Could TAS have been better?

[The Overlord]

I think TAS was a good cartoon for its time, but it was limited by being a Flimation cartoon in the 70s. Flimation is noted for their cheapness and the 1970s is considered the worse decade for American animation. TAS had some well written episodes, but other episodes had juvenile writing and the whole series as plagued by a tiny voice cast and very limited animation.

Do you think TAS was as good as it could be for a 1970s cartoon or could it have been better? If TAS was created post 1992, would it have been better?

 

[Albertese]

Yes and yes.

You are right that the 70's were a dark time for American animation and that TAS was about as good as could be expected for its time. Indeed, I would argue that the writing was generally better than it could have been by a long shot. Thanks to a writer's strike during its production, they had to reach out into the world of SF literature to get scripts made. This resulted in some pretty high quality stories we likely wouldn't have seen had we heard form the standard cartoon writers.

As for a theoretical post 1992 animated series, then I would say yes, it would have been great. In my opinion, the 90's was a golden era for American animation. Batman: the Animated Series was one of the greatest shows ever. Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, and Freakazoid were all great. Gargoyles was great. Trek from this era would have no doubt been fantastic.

--Alex

 

[Spock's Barber]

I loved watching TAS. Even as a kid I noticed that James Doohan, Majel Barrett and Nichelle Nichols all did multiple voices/characters on the show.

 

[Christopher]

TAS actually had an unusually high budget for a 1973 Saturday morning show, though I think a lot of that went to paying the actors. Its first season, conversely, was made under an insanely tight deadline for animation -- 6 months to do 16 episodes -- so the work was more rushed than was ideal, and that worked against its quality somewhat. The 6 episodes produced for the second season are a bit more polished, I feel.

Writing-wise, it was terrific for Saturday morning, and I'd say a lot of its scripts were competitive in quality with a lot of TOS's scripts. Acting-wise, the actors with voice-work experience (Doohan, Takei, Nichols, Barrett) did well enough, but the three leads were unfamiliar with the discipline, and because of the scattershot way recordings were done (literally mailing in their parts from different studios around the country), they didn't have a single director to guide their performances, so that undermined their acting.

Flimation is noted for their cheapness

I prefer to call it economy. They found ways to do more with less, and I think the quality of their work was superior to that of their main competitor, Hanna-Barbera. Much like Roger Corman, their productions may have been bare-bones, but they were a training ground for people who'd go on to do greater things. A number of the people who revolutionized TV animation in the '90s got their start at Filmation in the late '70s and early '80s, including Bruce Timm.

TAS had some well written episodes, but other episodes had juvenile writing

The writing was never intentionally aimed at children, except in terms of reducing the sex and violence. It does get silly at times, but so does TOS.

and the whole series as plagued by a tiny voice cast

Small repertory companies were routine for Filmation, and for other animated works as well. Most of Hanna-Barbera's voices in their early cartoons were just Daws Butler and Don Messick. Jay Ward's shows had most of their voices done by Bill Scott, Paul Frees, June Foray, and William Conrad. Mel Blanc alone did the vast majority of Warner Bros.' theatrical cartoon voices, along with Foray and a few others. A number of old radio series got by with fairly small ensembles doing a lot of different voices too, or at least a few lead actors and some versatile character actors doing most of the supporting cast. So I wouldn't call it "plagued" by any means. TAS actually had a larger cast than typical for a Filmation show.

 

[F. King Daniel]

TAS could've been a lot lot worse. The original plan was to have the crew training pre-teen cadets, who would have been the stars. The script for the first episode was posted online months ago but (again) Google is failing me...

 

[Christopher]

As for whether a later version of TAS would've been better, I'll once again trot out my argument that Filmation missed a great opportunity to do a TAS revival c. 1980, following up on ST:TMP. Filmation was at its creative peak around then, with better animation and richer music than in '73-4 (their Flash Gordon movie made in 1979 has some particularly beautiful stuff), and some notable writers were working for them around that time or would arrive in the early '80s, including Michael Reaves, Marc Scott Zicree, Diane Duane, and Paul Dini. And they'd done, or would later do, other revivals of their earlier shows -- The New Adventures of Batman, The New Fat Albert, Gilligan's Planet -- so it was within the realm of possibility for them to revive TAS as well. And the new sets, designs, and background aliens of TMP would've given them a lot to work with in animation, so it would've been a great chance to flesh out the TMP period some more.

 

[2takesfrakes]

TAS is really cute - I like the look of it. But the cartoon could've been so much better, even by 70's standards. Not in terms of how they animated, because of the deadlines being such and it all being done by hand. But the show was short on imagination. Some of the background vistas would be creative, somewhat, but the aliens living in them would frequently be Humanoid, in simple costumes.

And where the Human form was deviated from, the show would just take a cat, or a bird, stand it up erect and put clothes on it (if we're lucky). Chekov's replacement was imaginative, though, and there were a few examples of that type of interesting design. But, in the main, imagination was not set-loose to run wild, in TAS. It was almost as restrained as it was in TOS, which I find disappointing.

 

[Paradise City]

It was a courageous effort and all the actors are in tact and good at doing their thing. I think they could've reigned in some of the more outlandish aspects, lol, but I guess that's part of the charm of the cartoon medium. One thing I do find irritating is the in-episode score which irks me a little.

 

[Redfern]

...the show would just take a cat...and put clothes on it...

M'Ress: "A cat?! Do I look like some back alley scavenger to you?!"

Rest of forum: "Yeah, pretty much."

M'Ress: "Ah, good. I spent a good deal of time filing my claws sharp and tousling my mane for that proper predatory look."

 

[2takesfrakes]

I remember one episode where Harry Mudd's Love Potion was pumped through the ventilation unit, causing M'Ress to hit on Scotty, purring at him and everything. And ... it didn't put him off. I remember them drawing a Smitten Face on Scotty, like the kind he gave in TOS to women that didn't mean to turn him on ...

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

I think TAS was a good cartoon for its time, but it was limited by being a Flimation cartoon in the 70s. Flimation is noted for their cheapness and the 1970s is considered the worse decade for American animation. TAS had some well written episodes, but other episodes had juvenile writing and the whole series as plagued by a tiny voice cast and very limited animation.

Do you think TAS was as good as it could be for a 1970s cartoon or could it have been better? If TAS was created post 1992, would it have been better?

TAS worked as a successful continuation of TOS. The following is how Filmation approached TAS, as related on pages 96 & 98 of the book, Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation:

Lou Scheimer (2012): "The network had absolutely zero creative control for Star Trek; they had to accept the show or not accept the show, and I believe that was the first and last time that happened in the history of Saturday morning animation."

Norm Prescott (1973): "This is the first attempt to do an adult show in animation. Never before has an adult audience been challenged to watch a Saturday morning show. We feel it is a bold experiment."

Lou Scheimer (2012): "Wherever she (Dorothy Fontana) went, she begged the fans not to hate the show because it was animated, or it might kill the chances of Star Trek ever becoming another TV show or a movie. And once the fans heard how faithful we were being and how much care we were taking to respect the intent of the original series, they soon came over to our side. Word began buzzing to the 3,000 or so Star Trek fan clubs that Star Trek was coming back!"

You have to remember that in 1973, that generation of ST fans were "it"--the ground zero of intense fandom carried over from its NBC years, and the new, younger generation exposed to TOS in syndication, so Filmation had to hit a home run in adapting ST at such a critical period. TAS succeeded, and also won over critics, as Cecil Smith of the Los Angele Times famously put it:

"NBC's new animated Star Trek is as out of place in the Saturday morning kiddie ghetto as a Mercedes in a soapbox derby. Don't be put off by the fact it's now a cartoon... It is fascinating fare, written, produced and executed with all the imaginative skill, the intellectual flare and the literary level that made Gene Roddenberry's famous old science fiction epic the most avidly followed program in TV history, particularly in high I.Q. circles. NBC might do well to consider moving it into prime time at mid-series."

Before and during its run, it was clear this was a solid, satisfying adaptation far and above all other animated series, one that Cecil Smith thought was worthy of a prime time slot.

 

[alensatemybuick1]

Here are a few documents from 1973 that touch on some of what has been discussed, including the intended audience and supposed benefits of animation (which clearly were not fully realized):

 

[F. King Daniel]

FOUND IT. Read this pilot script for an animated Trek where pre-teens save the ship, then appreciate what we got!