TAS: another look....

[Warped9]

Just as TOS was a series that deserved a better budget TAS needed animation that wouldn’t be primetime for another twenty years.

 

[Christopher]

Just as TOS was a series that deserved a better budget TAS needed animation that wouldn’t be primetime for another twenty years.

Honestly, Filmation's work just 3-5 years later was markedly better, since it improved its techniques and added methods like rotoscoped stunt and movement sequences, backlit moire effects, and more. Look at Flash Gordon or The Lone Ranger and it's a good deal better than 1973 shows like Star Trek and Lassie's Rescue Rangers, though still more limited than what we're used to today.

I've said before how much I wish Filmation had done a second TAS in 1980 or so as a follow-up to ST:TMP. That was when the quality of their animation and music was at its peak, and when Filmation started to recruit impressive talents like Michael Reaves, J. Michael Straczynski, Diane Duane, Paul Dini, and Bruce Timm. And Filmation did occasionally do sequels to earlier series, including Batman, Fat Albert, and The New Adventures of Gilligan, so it would've been possible. Plus they could've done a lot with the alien crewmembers only glimpsed in TMP.

 

[Maurice]

Filmation just had their way of doing things and they adapted Trek to fit their established production pipeline. There were other ways to do it even then. Not that would have guaranteed a better end product, but it would have been interesting to see what apprpoach a Shamus Culhane might have tried.