Posted in: Movies, Review, TV | Tagged: blu-ray, Review, star trek, The Animated Series

'Star Trek: The Animated Series' Is The Last Jigsaw In Your Complete Collection

When I wrote up my Voyager review, I lamented over the idea that I got all the Star Trek I could ever want on Blu-ray and DVD, except for the Animated Series. I still personally own the DVD release that came in the white and orange plastic shell they created for the series a decade ago, but that version also kind of felt like a throwaway release. As if someone in marketing said "Hey, we still got this! Let's put it out." And while it was a nice gesture at the time, little marketing and promotion went into it. So when the 50th Anniversary releases were coming out I thought, I had a thought that we probably wouldn't see this one pop out on shelves. But shortly after my Voyager review, sitting in my mailbox was a Blu-ray version of the cartoon from Paramount and CBS Studios.

The series was produced by Filmation between 1973-74, a company most famous for reusing animation sequences and cells to get the most amount of content out of a show for as little money as possible. I'm willing to bet money somewhere there's an episode of The New Adventures of Superman that has less than four minutes of new animation over 24 minutes. The cast of the original show were all hired, except for Walter Koenig because the budget could not afford the whole cast, but they could afford Majel Barrett to return as Nurse Chapel and the wolf-like crewmember that would sit on the brigde. None of the actors recorded together, which included the guest stars and longtime voice actors who came in to voice various roles. Episodes were written by a combination of Gene Roddenberry, former series writers like DC Fontana, and some fresh union writers who loved the show and knew how to write for cartoons.

The series itself is one of those oddities in animation that is both awesome and terrible at the same time. There are some fun episodes that capture the spirit of the show like "Mudd's Passion," where the crew start falling for each other after Harry Mudd brings some of his love crystals on the ship. Or "Yesteryear," where Spock travels back in time to a pivotal moment when he was growing up as a lad and actually interferes with his own timeline a bit. As well as "The Survivor," where The Enterprise is infiltrated by a shape-shifter trying to do the bidding of the Romulans. You could tell there was some genuine passion for the show behind some of the episodes.

But then you get episodes "The Practical Joker" where someone is just going around playing pranks on the enterprise crew, and "The Infinite Vulcan" which had a giant Spock clone that contained some of the worst/funniest dialog in the series. But there were notable episodes in the middle-ground too, like "The Lorelei Signal" where crew's men fall madly in love with a particular race of women, and it's up to Uhura to take command of the ship (long before Janeway ever did) along with the rest of the crew's women to save the captain and company. Say what you will for storytelling in the '70s, that was an actual progressive moment for the time, and it was done on a Saturday morning cartoon show. A lot of the episodes kind of fall into that middle ground because of the writing and the way they were animated, not good enough to be considered cool, but not bad enough to be considered complete garbage. It's the kind of cartoon that you could watch for fun without any grand explanation or drawn out backstory to pay attention to.

The series finally got a full Blu-ray release for the 50th, and compared to the original DVD, this is far and above the best way to see it. All the footage has been given a nice cleanup job to match the quality, the audio has been given a fine tuning from the original score and recordings, and this one comes with some additional features worth browsing through. Several episodes come with audio and text commentaries with cast and crew, a complete "Making Of" documentary on the series as a whole, a storyboard gallery, a doc about making a connection to TOS, and a history of the show. As an added bonus, this edition comes with 22 collector's cards, all drawn by Juan Lopez to represent each episode. Not too shabby for a series that only has 22 episodes and lasted a total of 13 months on the air.

The series is fun to own, but it isn't for everyone. There are some hardcore Trek fans who just don't even acknowledge this thing exists because of the way it was created and acted. But there are many who have welcomed it as part of the cannon and would take these episodes over The Motion Picture and Star Trek V any day. Not to mention a cult side of the audience who love to drink and watch episodes, comparing it to Sealab 2020 in some ways for being terrible in a good way. And without it, we wouldn't have the awesome Twitter feed Swear Trek. Ultimately, it's worth your time if you're fan of TOS, but for your average Trekkie, maybe check out a few episodes online before committing to purchase.

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