Watching The Animated Series For The First Time

[DarrenTR1970]

This is also suggested by dialogue in the pilot. I've never liked the idea that WNMHGB was before the 5YM, on some earlier mission or shakedown cruise; I consider it to be the FINALE of an unseen previous season of adventures, that would have had HUGE impact after watching a full set of adventures with Kelso and Mitchell. YMMV. In the old days, I would have loved to see that expressed as a fan series.

I don't see why it can't be both. After all, if 5-year missions aren't a default, that means that missions could come in any number of lengths. They could be brief, single-mission assignments, yeah, or they could be shorter tours of maybe 6 months, a year, 2 years, anything.

The way I portrayed it in The Captain's Oath was that Kirk and the crew had a handful of missions before getting the galaxy-edge assignment (including the first mission in TCO and the missions depicted by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore in SCE: Foundations Book One and Mere Anarchy Book One), and that the trip to the galaxy's edge would've taken long enough that other missions could've happened along the way. My intent was to say that the 5-year mission proper didn't begin until after the ship got back from the galaxy's edge and underwent a refit to its series configuration, since it makes no sense for such an extensive refit to happen during an ongoing mission. But I was instructed not to state that outright on the grounds that it might confuse casual readers, so I left it implicit.

I've mentioned this before in another thread that if one were to take Gene Roddenberry's novelization of 'The Motion Picture' at face value in the early chapters he lays out a timeline of Captain Kirk and the Enterprise prior to the events of the 'Motion Picture'.

Based on that information, the timeline could be laid out thusly
9 years ago - Kirk takes command of the Enterprise (Chapter 5)
8 years ago - Start of the FYM (Chapter 11)
7 years ago - Christine Chapel joins the Enterprise (Chapter 11)
3 years ago - End of the FYM. Kirk is promoted to Admiral. McCoy retires. Scotty begins redesigning and refitting the Enterprise (Chapters 7, 9)
2.8 years ago - Spock begins studying Kolinahr on Vulcan (Chapter 2)
2 1/2 years ago - Kirk is placed in charge of Starfleet Operations (Chapter 5)
2 years ago - Chapel earns her doctorate and becomes an M.D. (Chapter 11)
18 months ago - Kirk recommends Captain Decker oversee the Enterprise refit and command her once it is completed (Chapter 3)

As you can see, there is a one-year gap between the time that Kirk took command of the Enterprise and the start of the FYM. Plenty of space for 'WNMHGB' and other adventures before the Enterprise returns to Earth to be refitted from the Pilot version to the Series version.

 

[mb22]

Most of them, presumably, since Ervin L. Kaplan (sorry, I got his name wrong before) was the color director for Filmation's animated shows and films from 1971 until it went out of business in 1989. (Before that, he was a background artist and background director on their shows starting in 1966, after having previously worked as a color artist for UPA and a background artist on Gene Deitch's Popeye and Tom & Jerry cartoons and The Alvin Show. Post-Filmation, he was a background key designer for King of the Hill.)

Thanks for the information.

I just did a very quick Google search for Filmation and 'pink' and 'purple' and only got TAS and Prince Adam's pink vest from He-Man. Someone with time on their hands should look over all the shows and films for any other examples.

 

[Christopher]

Someone with time on their hands should look over all the shows and films for any other examples.

Hardly seems worth the effort. Is it really so hard to believe that bright colors appeal to children?

 

[TRON JA307020]

Hardly seems worth the effort. Is it really so hard to believe that bright colors appeal to children?

I just finished the Tribble episode last night. All the tribbles were pink. I get why they did that. They were bright and colorful and contrasted with the gray blue and blacks of the enterprise color scheme. I had no problem with it. It actually was pleasant to look at. Good episode though. Liked the sound effect they used twice when Kirk pushed the giant Tribbles off his chair. Lol

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

Hm, for me it's different ... the very outdated animation and the terrible music (the same music over and over again in every single episode) ruin the series for me.

I might enjoy the rest, but I don't manage to look beyond that.

At least they avoided the ''rock-and-roll song at the end'' trap which many animateds were cursed with.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

Looks like you were mythtaken.

Don't Bogart that Cindy Brady, Forbin.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I've heard rumors that "How Sharper . . . " has scenes that were animated in 1s and 2s, rather than the 6s, 8s, and 12s that were the norm for Saturday morning animation (and that earned it the moniker, "illustrated radio").

 

[Richard S. Ta]

I've heard rumors that "How Sharper . . . " has scenes that were animated in 1s and 2s, rather than the 6s, 8s, and 12s that were the norm for Saturday morning animation (and that earned it the moniker, "illustrated radio").

I don’t understand this post.

 

[mb22]

Hardly seems worth the effort. Is it really so hard to believe that bright colors appeal to children?

People have done more obsessive things on the internet.

 

[TRON JA307020]

I don’t understand this post.

I think he means if you just listen to the episodes and not watch them they are as effective as radio programs. Basically theater of the mind star trek style. Imagine real life like TOS episodes while you're listening. I could be wrong. When the radio show Dragnet moved to television they designed the shows so you could also just listen to them like they were on the radio still. Sound effects and exposition on what they were doing. Just like the radio programs. I read that somewhere long ago.

 

[Tallguy]

I've heard rumors that "How Sharper . . . " has scenes that were animated in 1s and 2s, rather than the 6s, 8s, and 12s that were the norm for Saturday morning animation (and that earned it the moniker, "illustrated radio").

I don’t understand this post.

It refers to how many frames per second are animated. 1s is 24 frames per second and 2s is 12 fps. (Animating "every other frame".) Basically feature quality animation. I had not heard this about the episode, and I haven't watched the episode in a while.

"Illustrated radio" is just saying that it isn't really "animation" because the pictures aren't really moving (much, anyway). Of course I listen to TAS far more often than I watch it, so it's hard for me to disagree there.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

I think he means if you just listen to the episodes and not watch them they are as effective as radio programs. Basically theater of the mind star trek style. Imagine real life like TOS episodes while you're listening. I could be wrong.

I don’t get what it means to animate something in 1s or 2s, rather than… oh, never mind. @Tallguy clarified (thank you).

Did you reach the giant Spock episode yet?

 

[Christopher]

I've heard rumors that "How Sharper . . . " has scenes that were animated in 1s and 2s, rather than the 6s, 8s, and 12s that were the norm for Saturday morning animation (and that earned it the moniker, "illustrated radio").

You're incorrectly conflating two separate principles, limited animation and reduced frame rate. TAS, like most American animation of the day, was normally animated on twos, as I understand it; it was just limited animation with a lot of static and repeated poses, though often with simple animated elements like lip and eye movements, blinking lights, etc. Once American animation studios began subcontracting their work to Asian studios in the '80s, animating on threes became common. Filmation was the last American studio that kept its animation in-house rather than subcontracting it (with the sole exception of The New Adventures of Zorro, which was subbed out to Tokyo Movie Shinsha because Filmation had too much else on its plate that year).

Your statement is gibberish, because anything with a lower frame rate than 8 frames per second ("on threes") fails to create the illusion of movement, since the eye's persistence of vision has a latency period of 1/8 second. Thus, anything lower than animation on threes would be obviously jerky and you could recognize that on sight. (I think a number of Japanese cel-shaded 3D shows animate on fours, since the jerkiness is fairly obvious.) This is clearly not the case if you look at the animation in any Filmation or other animated series from 1970s-80s Saturday morning TV.

With one exception -- there were a few times when a Filmation show would depict a complex action in slow motion by dissolving between still frames maybe once a second; I remember seeing it done in a Tarzan episode when Tarzan was pushing his way through a waterfall. (I think it was accompanied by the same sound effect used for bionics in The Six Million Dollar Man.) But it was only done infrequently in specialized instances.

 

[TRON JA307020]

I don’t get what it means to animate something in 1s or 2s, rather than… oh, never mind. @Tallguy clarified (thank you).

Did you reach the giant Spock episode yet?

I just read tallguys to. Makes sense. Lol. No I haven't yet. I'm watching mostly on the weekend. I'm taking my time to enjoy each one as much as possible. lol

 

[Richard S. Ta]

I just read tallguys to. Makes sense. Lol. No I haven't yet. I'm watching mostly on the weekend. I'm taking my time to enjoy each one as much as possible. lol

You should! I think I haven’t seen about… half of it maybe? I really should get around to it.

If you’ve never seen it before, it’s literally ‘new’ old Trek. Savour it!

 

[Tallguy]

I just finished the Tribble episode last night.

A tremendously underrated episode. It generally gets lumped in as a retread of The Trouble with Tribbles. It's actually the most epic space battle in Star Trek (to that date at any rate) that is complicated with Tribbles (and Cyrano Jones).

 

[I am not Herbert]

Hardly seems worth the effort. Is it really so hard to believe that bright colors appeal to children?

This is a somewhat belated objection to make on a website devoted to dissecting the minutiae of a 50+ year old series. I say godspeed

 

[Christopher]

A tremendously underrated episode. It generally gets lumped in as a retread of The Trouble with Tribbles. It's actually the most epic space battle in Star Trek (to that date at any rate) that is complicated with Tribbles (and Cyrano Jones).

I think it's kind of ridiculous, the coincidence that the Enterprise just happens to run into Cyrano Jones, tribbles, and Koloth while protecting a shipment of a triticale variant for Sherman's Planet again. It's the worst way to do a sequel, just rehashing the original through contrived circumstances. Compare that to something like "Once Upon a Planet," which feels very different from the episode it's a sequel to because it takes the story in new directions.

And the way the battle plays out makes no sense. The Klingon stasis weapon freezes the transporter the first time, but not the second time. Moreover, Kirk not only threatens to beam the tribbles over, he actually does it preemptively. That's not how a threat works. You hold the threat in reserve -- let us go or we'll fill your ship with tribbles. By beaming the tribbles over first, Kirk loses all his leverage. He's already done his worst, so Koloth has nothing to lose by continuing the attack. It's nonsensical writing.

 

[Tallguy]

I think it's kind of ridiculous, the coincidence that the Enterprise just happens to run into Cyrano Jones, tribbles, and Koloth while protecting a shipment of a triticale variant for Sherman's Planet again.

All fair points. Star Trek has done worse.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I think it's kind of ridiculous, the coincidence that the Enterprise just happens to run into Cyrano Jones, tribbles, and Koloth while protecting a shipment of a triticale variant for Sherman's Planet again.

"Rule of Funny." While relatively few TAS episodes were comedies (as opposed to another animated series that most of us have come to know and love), this one was.

I'm not entirely certain, but I think it may very well have been (and a cursory Google search agrees with me) no less than Chuck Jones who first applied the term "illustrated radio" to limited animation. Precisely because it fails (and fails miserably) to convey any convincing illusion of motion.