I disagree. Compared to its contemporary Saturday morning shows, Star Trek: TAS was just about the most intelligently written one, and one of the better-looking ones despite its limited movement. As for Transformers and G.I. Joe, I was never that fond of them, but I gather in retrospect that they had some pretty good writers who occasionally worked in some sophisticated themes and characterizations despite the basic toyetic silliness of the premises. The animation was pretty clumsy, though.
I diagree. Even if 100% of IDW's Star Trek output were crossovers, I would be fine with that. Why? Because IDW would be doing something with their license and the characters that other licensees, like Pocket, would find difficult, if not impossible, to accomplish. Putting Captain Kirk and Hal Jordan in a scene together isn't going to happen in a book or a movie. But it can happen in a comic book. They're taking advantage of the medium to tell stories with the Star Trek characters that can't be told any other way. That said, doing one-ish crossovers a year strikes me as a good output level. Their focus is on "traditional" Star Trek storytelling, and one project a year they pull out all the stops for something cool. That keeps it fresh. If you want to see what that story should look like, look at Alien Covenant. As I understand it, the creators on TNG/Aliens jumped the gun in talking about the project when all the Is weren't dotted and the Ts weren't crossed. It wasn't as close to approval as they thought.
Not being alive at the time, I have seen very few Saturday morning cartoons from the 1970s, so I don't really care how it compares. Watching it in the 2000s for the first time, I found it usually boring and more silly than the parent show. Every now and again there was an okay episode. (I do have a fondness for many of its characters and concepts, probably because I read the Alan Dean Foster books growing up.)
At this point, there are fewer and fewer genre properties Kirk and Company didn't encounter during the five-year mission.
I don't mind if they become routine, I just get a kick out of seeing the characters from my favorite franchises interact. I'm still frustrated they pulled Assimilation2 ( the TNG/Doctor Who crossover) when IDW lost the DW license. I actually got the first volume, but they pulled it before I got the second. I'm not reading Vol.1 until I can get my hands on Vol.2.
I expected something more from a Star Trek/Doctor Who crossover than a fifth season TNG bottle episode.
If Alan Dean Foster were to novelize this Transformers crossover and if it were published as Star Trek Log Eleven, the publisher of the novelization would have my money.
Interestingly, while this comic miniseries is not canon for Star Trek, it is for Transformers as that franchise operates on a rule of "everything is canon in separate universes".
It's very rare for these crossovers to be done as novels, and they don't really do many Transformers prose novels.
I can't wait to see what the tfwiki does with this. that place is hilarious, image captions and such.
Indeed, the fact that this is the TAS show and TF TV show is just enticing enough to make me want to buy it. I always liked both TV series, and find myself watching the TAS on my computer and sometimes TFG-1 on my laptop too. This book bridges that gap and is just the sort of pure fun an 80s science fiction fan could ever want. Pure joy! Now imagine a TOS Kelvin and Krypton cross over comic.. Whoa..I'd love that!
I came away with the impression that there were so many layers of approval involved in even getting such a crossover out the door that the resulting story was all they were allowed to do.
I think that is a very good idea, I will implement this for Star Trek and the issue of what is canon.
That's pretty much how I've always treated any contradictions between the tie-ins and the movies and shows.