The One Thing You Could Change, Animated Series Edition...

I decided on a thought exercise for myself, and wanted to see what other people would come up with. I am going to do this for each series, except DISCOVERY and PICARD, as they are still currently in production.

Come up with only ONE thing you would change about a series. It can be something about a character, a storyline, or even something physical, like a different ship design. It can be anything you like, provided it would be used for more than just one episode.


For the Animated Series, I think I would have had Walter Koenig in. We could still have Arex, but Chekov was missed. To me, anyway. It was a family reunion with a member missing.

What do you all think?

 

A better animation studio.

 

Thinking in terms of what could be done about it now, and if I were forced to change something, I'd simply fix the animation errors, such as elements painted the wrong color, misaligned elements, missing elements (e.g., elevator doors), etc. I wouldn't otherwise try to improve anything, with the possible exception of increasing the frame rate for elements that were rotoscoped or that involved rotating elements (generally the ship itself in motion, but also character heads).

 

Agreed about Walter Koenig. It would have been nice to get Walter back to play Chekov. Also they should have done more episodes.

 

The tedious tempo. Everything on that show ran at about 80% speed.

 

Don't have the characters look like card board cut outs.

 

Keep an eye on characters uniforms, don't have Kirk signal sick bay when McCoy is standing next to you in one shot! Remove the pink from the Klingon uniforms and the perm and get John Colicos in to do Kor's voice!
JB

 

I'd reimagine the Enterprise bridge. They did a good job of replicating TOS (although they made everything perfectly smooth and round), but it comes off very bland compared to the alien landscapes and ships we see. I'm sure they could have made it amazing given the leeway to.

 

More M'Ress!

Come on, you guys knew I'd say that.

Oh, and Eartha Kitt voicing her!

 

Feature length animated films featuring Walter Koenig voicing Chekov.

 

Man, tough call.

As an artist, I'd definitely like to tweak/improve the models of the main characters a bit (especially Scotty and Uhura - They don't look very much at all like James Doohan and Nichelle Nichols. The only model that I feel Filmation absolutely nailed was McCoy).

Animation wise, Filmation recycled a lot of shots, which kept the show on budget, but also gave TAS a definite monotonous, repetitive quality.

Story & script wise, they did a few too many "kiddie" type shows and substandard sequels to TOS episodes for my liking. We didn't really need to return to the "Shore Leave" planet, have Harry Mudd come back with a love potion, or have giant tribbles running around.

But, playing by the rules and limiting myself to just one change, I think I'll say having the cast record all the episodes as a group. Book them studio time together. That way they can feed off of each other's energy, they can all receive the same direction, and hopefully you no longer would have problems like having two different pronunciations of "Orion" or "sabotage" within the same scene.



I feel that having group recordings would've gone a long way to helping give the show some more oomph and energy and feel a little more like Star Trek.

But if I'm allowed to get really indulgent, I'll just have voice director Andrea Romano (Tiny Toons and the DCAU shows) travel back in time 20 years to direct the TAS cast. She's a big believer in group recordings, and every actor who's ever worked with her absolutely loves her. I know she could have gotten terrific performances out of the TOS actors.

 

Is Chevok Chekov's Vulcan cousin?

 

That's a great suggestion.

 

Not have Nichelle Nichols Majel Barrett and James Doohan do voices for other characters.
It made the Universe they were inhabiting very small and cheap. Like a limited budget production with actors playing dual roles on stage or something

 

Sarek had another human wife who's name named Svetlana.

 

You know what I meant.

 

Use good scripts.

 

How about a Sealab 2021 version?

 

The Klingon voiced by George Takei in Time Trap was pretty obvious and in later episodes another unknown artist voiced members of the crew and also the Romulans in Practical Joker for instance!
JB

 

Full animation...but that would not have been practical