With just 22 episodes, we have come to the end of The Animated Series. Here’s a breakdown of our ratings:
Season 1
| Title | Eugene’s Rating |
Torie’s Rating |
||
 |
1×01 | “Beyond the Farthest Star” Aired: September 8, 1973 |
4 | 4 |
 |
1×02 | “Yesteryear” Aired: September 15, 1973 |
3 | 4 |
 |
1×03 | “One of Our Planets Is Missing” Aired: September 22, 1973 |
5 | 5 |
 |
1×04 | “The Lorelei Signal” Aired: September 29, 1973 |
3 | 2 |
 |
1×05 | “More Tribbles, More Troubles” Aired: October 6, 1973 |
4 | 4 |
 |
1×06 | “The Survivor” Aired: October 13, 1973 |
5 | 4 |
 |
1×07 | “The Infinite Vulcan” Aired: October 20, 1973 |
2 | 1 |
 |
1×08 | “The Magicks of Megas-Tu” Aired: October 27, 1973 |
3 | 2 |
 |
1×09 | “Once Upon a Planet” Aired: November 3, 1973 |
4 | 1 |
 |
1×10 | “Mudd’s Passion” Aired: November 10, 1973 |
Impulse | 2 |
 |
1×11 | “The Terratin Incident” Aired: November 17, 1973 |
6 | 3 |
 |
1×12 | “The Time Trap” Aired: November 24, 1973 |
3 | 3 |
 |
1×13 | “The Ambergris Element” Aired: December 1, 1973 |
3 | Impulse |
 |
1×14 | “The Slaver Weapon” Aired: December 15, 1973 |
6 | 3 |
 |
1×15 | “The Eye of the Beholder” Aired: January 5, 1974 |
4 | 5 |
 |
1×16 | “The Jihad” Aired: January 12, 1974 |
3 | 3 |
Season 2
| Title | Eugene’s Rating |
Torie’s Rating |
||
 |
2×01 | “The Pirates of Orion” Aired: September 7, 1974 |
2 | 1 |
 |
2×02 | “Bem” Aired: September 14, 1974 |
5 | 5 |
 |
2×03 | “The Practical Joker” Aired: September 21, 1974 |
2 | 3 |
 |
2×04 | “Albatross” Aired: September 28, 1974 |
3 | 3 |
 |
2×05 | “How Sharper Than A Serpent’s Tooth” Aired: October 5, 1974 |
1 | Impulse |
 |
2×06 | “The Counter-Clock Incident” Aired: October 12, 1974 |
5 | 6 |
Are there any ratings you would change?
Eugene: I think in some cases, my ratings may have been slightly inflated, but the only one I would take down a notch is “The Magicks of Megas-Tu,” which has become my standard example of just how outlandish the animated series is. So I’ll revise that one to Warp 2 but let the rest stand.
Unlike the live action series, the animated series never had a chance to hit its stride; it was uneven for the whole ride, and the only basis of comparison was the original show, which is like trying to compare an apple to a drawing of an apple: no matter how well the artist captures the essence of the model, it isn’t satisfying to sink your teeth into a picture and it doesn’t have the same nutritional value. In the end, I tried to appreciate the animated episodes on their own merits and, acknowledging the limitations of the medium, grade it on effort as much as execution.
Torie: I know it’s a cop-out, but I think the answer is no. All of the episodes that Eugene and I disagreed on most (“Once Upon a Planet,” “The Terratin Incident,” and “The Slaver Weapon”) I still, today, remain unpersuaded by his side.
Best episode? Favorite episode?
Eugene: Best episode is a tie for me between “One of Our Planets is Missing” (because both Torie and I rated it highly, and because it manages to feel most like the original series and best showed the true potential of the animated series) and “The Slaver Weapon” (for the opposite reason–it wasn’t necessarily great Star Trek, but it was good science fiction.) I’ll claim “The Counter-Clock Incident” as my favorite, simply because I loved its theme and it expanded on the show’s history.
Torie: Both are “The Counter-Clock Incident.” It hit all the right notes for me and was just a great stand-out.
Most disappointing episode?
Eugene: Alas, “Yesteryear,” which by all accounts is supposed to be the best of the series and just about ruined one of my favorite characters, the Guardian of Forever. I’m a sucker for time travel stories, and I still can’t get behind this one.
Torie: “Yesteryear,” by a mile. D.C. Fontana + Spock = meh? Just wholly uninspiring, and completely nonsensical.
Most cracked-out episode?
Eugene & Torie: Yeah, that’d be the “Magicks of Megas-Tu.”
Eugene’s final thoughts on The Animated Series: I was expecting much more from this series than it could deliver, either because my memory of it was flawed or because I held it to lower standards when I first saw it. I don’t regret watching it, but I don’t think it warranted the same sort of re-watch treatment we gave the original series. Judging by the decreased commenting on the posts for these episodes, most of you agree–there just isn’t much to say, is there? “So, that happened” pretty much sums it up. Far from the often layered meanings and moral complexity of the live action show, what you see here is what you get.
As a fan of animation, I thought the biggest shortcoming of the animated series would be its simple style and the cheap quality of the production, but surprisingly I got used to that, just as I accepted the often bad voicework and the irritating music. No matter how beautiful an animated film is, I can’t truly recommend it unless it has a good story, and where the animated series most disappointed was in its scripts. It’s clear that the writers are talented, that they usually had terrific ideas, but whether they were limited by format, the intended audience, or Roddenberry himself, what made it to the screen rarely fulfilled its promise on paper. On the other hand, shows that look even cheaper than this (regardless of whether that was a stylistic or budgetary decision) manage to be more clever and far more entertaining.
However, I think the involvement of so many of the original cast and writers, and its slavish devotion to the design aesthetics of the live action show, make the animated series a must-see for fans of the franchise. I watched the entirety of Star Trek: Voyager and only got seven brilliant episodes for my trouble; this was a much lower investment for a similar return. The rewards are few and far between, but there are rewards. And as our diverse ratings and comments show, your mileage may vary–it seems many people enjoyed these a little more than we did, and as far as I know, kids may love it.
Torie’s final thoughts on The Animated Series: I confess to being entirely relieved that this series is over.
Rather than episode reviews, each post became a chronicle of failures, shortcomings, and frustrations. Weak scripts and dreadful animation squandered almost all of the series’ potential, and too many of these episodes relied entirely on the “We could never do this in live action” factor. “Beyond the Farthest Star,” “The Infinite Vulcan,” and “The Ambergris Element” are great examples of how choosing a cool concept can never make up for the host of other flaws; an unfilmable conceit just isn’t enough. Ultimately, the series lacked the strong, memorable stories that made TOS great.
Looking at this list of episodes, I feel a kind of hangover headache coming on. What on earth happened? If I saw photos would I remember then? The eleven weeks it took to cover “Beyond the Farthest Star” to “The Counter-Clock Incident” represents a fraction of the time we spent on TOS, and yet I can barely remember plots of episodes I reviewed last month. So many are just bland. They manage to be boring in only twenty-two minutes! I’m getting deja vu of TOS’ third season, where interesting, compelling ideas were also utterly shafted by low budgets and hackneyed shortcuts.
It hasn’t all been bad, of course. At least we got a little bit more Star Trek, and there are enough memorable characters, one-liners, and visible goofs to make the viewing experience reasonably painless. In addition to my only warp 6, “The Counter-Clock Incident,” I really enjoyed “Bem,” “Eye of the Beholder,” and “One of Our Planets is Missing,” all of which were fun but none of which were excellent. Unlike TOS where the highs are high and the lows are low, this is just generally lousy. Four good episodes and ten middling ones out of twenty-two is too low a ratio for recommendation.
It pains me to say it, but I cannot imagine a scenario in which I will ever re-watch this series.
That said, I don’t regret having seen it and I am immensely grateful that it happened at all. Not because it was good, but because it got so many of the people involved with the series back to work, and because it revived enough interest in the franchise to inspire the fans writing letters, keep the studios interested in the property again, and set up the next great adventure: the films.
Next up: The Star Trek Movies Re-Watch! We’ll begin at the beginning, with Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Housekeeping note: Eugene’s got a book deadline coming up and I’ll be out of the country for two weeks so we will likely not begin the movie reviews until September.
For me, it was interesting to realize how much better I thought the series was than it actually is, almost entirely because of the novelizations by Foster. I have them all, and enjoy reading them to this day, because they suffer none of the limitations and have all of the advantages1.
So I still have an overall warm fuzzy about the series, because for me most of the memory is formed around the books, and not the shows.
I’m looking forward to the movies, and Eugene’s book. Very much enjoying the thoughtful and varying commentariat we have here.
I’ve started working on writing a couple of re-watches myself, though they may not be to the taste of some of my fellow commentators here (no disrespect, just recognizing that we share Star Trek fandom, not necessarily all political beliefs): I’m going to do a thoroughgoing feminist/progressivist look at both Avatar: the Last Airbender and Supernatural, two shows that sort of emblematize the poles of progressivism in media, but both of which I love.
I’ll let y’all know when I get started posting them – I want half a dozen of each in the bag before we start, to cover the inevitable times when I just can’t get to it that week – though I’m not sure where it’ll be going yet. I may have it at my own blog, but there’s a group blog that may want me to do it there instead.
1 Limitations: poor animation because of budgeting – a book’s largely a book, one way or the other; limited voices – they have as many as my mind wants to give them, by as many different actors; short format – the novellas are as long as they need to be, and often have added elements because the TV show was just too short to make a reasonably novella
Advantages: fidelity to TOS; ability to do things live-action can’t
Reasonably novella? Oy.
Reasonable. Sheesh.
@1 CaitieCait
I think I read the Foster adaptations as a kid too, before ever seeing the animated series. Perhaps they got caught up in my recollections as well.
I’m looking forward to your re-watches! I love Supernatural, and I’m slowly working my way through Avatar: The Last Airbender for the first time. (I know I’m very very late to the game, but there’s only so much time in the day.) There’s certainly plenty to discuss about those shows, not only in terms of politics, but character, approaches to storytelling, and direct dialogue and engagement with their audiences.
Yeah… I was kind of let down by these. To me the greatest weakness is how formulaic they all became — I felt like I was watching basically the same story every week (or, twice a week). Not that there’s not a place for that — I mean isn’t that the definition of what a Saturday morning cartoon was supposed to do, back in 1973? — but I was expecting Trek, and I don’t feel like that’s what I got. So many of the great original-series episodes were inspired by cool science-fictional premises. Sure, some of them wound up being Planet of the Hats; some of them were obviously excuses to raid a costume closet and hang out on the Paramount back lot. But there was always some interesting concept going on that said something about human nature in the face of the unknown and that reflected on humans of yesterday, today, and tomorrow — of forever. Characters had weaknesses and flaws, but also nobility of spirit.
In TAS, the challenges are muted. As I observed on one episode or another, everything (technological) worked the first time — unless it breaking was *the* central conflict. Kirk wasn’t noble so much as just right all the time, which gets old, real old; Bones was no longer amusingly crotchety but just whiny; Spock was needlessly antagonistic, and the relationship between the latter two was enough to make me cry because mommy and daddy are fighting again. Everything’s thus — reduced, diminished, simplified.
Not to mention that I wish — as I always wished, actually, in TOS — that we got to see more of the non-trinity cast. That was one of the things that I grew to love about TNG (my personal favorite Trek); by season 3 or so, it was really an ensemble cast, and each of those characters had a separate personality and got a lot of screen time. TOS never gave me enough Sulu and Uhura; by TAS, the plots are so condensed that those characters are practically written out. And that’s a shame.
Ultimately, no incarnation of Star Trek — of any truly broad-reaching science-fiction show that aspires to be more than an adventure serial — can rest solely on one, two, or three characters. This is humanity’s quest for the unknown. To show the full range of humanity in these conditions — that really demands an ensemble, in my opinion.
I leave you with the lyrics that always ran through my head when I listened to the TAS theme song:
Star Trek, Trekkin’ to the Staaaars!
Star Trek, out way beyond Mars!
A Star Trek, We’re goin’ on a Star Trek,
But what is a Star Trek? Come and see on Star Trek!
Join the wagon train un-to the staaaars!
My apologies if this winds up being an earworm. But I suppose using that term here I’m rather getting ahead of myself…
@4 DeepThought
You know, a couple of episodes of one of my favorite cartoons, Darkwing Duck, actually were about the Planet of the Hats: “Battle of the Brainteasers” and “Revenge of the Return of the Brainteasers, Too!”
I’ll have some thoughts to share a bit later, but before we leave televised classic trek, here’s one last parting look.
http://youtu.be/SnvzAyZIqRc
@6 bobsandiego:
Oh God that was hilarious. I had forgotten how great that show was. Burnett’s Shatner impression was awesome. Do you know when that was from? It looked like Andrea Martin as Spock and I would have thought she was still in Canada. But everybody really needs to go watch that.
I still have a great fondness for this series…mostly from nostalgia no doubt. It gave the younger me a permutation of Trek when there was none ( for part of my childhood I actually lived in a part of the U.S. where there were no syndicated Star Trek re-runs during the ’70s… hard to believe I know, but true ). I can forgive a lot of the lesser qualities of the show, because I remember how dreadful a lot of the other drek that filled the Saturday morning airwaves at the the same time was. As a Batman fan, i was excited at the prospect of the “Super Friends” cartoon which premiered the same day as “Star Trek”, and I remember being disappointed at just how juvenile an adaptation that was ( no ‘supervillains’ from the comics, just misguided but well intentioned baddies who merely needed lessons in civics and manners from the costumed heroes – and their moronic junior cohorts ).
Around the time the animated series started, there was a peculiar cycle going on of adapting cancelled – and sometimes on-going live-action shows to the animated Saturday morning line up. This included ( but was not limited to ) such entries as; Gilligan’s Island, I Dream Of Jeannie, Emergency, and My Favorite Martian. There was even a failed Lost In Space pilot, whose only resemblance to it predecessor was the presence of Jonathan Harris, and the robot character…called Robon, in this version. Most of these took extreme liberties with the source material and were dumbed down for the kiddies ( even Gilligan’s Island! Can you imagine an even dumber version of that? ). I feel fortuante that the cartoon “Star Trek”, even with it’s faults, tried to stay true to the original ( in form, if not always in substance ).
A lot of it’s shortcomings can be blamed on time slot and network restrictions ; no real violence, no romances or even a whiff of sexuality – I’m surprised they got away with the Lara character’s comments to Kirk in “The Jihad” – nothing to upset the parents. Also, there was just so little room in a twenty-two minute show to really flesh out the characters, and lapses in story logic often had to be glossed over, or ignored. But even so, in spite of it’s often derivative stories and limited animation, it’s over-dependence on stock shots, stock character movements, stock actors, and stock music, it was often light-years ahead of what passed for children’s entertainment at the time. It may be just a trifle, but I think it was a noble one.
I Had not watched any of these episodes since their original aring in the 1970’s. I remembered little and my emotional memory was of something that really wasn’t worth the tiime and effort. Yeah in general there were a lot fo clunkers, howvevere remembering that the challenge was to take an adult show and make it into a children’s show without compromising the source code well that’s a hell of a challenge. I’m surprised that as often as they did that manage to aproximate the tone of the original, albeit in a cride and less well written form. I’mn hapy for the rewatch, but the disc will not be joining my library. (no you cannot have too many DVD’s but that doesn’t mean you need all.)
@4 DeepThought
Nice. First you put that song in our heads, then you make a STII pun! I don’t know whether to praise you or curse you.
@6 bobsandiego
I can’t believe I’ve never seen that before! And now I wonder why no one has made a Tricorder purse yet.
@8 Dep1701
Wasn’t that Gilligan cartoon “Gilligan in Space”? *shudder*
@10 Eugene
“Wasn’t that Gilligan cartoon “Gilligan in Space”? *shudder*”
No, you’re thinking of a live-action Sid and Marty Krofft show from about the same time; “Far-Out Space Nuts”. It’s understandable, because it starred Bob Denver, basically playing the same role as he did on “Gilligan’s Island”.
The Gilligan’s Island cartoon was actually an animated series from Filmation, which featured most of the original actor voices from the series ( with the exception of Tina Louise, who has done everything she possibly can to distance herself from the original show. In fact, the animated Ginger character had white hair, to make her look even less like Tina … which also totally made the name “Ginger” a non-sequiter ). If you guys think the Star Trek cast sounded awkward recording their lines, you should have heard the “GI” cast.
Oh, crap… My apologies, Eugene. I just found clips on Youtube, and you’re right!! There were TWO animated Gilligan series ” The New Adventures Of Gilligan” and “Gilligan’s Planet”!! Mercifully, I had never heard of the second.
My mind reels… TWO Gilligan cartoons ( three if you count the original series, which was pretty cartoonish itself )…sheesh.
I remember the Bob Denver IN SPACE! one. It was so, so bad. I even remember there being ads for it in comics of the time. Big glossy insert pages, or inside-cover ads, like those for movies. Saturday morning was a huge market in NorAm in those days.
@ 1 CatieCat
Cool! Be sure to post the link when it’s up. I don’t watch either of those shows (I don’t have TV) but I’ve heard plenty of ranting and raving about Supernatural from my friends.
@ 6 bobsandiego
I usually love Carol Burnett, but that was awful. It’s as if the Turnabout Intruder mentality were justified.
@ 8 Dep1701
It makes me feel lucky that I was born in the era of fantastic kids’ programming. Well, mostly.
Thanks, Torie and Eugene! I actually dedicated the Intro to you two, because you’re the ones inspired me to do it. :)
I’ve got two eps for each of SPN and ATLA so far. Once I hit six with each, we’ll be go.
@14 Torie
You can still catch up on the shows via Netflix DVD rentals and then keep up with new episodes online at Hulu and the CW website, like I do! :) But, I don’t think you will like Supernatural.
@ 15 CatieCat
Aww I’m honored! Just remember: don’t let the haters get you down.
@ 16 Eugene
Yeah, no thanks. The roommate describes Supernatural as the show where women and people of color go to die. That hasn’t exactly sold me on it…
Besides, now that Mad Men is on Netflix, I’m wondering if I should start that. At least that one doesn’t have, what is it, NINE seasons?!
@ 14 Torie I didn;t think you were going to like that skit, but I though I’d post the link anyway. It too is a product of its time.
So … did I miss something … ?
I have to confess that I haven’t participated in this particular rewatch at all and I’m not entirely sure why, especially since I so enjoyed the previous one. Maybe it was just a sense of forboding, with vague memories of the rather abysmal animated series still flitting about in my head, and a desire to avoid episode after episode of ‘Well, that sucked.’
Or it could be that there’s just been a lot of work to do and I’m moving house and I’m generally depressed about the world going to hell in a handcart … but I won’t bore everyone with that.
Suffice to say I’ll try to read through the animated episodes anyway, just because I do enjoy the analysis and commentary, and I will try to be more on-hand for the film rewatch series, which promises to be quite good. Well, there is Star Trek V, but, hey, you can’t have everything.
Thanks to Eugene and Torie for the effort, even though I haven’t yet taken advantage of it!
@ 19 NomadUK
You didn’t miss much. Third season plus TAS was a double whammy, I wound up losing hope towards the end. Thank goodness we’re at the movies now and I am excited about Star Trek again!
Except for V. Shudder.