Animated Series
- Thread starter hux
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What?? Why would you want to? What a pointless gimmick.
What I'm saying is that TAS is what it is. It's a creation of a particular time and context and should be accepted in that light. Indeed, for a Saturday morning cartoon from the early '70s, it's a damn sight better than we would've had any right to expect.
TAS is canon. It was produced, filmed, and aired. And doesn't contradict anything from TOS, IMO. Some of the stories are quite good, for a Saturday morning cartoon. The animation is not good, but the stories make up for it, I think. If you're a fan of TOS or just Trek in general, pick it up. It's worth having in your Trek DVD collection
Don't remake TAS. Leave it as it is. If you want new animated Trek, I'm all for them making a CGI or trad-animation new show.
There were actually talks for an animated TNG in the late nineties with Nickelodeon, but Berman backed out as he thought it would 'cheapen the franchise'.
What I think would've been great would be if Filmation had done a second animated series around 1980-81. By then, the quality of their work had improved considerably -- their animation was still repetitive, but they repeated stock action sequences, some of which were beautifully animated, rather than just still poses. And they'd innovated some pretty sophisticated special-effects techniques like backlit moires, and Ray Ellis & Norm Prescott's music was as rich and gorgeous as it got. And a show at that time would probably have been set after TMP, like the Marvel comic and LA Times comic strip were as well as several of the novels from that time. So we could've had more screen adventures set in the TMP era, and Filmation could've made use of the alien crewmembers glimpsed in that film, like Saurians and Zaranites. It could've been really cool.
Agree.
Christopher this is an excellent idea that should have been done.
And there's no reason it couldn't have happened. Filmation did two different Batman cartoons, one in '67 and one a decade later. And in the late '70s/early '80s they did new animated versions of their live-action characters Isis and Captain Marvel. Not to mention that they revived Fat Albert once or twice after years of reruns, and did Gilligan's Planet as a sequel to The New Adventures of Gilligan.
Around the time in question, Filmation was doing the fantasy series Flash Gordon and Blackstar (sort of a prototype for He-Man) as well as animated versions of The Lone Ranger and Zorro. A new Star Trek could've fit in reasonably well.
Around the time in question, Filmation was doing the fantasy series Flash Gordon and Blackstar (sort of a prototype for He-Man) as well as animated versions of The Lone Ranger and Zorro. A new Star Trek could've fit in reasonably well.
Agree, Filmation missed out on this. It would have been a brilliant TMP era animated series to fill in what happened before WOK.
I absolutely agree. TMP era animated Trek would have been a great way to reboot a cartoon series. I don't recall reading anything; I wonder if the this idea had ever been discussed.
I think the time is ripe for a new animated series. As much as I would love to see one of the older series animated, I suspect it would have to be nuTrek to really be successful. That would be the crew to draw in the younger aged audience.
That seems the most likely possibility. Orci & Kurtzman already produce one animated spinoff of a film franchise they're involved with, Transformers Prime, and we know they've talked about developing an animated Trek spinoff.
An animated Star Trek series would be a catalyst to attract children as new fans to the franchise.
Existing fans would enjoy it too.
If they could pull off a Trek like they did Transformers Prime I'm all for that. That show is some good Cybertronian action.
If we were to get anything new on TV I believe animated would be it. For some reason I think it'd be a different ship, with the Enterprise in the pilot to help set it up. Mainly due to the cost of the actors.
If we were to get anything new on TV I believe animated would be it. For some reason I think it'd be a different ship, with the Enterprise in the pilot to help set it up. Mainly due to the cost of the actors.
It's not essential for the movie actors to participate in a hypothetical animated series. The Clone Wars, for one, proved that.
Indeed. There are plenty of animated adaptations of movie franchises, but it's rare for them to use the actual movie casts; they usually go with similar-sounding substitute actors.
Just to cite a few examples, let's look at the recent shows based on DreamWorks movies. Dragons: Riders of Berk has Jay Baruchel, America Ferreira, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and T.J. Miller reprising their characters from How to Train Your Dragon, but everyone else is recast. Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness has only Lucy Liu and James Hong from the movie cast. And the new Monsters vs. Aliens cartoon has none of the movie cast involved.
Other examples: The Real Ghostbusters had no cast members in common with the movie (in fact, Ernie Hudson auditioned to play Winston on the cartoon but was rejected for not sounding Winston-like enough!). Men in Black: The Series had only Tony Shalhoub and Vincent D'Onofrio returning from the movie, and everyone else was recast, without even any particular attempt to imitate the film actors' voices. Godzilla: The Series had Kevin Dunn and Malcolm Danare returning from the movie, and that was it. The MTV Spider-Man CGI cartoon that was meant to be a sequel to the first Raimi movie had none of its cast members reprising their roles (although it did get Michael Clark Duncan to reprise Kingpin from the Daredevil movie).
There have been some cases where cartoon adaptations have featured the original cast, true. Filmation was often pretty good at getting the original cast. TOS had everyone but Walter Koenig. The New Adventures of Gilligan had everyone but Tina Louise, with Ginger recast. The '77 New Adventures of Batman had Adam West and Burt Ward, although Lennie Weinrib, Melendy Britt, and Lou Scheimer played everyone else. But they also had their share of shows with actors recast. The Brady Kids initially had the same child stars as The Brady Bunch but recast many of them later on. My Favorite Martians had Jonathan Harris and Howard Morris replacing Ray Walston and Bill Bixby in the leads.
So if there were a Trek cartoon based on the Abramsverse, there's no guarantee it would get many or most of the films' cast. Probably Pine and Saldana are too big to be available or affordable. Cho and Yelchin seem to be rising stars too, so it's hard to say. Pegg might be willing; he has voice-acting experience.
Really only one character in common, but I was floored the first time I heard Patrick Warburton voicing Buzz Lightyear in the cartoon series...
It would be most hilarious if Simon Pegg ended up voicing multiple characters on a new TAS...that or bring in Mark Hamill for a voice or two.
You are probably correct, but I'd like to think that everyone would be available and willing to do their voiceovers. Even if a season's worth of half-hour animation was say 20 episodes - if the scripts were all set in advance, I'd like to think people could voice all their lines in a few days at most. Coming up with a fee would likely be the biggest sticking point. Wishful thinking, I know, but what the hell, eh?
You'd think that availability wouldn't be an issue for animation, true, but sometimes it can be. The reason Justice League had George Newbern replacing Tim Daly as the voice of Superman was because Daly's starring role on the TV reboot of The Fugitive (which entailed a lot of travel) made him unavailable for voice work. And I've read about other voice roles in other shows being recast due to the unavailability of the original actors. Although sometimes it's just a matter of becoming too big a star for the show to afford. On the '90s Spider-Man cartoon, the original voice of the Scorpion was Martin Landau. Then he won an Oscar for Ed Wood, and suddenly he was out of their reach. Richard Moll took over the role for the rest of the series.
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