TAS Thougths!

You mean they might have made a half hour children's cartoon more accessible to children?
Perish the thought!

 

The series was accessible to children--the kind of kids who were not entertained by the mind-rotting likes of Goober and the Ghost Chasers, Inch High Private Eye or the Super Friends. TAS was also designed to appeal to the adult fans of TOS--the series worked for more than one demographic, the same as TOS.

 

Well reasoned; Vulcans are not robots. Vulcan children--who are still learning to understand what it means to be Vulcan--can be prone to act before thinking or applying a logical approach to situations as their second nature.

 

While what you say is true, it does well to remember that 7 year olds were the target audience.
And Vulcan Philosophy's complicated, almost Escheresque twists and turns in it's appreciation for logic hadn't been spelled out in 1972, much less at the level a 7 year old would understand.
I recall, at 7 a feeling that I have to paraphrase from the end of "Lord of the Flies":

"I would have expected better from Vulcan Children."

 

As the co-author of the official guide to Star Trek the Animated Series I can tell you that 7 year olds were not the target audience.

The target audience was all ages with an eye towards making sure that it’s appropriate for anyone who might watch it at 10:30 AM on a Saturday. As Dorothy said on multiple occasions “We were not making a kiddie show” which is obvious by subject matter like suicide, death of a pet, etc.

 

What do you mean "in later Trek"?

I say that because in the original run of Star Trek from 1966-1969, anytime Vulcans were shown they had a disdain for non-Vulcans:

In TOS S2 - "Amok Time", T'Pau's first words to Spock are:

"Are our ceremonies for out-wolders?"

And later as Spock while under the effects of the Vulcan blood fever pleads with T'Pau to forbid Kirk becoming part of the ceremony, in her response to Spock, she says:

"Thee has prided thyself on thy Vulcan heritage... Art thee Vulcan or art thee human?"
^^^
And when she says 'human' in the above line, the disgust in her voice comes through very clearly.

There's also the fact that when T'Pring chooses Kirk as her champion, she says in a very honestly dismissive tone:

"This one."

Then there's TOS S2 "Journey to Babel" where are the accomplished ambassador Sarek (Spock's father), is dismissive to practically any other alien race on the ship including humans. He also has open disdain for Starfleet that comes through loud and clear.

So yeah Vulcans were always shown as 'pricks' to non-Vulkans from the start of Star Trek.

 

This probably won't come as a surprise, considering: I love TAS. I mean, Star Trek, animation, an anthropomorphic character, buckets of frequently wild imagination; resistance was futile.

It's the imagination I love the most about TAS. Animation is freedom, the freedom to go anywhere you can conjure up, and TAS took that and ran with it. It certainly took "strange new worlds, new life and new civilisations" far beyond what any other incarnation of Trek I've seen was able or willing to. It's arguably the Trek most true to the opening speech we can all likely recite word-for-word, and I for one think it deserves serious credit for that.

I might even go so far as to say it's the best encapsulation of why I love Trek in general. It's all about the possibilities.

 

That's kind of beautiful!

 

That's exactly what they did in the 2009 Star Trek.

 

Thank you.

 

TAS and ST09's Vulcan bullies show us one VERY important thing about Vulcans: Their unemotional behaviour is taught. And the children haven't yet been taught, at least nowhere to the level of the parents, yet.

 

Vulcans often seem to look down their noses at humans, but humans generally wrestle with their emotions openly rather than denying even having them. Vulcans have built their society on denying they even have feelings rather than dealing with them.

 

TAS also implies that there might be an "up" in space. On more than one occasion, reference is made to the/a "galactic plane" along with a direction or attitude.

 

Vulcans have never denied they have feelings/emotions, they've just taught themselves (and societal pressure aids this too) to outwardly suppress/never express them in public under ANY circumstances.

 

No, it's just a coordinate system reference.

"The dead star is directly ahead, Captain, twelve degrees south of galactic plane." [http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/TAS023.htm]​

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_coordinate_system:

In the equatorial coordinate system, for equinox and equator of 1950.0, the north galactic pole is defined at right ascension 12h 49m, declination +27.4°, in the constellation Coma Berenices, with a probable error of ±0.1°. Longitude 0° is the great semicircle that originates from this point along the line in position angle 123° with respect to the equatorial pole. The galactic longitude increases in the same direction as right ascension. Galactic latitude is positive towards the north galactic pole, with a plane passing through the Sun and parallel to the galactic equator being 0°, whilst the poles are ±90°.​