With only 22 episodes total, and a second season of only 6, it made no sense to write separate overviews of the two seasons of Star Trek: The Animated Series. Instead, I've waited until the end to present my thoughts, in a look back on the series as a whole.
PICKING UP WHERE WE LEFT OFF
The Animated Series' greatest strength is how much it genuinely feels like old-school Star Trek. It's so instantly recognizable as Star Trek, it creates a certain feeling of comfort even as the opening credits play. With a number of scripts written by TOS veterans, with D. C. Fontana acting as script supervisor, and with all of the original cast save for Walter Koenig returning, there is a real sense of watching the last two years of the original five year mission.
A number of episodes reference, or even directly follow up, TOS episodes. Yesteryear, almost universally regarded as the series' best episode, features return appearances by the Guardian of Forever and by Spock's parents in a story centered around Spock's childhood. More Tribbles, More Troubles pits Kirk against Koloth a second time, once again in a scenario involving Cyrano Jones and Tribbles. Once Upon a Planet returns the ship to the Shore Leave planet for another reality-bending adventure.
The effect is 22 additional installments of TOS, just in animated form and in a shorter timeslot. The goodwill built in by this helps to keep the show afloat even when many individual episodes are flawed or outright poor.
STORYTELLING IN A SHRINKING TIMESLOT
While the most visible difference between the original Star Trek and this one is that this one is a cartoon, the most meaningful difference is the running time. 1960's Star Trek episodes time out to about 50 minutes each. TAS episodes time out to less than 25 minutes. That presents a significant storytelling challenge - one the animated series often doesn't meet successfully.
Too many of the scripts attempt to be TOS scripts crammed into the shorter timeslot. Given that this series seemingly religiously resists any two-parters (which would have been the obvious solution to this problem), we are too often left with rushed, choppy storytelling, with major problems resolved quickly and easily or, in a few cases, off-screen via the magic of the "Captain's Log."
The most successful episodes are the ones that keep their stories simple and direct. Yesteryear has a very basic central story, which allows plenty of time for the character material to resonate because it doesn't have to spend much time on plot. The Slaver Weapon, the series' second-best episode, also has a narrative that could be summarized in a single sentence: "The crew try to stop the Kzinti from using an alien weapon." By not being overburdened with the need for heavy exposition or major plot turns, the narrative is allowed to flow at a natural pace and there is even room for some decent character material.
By Season Two, the need for simpler stories seems to have sunk in, with even the weakest Season Two offering - How Sharper Than a serpent's Tooth - failing because of being trite and hilariously earnest rather than because of pacing problems. Unfortunately, just as the series' writers figured out how to pace their scripts for the timeslot, the series was already coming to an end. A pity - I think the show could easily have sustained two full seasons, rather than the one-and-a-third that it ultimately got.
QUALITY CONTROL (AND THE LACK OF IT)
Not all of the storytelling failures are casualties of overambition. Just as in TOS Season Three, there are large swings in quality. Some of the animated series is a joy to watch. Yesteryear and The Slaver Weapon, for instance, are in my opinion better than any episode of TOS' third season. Other episodes try very hard, but simply miss the mark, as happens in any series.
But entirely too many episodes are just plain crap.
Episodes such as The Lorelei Signal and The Infinite Vulcan are not only bad, they are worse in my opinion than any TOS episode. These are episodes that are staggeringly stupid without even having the fun factor of such cheese-fests as The Way to Eden or Spock's Brain. Featuring severe Idiot Plotting and often senseless plot turns, these are examples of scripts that I suspect were turned in under the thinking that "It's just a kid's cartoon, after all," and were likely put into production for the same reason.
In a series that runs only 22 episodes, it's disheartening how many of those episodes are poor: The Lorelei Signal, The Infinite Vulcan, Mudd's Passion, The Terratin Incident, The Eye of the Beholder, and How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth all earned poor ratings from me... Which means that I found almost a full third of the series borderline painful to watch. That's not even getting into the simply mediocre ones (i. e., Beyond the Farthest Star or The Ambergris Element).
I admit that variable quality has always been an issue for every Star Trek show. But outside of early TNG, I don't think any period of live action Trek had as wide a variance in quality from one episode to the next as this animated series did.
There is some very good Star Trek in The Animated Series. There is also some jaw-droppingly bad Star Trek. The series is certainly not a complete success, with almost as many bad episodes in its run as good ones. I wouldn't even say it's better overall than TOS' third season... though I would call it better than the second half of that season.
What The Animated Series offers is, simply, a little more Classic Star Trek. 22 more episodes with Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, and Uhura. As a bonus, several of those episodes are very good, and several fill in details that would form bits and pieces of the series' lore in its future incarnations: From James Tiberius Kirk's middle name, to Spock's Selat, to just some fun new adventures. Its influence can be felt in the later spinoff series, and even in the newest bigscreen incarnation of Star Trek.
I can understand some Trek fans' desire to exclude the series, based on its static animation and weak hit rate. But I can't understand the outright hostility some hold toward it. It's not like The Animated Series replaced some other Trek project in 1973. It was this or nothing. Given those choices, I'm happy to have been able to watch The Animated Series. For all its failings, it is 22 additional episodes of original cast Star Trek, a few of them very good episodes. That is easily better than nothing.
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