocking (these days) to hear how much of TOS is tracked.
Chapter 2 Page 41 of the 'Wrath of Khan' novelization has this quote from McCoy as part of a piece of extended dialogue from the apartment scene where Kirk and McCoy are celebrating Kirk's birthday - "Bull. You never should have given up the Enterprise after Voyager."
Followed a few short sentences later by the this, "That's bull too. If you'd made a few waves, they wouldn't have had any choice but to reassign you."
The implication being that after the events of 'The Motion Picture', Kirk reluctantly accepted a (re) promotion back to Admiral and a desk bound assignment rather than remain Captain of the Enterprise, possibly because of pressure brought about by Nogura or someone higher up.
It could be that after 'The Motion Picture', Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise had achieved a level of notoriety after saving the Earth from V'Ger (Voyager 6), and there were those in Starfleet who didn't want to lose a valuable asset like Kirk and applied some pressure to get Kirk to accept a desk job.
It also sounds like Kirk, for whatever reasons, chose not to fight it.
I quickly read the opening chapters of 'The Wrath of Khan' novelization and the only mention I could find of the crew being apart comes from Chapter 3 pages 59-62 when the shuttle leaves Earth and is approaching Enterprise, when Kirk says to Sulu that it's good to see him again and that it has been a long time.
Then Kirk congratulates Sulu on his promotion to Captain, who will take command of the Excelsior at the end of the month. That's really the only mention of the crew being apart from each other.
It does raise the question of where Sulu has been if he wasn't part of the Enterprise after the conclusion of the second FYM.
In my head cannon after the conclusion of the second FYM, Kirk is promoted to Admiral again and takes a post teaching at Starfleet Academy, Spock is promoted to Captain of the Enterprise, which is turned into a training vessel. Scotty stays onboard as Chief of Engineering. McCoy works for, or becomes head of, Starfleet Medical. Uhura becomes an instructor at the Academy or an aide to Kirk. Chekov is promoted to Commander and becomes First Officer of the Reliant.
That leaves Sulu, did he accept a promotion to First Officer and serve as a Commander on another starship, or did he stay Earthbound and accept a position teaching at Starfleet Academy, to be close to and raise his daughter Demora.
The dialogue makes it sound like Kirk and Sulu haven't seen each other in a while, but Kirk followed Sulu's career post second FYM and put in a good word to his superiors about promoting Sulu to Captain.
I adore Vonda's Wrath of Khan and Search for Spock. But I'm not going to say she had a super tight grip on "official canon". (Not that anyone cared back then.) OTOH, she re-wrote the dialogue between Sulu and Kirk into words that a human might actually say out loud. George might have gotten to keep his scene.
Of course the reason that TWOK covers the same "unhappy admiral" ground as TMP is that TWOK barely allows TMP to exist. TWOK and TSFS don't consider the Enterprise to be shiny, updated, and an "almost totally new Enterprise" because they treat her like she's been the same old ship since the 60's.
TWOK was SNW before SNW got there. Yes, the props are different but they've ALWAYS looked like that. *wink*
Anyway, this was how the Great Bird ended Star Trek: The Motion Picture:
Then again TWOK ended with "I feel young!" and TSFS began with "The death of Spock is like an open wound." Kirk is apparently a mercurial fellow.
Wait... Is this the TAS thread?
Of course the reason that TWOK covers the same "unhappy admiral" ground as TMP is that TWOK barely allows TMP to exist. TWOK and TSFS don't consider the Enterprise to be shiny, updated, and an "almost totally new Enterprise" because they treat her like she's been the same old ship since the 60's.
TWOK was SNW before SNW got there. Yes, the props are different but they've ALWAYS looked like that. *wink*
Anyway, this was how the Great Bird ended Star Trek: The Motion Picture:
Then again TWOK ended with "I feel young!" and TSFS began with "The death of Spock is like an open wound." Kirk is apparently a mercurial fellow.
Wait... Is this the TAS thread?
Yes, as I mentioned before, some people chose to hypothesize that Kirk had returned to the admiralty after TMP. But that's very much the minority view where tie-in fiction is concerned. Many tie-ins have posited a continuing mission after TMP, as the movie's own ending implied. The 1979 newspaper comic strip and the 1980 Marvel comic book were set in such a mission, as was Marvel's 1998 Untold Voyages miniseries. The Pocket novel line that began in 1981 has always featured a mix of TV-era and movie-era TOS stories, including my own ongoing series of post-TMP novels starting with 2005's Ex Machina, a direct sequel picking up 10 days after TMP. My novels are consistent with earlier ones such as Peter David's The Captain's Daughter which set the duration of the post-TMP mission at 5 years, but as I already mentioned, David R. George's Crucible trilogy posits a 7-year mission of deep-space exploration after TMP.
Novels are never canonical, and that includes novelizations. Any speculation a novelizer makes beyond the onscreen evidence is merely that, speculation. So we've always been free to conjecture different possibilities, sometimes staying consistent with earlier authors, sometimes going our own way.
The only mention? Kirk is no longer the captain. Chekov is first officer of another ship. Sulu was meant to be established as the Excelsior's captain in the TWOK script, though it only survived in the novelization. So that's three of the seven who've gone their separate ways -- or four of the eight, since there's no sign of Chapel in TWOK and TVH shows her assigned to Starfleet Headquarters.
Yes, that's what I'm saying. The E is attached to the Academy as a training ship, so it may not even have a permanent command crew besides Captain Spock. And it would only go out on occasional brief missions, so the crew would have plenty of time to get assigned to other ships for short-term missions in between.
The way I portray events between the second 5YM and TWOK in my novels The Higher Frontier and Living Memory is similar to what you posit, though Chekov is only second officer of Reliant to start with, Sulu is staying on Earth to raise Demora (per The Captain's Daughter), and I have Scotty and Uhura taking a posting on a different starship -- both because it served my story needs to have some familiar characters on that ship, and because it's more realistic if the officers move around to different assignments rather than being frozen in place between movies.
That's because the film was scripted to open with the Grissom scene where they discovered Spock's intact coffin/tube. Kirk's scripted line in the log entry was "The news of Spock's tube is like an open wound." Both the novelization and the DC Comics adaptation preserve this scene order. Evidently the filmmakers decided it was better to open with the main cast.
I do love the music for TAS. Something about it is soothing. Maybe it reminds me of my childhood watching the few episodes that I caught in reruns and reminds me of some of the other filmation shows I watched like He-man. It might also be that certain quality of sound crispness that the filmation shows had. The sound quality just seemed different than other shows. It's nice. The music itself was well written.
That's unexpected, since He-Man was the first Filmation show to be scored by Shuki Levy & Haim Saban instead of the stalwarts "Yvette Blais & Jeff Michael" (i.e. Ray Ellis & Norm Prescott) who'd scored pretty much every Filmation show from 1970-82. And it had a completely different musical style, purely electronic in place of Ellis & Prescott's usual orchestral/jazzy style.
I was referencing the sound quality itself not really the musical scores. Something about filmations sound quality even when the characters are talking seems different. I'm not a sound expert so I dont know what it is. But I do like it.
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When I watched some TAS episodes again after not seeing them since (probably) they first aired, I was amazed how the music instantly put me back in the stories. I'm fairly sure that when I'm senile, I'll still recognize the DAA-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-DAA-DAA-DAA!
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