Star Trek The Animated Series – The Animated Adventures of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek (1973)
by Rob on Jun.28, 2009, under Star Trek Universe
Amazon.comStar Trek: The Animated Series is often referred to as Star Trek’s “fourth season” because it was created in 1973, four years after the third and final season of the original series, and because most of the original cast provided the voices. William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, and Majel Barrett reprised their characters, and some contributed other voices as well. The only major omission was Walter Koenig’s Chekov, who was replaced at the navigation console by Lieutenant Arex, the three-armed alien who most prominently represented the series’ freedom to create non-humanoid characters. (Koenig did write an episode.) And while the animation is crude at best, the stories are solid sci-fi (penned by some of Star Trek’s veteran writers including DC Fontana and David Gerrold, all of whom received prominent opening credits), explored the Star Trek mythos, and elevated the series above typical Saturday-morning fare. For example, “Yesteryear” goes back to Spock’s early years on Vulcan, continuing some explorations from the original series’ “Journey to Babel,” and offers the familiar voice of Mark Lenard as Sarek. “One of Our Planets Is Missing” raises some interesting philosophical questions about the value of life, and “More Tribbles, More Troubles” and “Mudd’s Passion” revisit favorite characters. Star Trek: The Animated Series lasted just barely over one season, but it won the franchise’s only Emmy (for Outstanding Entertainment Children’s Series in 1975) and some of its ideas were embraced by future series. Trekkers who know it only by reputation will find it a valuable part of the Star Trek canon. In addition to the series’ 22 half-hour episodes, the DVD set includes “Drawn to the Final Frontier: The Making of Star Trek: The Animated Series,” a 24-minute featurette including interviews with the producers and writers (but not actors) on how the series was created and why it still holds up; “What’s the Star Trek Connection?”, a glossary of characters and themes common to the animated series and other series; a storyboard gallery; and a brief text history. Writer David Gerrold and producer David Wise contribute audio commentaries on three and one episode, respectively, and the ever-reliable Michael Okuda and Denise Okuda provide text commentary on three other episodes. –David Horiuchi
Product Description
Boldly continuing where Star Trek: The Original Series left off, these animated adventures chart the progress of Captain Kirk and his crew in a universe unconstrained by “real-life” cinematography! With all characters voiced by their original actors, join Kirk, Spock, Bones and the crew for 22 new adventures: to boldly go where no animation has gone before!
10 Comments for this entry
-
Howdy. Welcome to Scifi Mag!
Thanks for dropping by! Feel free to join the discussion by leaving comments, and stay updated by subscribing to the RSS feed. See ya around!
SCI FI Wire Atom Feed- Sexy Tron Legacy teaser trailer: babes and light cycles!Check out the new teaser trailer for Tron Legacy and select images from it, explained. […]
- George Kirk meets Amidala: Official Thor movie details!We've got the first official details of Paramount/Marvel's upcoming Thor movie. […]
- Felicia Day comes to Syfy in fantasy tale RedFan favorite Felicia Day comes to Syfy in the Saturday night movie Red. […]
- Canadian cafe owner claims Avatar was HIS ideaA Vancouver cafe owner claims James Cameron ripped off his ideas for Avatar. Right. […]
- Sexy Tron Legacy teaser trailer: babes and light cycles!
June 29th, 2009 on 2:33 am
4.0 out of 5 stars
great Trek stories
The animation is pretty bad. Just static figures whose mouths are the only thing that moves. However the stories for the most part are really good Trek.
June 29th, 2009 on 9:56 am
5.0 out of 5 stars
Star Trek – The Animated Series (DVD, 2006, 4-Disc Set)
This is a great addition to add to your orginial Star Trek Box Set collection, it comes in a plastic case that is just like the recent season’s box sets of the original series,so…
June 29th, 2009 on 11:59 am
5.0 out of 5 stars
Star Trek Cartoons
When you are starved for new Star Trek fodder (before new movie), you’ll watch anything – was pleasantly surprised with original voices and new characters – Fun to watch – glad I…
June 29th, 2009 on 5:18 pm
3.0 out of 5 stars
Star Trek, TAS (The Animated Series)…
I too was excited when I heard when an Animated version of the series was going to debut (I was in the 10th grade at the time).
June 29th, 2009 on 7:07 pm
4.0 out of 5 stars
Brings Back Memories Of Saturday Morning.
I got this set mainly for nostalgia. It’s been so long since I have seen any of these episodes the only thing I remembered was the incendental music.
June 29th, 2009 on 8:37 pm
5.0 out of 5 stars
Voyages of the animated Star Trek
Do you like Star Trek? What about cartoons? Well this is both together, with actual voices. I grew up watching these, now I can watch them on DVD.
June 30th, 2009 on 1:58 am
5.0 out of 5 stars
dr spock?
Just one sentence, look in the liner notes of this STAS and instead of Mr Spock, it is written as Dr Spock, the child psychiatrist.
June 30th, 2009 on 7:36 am
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fast, ridiculous, animated and not just for hardcore Trekkies
I’ve only seen two episodes of the Star Trek original series, but I gobbled up this Animated Series in a little over a week.
June 30th, 2009 on 11:39 am
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of Filmation’s finest!
No collection of Filmation cartoons is complete without their version of Star Trek. Like many Filmation projects from the seventies through the early eighties, the emphasis was…
June 30th, 2009 on 4:07 pm
4.0 out of 5 stars
A gift for my friend
I got this item as a gift for a friend who Loves Star Trek. He was thrilled to get it!! It added a piece to his collection that he was missing.