Your TAS memories

[Warped9]

I was 14 and already a huge TOS fan. I'm not sure when or where I first heard of the forthcoming series, but it could have been NBC promos. My first exposure was "Beyond The Farthest Star" and then "Yesteryear." At the time I thought the show was light years beyond what else was being done in animation, and while I loved it I still didn't think it was on the level of TOS. I noticed its limitations back then, but I overlooked them because I was so excited to get new Star Trek adventures as well as getting to see new ships and new exotic aliens.

 

[Kelso]

Heh. I was just talking about this elsewhere, but I'll re-post my comment here...

My first exposure to TAS was through my uncle's old set of Foster adaptations. "Beyond the Farthest Star" and "Yesteryear" in particular were mind-blowing reads for this young Trekkie! A bit later (in the early nineties) I started watching the show on The Sci-Fi Channel and I was shocked to discover the origin of those great stories! I started collecting the VHS tapes in college, and not long after I came across some crazy guy on the internet who wanted to make original TAS comic stories and needed a writer! Eleven years later, we're still going strong!

I would also film the TV screen with my super 8 camera.

Please tell me you still have those reels! I'll bring one of my projectors the next time I come down!

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

^ I still remember reading "Yesteryear." Foster did a great job. "An infinitude of Kirks waiting for the return of a billion Spocks in a million variations of a certain awkward second or two in time..."

 

[J.T.B.]

TAS was my first Star Trek experience, I was only three or four so I don't remember a lot of details. I do remember, as others have said, that it was on late in the morning, so there was a little conflict over watching the show or going out to play. I think I decided in TAS's favor quite a bit. I only remember a few impressions of the show and can't sort most of it out from what I saw a few years later, when it ran in a weekday after-school slot. The main things I remember from the original run are the music, the ship moving "sideways" fast in the opening credits, and the rotating Scheimer-Prescott credit thing.

The next thing I remember were the toy commercials. My friends on the block had the communicator walkie-talkies, which worked OK but not great IIRC, and the bridge playset, the transporter part of which I found to be a disappointing gimmick compared to how it looked on the commercial. I got a 12-inch Captain Kirk figure sometime around '75 or '76. It went well with my Lone Ranger, Batman and Emergency! Squad 51 figures, but soon Star Wars hit and the 3-inch Kenner figures took over the play time of my brother and me.

 

[KirkusOveractus]

TAS was also my first Trek experience. I was only 2 when it premiered, but for some reason it was one of the earliest memories I have of watching anything on TV. Since my parents were fans of TOS since September 8, 1966, TAS was on the TV from that premiere.

The first episode that I clearly remember was "Eye Of The Beholder" when it first aired, but everything from the series stuck with me all through my watching of TOS later on (some memories had been comingled, with me at one point trying to find the TOS episode where Kirk has "Kirk is a Jerk" on his tunic!)

When Nickelodeon started showing it, we didn't yet have cable TV, but when we went to an Uncle's house for a family gathering, we had the TV on. Someone put Nickelodeon on, at about the time when an episode of TAS was going to come on.

We left it on, and the first TAS episode I was able to see for the first time in 11 or so years? "Eye Of The Beholder"...

 

[Christopher]

My friends on the block had the communicator walkie-talkies, which worked OK but not great IIRC, and the bridge playset, the transporter part of which I found to be a disappointing gimmick compared to how it looked on the commercial.

To this day, I still think the bridge-playset transporter was a pretty awesome gimmick.

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

^ "Place Mr. Spock or any other character into the transporter chamber. Spin the dial, press a button. Mr. Spock disappears!"

 

[Garrovick]

I missed TAS during its initial run since I would have been about 4 at the time. But, around 1977 or 1978 when I would have been 8-9 years old, they started showing it during the local Saturday morning cartoon run - except that they showed it first, starting at 6:30 am - so for years I associated TAS with getting up extra early on weekends - even to this day I don't think that association has completely left me.

One of my two first ST books was Star Trek Log Ten - my mom bought it for me in a garage sale around 1979 or so. It's still one of my favorites. Alan Dean Foster did an outstanding job on all of those books.

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

Just a couple of quirky things about Foster's prose style:

He'd write a sentence with one predicate, tack on another predicate after a comma with no conjunction.

Then he'd always end the story by using ellipsis . . .

 

[jpv2000]

^ "Place Mr. Spock or any other character into the transporter chamber. Spin the dial, press a button. Mr. Spock disappears!"

Oh yeah. I had good times with that.

 

[Christopher]

Stop it, you're making me sad that I lost my bridge playset during a move to a new house when I was ten.

 

[Shawnster]

Like Kelso, my first full exposure to TAS was through Foster's "Log" series. I'd heard of TAS and I'd read references to the episodes in Bjo Tremble's Concordance, but I never dreamed I would ever see the series. It wasn't in syndication anywhere that I knew of and I never thought it would.

Then in about 1985 (I think) Nickelodeon started broadcasting the entire series. Here I was, 13 or 14 and riveted by "new" Star Trek with Kirk, Spock and McCoy. I'd read some of the Logs and was finally able to see the episodes "live," so to speak.

I finally understood how the Klingon D-7 was able to "capture" and carry the Enterprise as depicted in the Concordance.

 

[Christopher]

^What I don't understand is why they changed the red Delta Triangle backgrounds to black in the DVD release of "The Time Trap." Probably a color-correction error like the infamous de-greening of Majel Barrett in the Orion test footage from "The Cage," but if so, it was careless of them.

 

[Kail]

Replacing the red space with plain old black is a major peeve with the DVds for me. Kelso, I wish I had some of those old super8 films I made back in the day, but they are all LONG gone. I made some pretty cool little films.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I used to draw my comics as a kid. When I drew Star Trek the characters looked like the TAS versions.

 

[BoredShipCapt'n]

^What I don't understand is why they changed the red Delta Triangle backgrounds to black in the DVD release of "The Time Trap." Probably a color-correction error like the infamous de-greening of Majel Barrett in the Orion test footage from "The Cage," but if so, it was careless of them.

Maybe they'll fix it on a future re-release if they get complaints.

 

[jpv2000]

^What I don't understand is why they changed the red Delta Triangle backgrounds to black in the DVD release of "The Time Trap." Probably a color-correction error like the infamous de-greening of Majel Barrett in the Orion test footage from "The Cage," but if so, it was careless of them.

Maybe they'll fix it on a future re-release if they get complaints.

I wasn't even aware they had changed them. It had been years since I saw the episode, before I got the DVD set.

 

[BK613]

Watched the original run. Bought the DVDs when TNG S4 Bluray released and rewatched this summer.
For me the theme was meh from the beginning but the underscore is still a favorite...

 

[RandyS]

^What I don't understand is why they changed the red Delta Triangle backgrounds to black in the DVD release of "The Time Trap." Probably a color-correction error like the infamous de-greening of Majel Barrett in the Orion test footage from "The Cage," but if so, it was careless of them.

I guess I need to turn in my Star Trek fan badge, I've owned that DVD set since the day it came out, and watched that episode at least 200 times in the years since (one of my favorites), and I never once noticed that the background had been changed.

 

[Christopher]

^Well, I only knew about it because I've heard it complained about on this BBS before. Although I do still have a very worn-out VHS copy of the episode (actually a VHS re-copy of a Beta copy of a VHS rental) that shows the original background color.