Tom Salinsky

TAS S01E06 The Survivor (). The survivor in this case survived a meteor “swarm” and turns out to be a 23rd century Lord Lucan. I think that’s Shatner doing his voice, and Nichelle Nichols as his fiancée. Far from this being a post-monetary society, Lucan is a wealthy philanthropist – and in fiction they are always either masked vigilantes or psychopathic super-villains. Wanna guess which one we have here? So, this turns out to be that good old Trek stand-by: something nasty has snuck on board the ship. Lucan impersonates Kirk and takes control of the ship. While this doesn’t suffer by trying to space battles in animation, it doesn’t take advantage of the medium the way that Furthest Star did, so this all feels a bit rote – and the early plotting requires the crew to be dumber than usual. Some character work from “Carter” does something to redeem it. The relationship between the Vendorian and the grief-stricken Lt Anne feels very Star Trek in a way that many of these episodes have struggled to achieve. We also meet the leonine Lt M’Ress in this episode.

TAS S01E07 The Infinite Vulcan (). Walter Koenig’s script is very fast paced – we go from Sulu dropping the alien plant that just stabbed him to “he’s got a minute to live Jim!” in seconds. For the first time in ages, we get to see a really extravagant alien city and some aliens (and giant humanoids) that the 60s show would’ve struggled to realise, and this feels like a really strong version of what animated Star Trek could and should be (although about the final exchange between Kirk and Sulu is all sorts of wrong). But the great strength of the live action episodes – the chemistry between the leads – never really comes through here. Nimoy and Kelley are fine, but it’s evident throughout that William Shatner really couldn’t give a shit about this job. His line readings sound as if they’ve been tossed off in between golf games (and my understanding is that’s basically what happened).

TAS S01E08 The Magicks of Megas-tu (). After a wobbly start, during which the show’s scientific advisors seem to have gone for a liquid lunch, this generates considerable energy and pace. And even though those world-class character dynamics are never present, this admirably fulfills the brief of using the animation medium to tell thought-provoking science-fiction stories, even if it is using familiar tropes –the bridge is visited by a playful being with god-like powers who puts humanity on trial.

TAS S01E09 Once Upon a Planet () is another sequel to a TOS episode and early dialogue rams that fact home, even though the painted backgrounds only vaguely resemble to location chosen for Shore Leave. The solution to the problem turns out to be the same as last time, followed by having a chat with the previously murderous computer, so this is all a bit of a bore – zero gravity on the bridge is quite good fun though.

TAS S01E10 Mudd’s Passion (). I disliked Mudd’s Women and hated I, Mudd, and so I wasn’t looking forward to this one – yet another sequel to a TOS episode and in this case a third instalment. If anything this was worse than I expected. This time the slimy bastard is offering a strictly heterosexual love potion, which he’s knocking out at 300 credits a pop.

Some of the best episodes of TOS have probed and pushed at the limits of Spock’s logical stoicism. But this story does it with no subtlety, feeling or attention to detail. In earlier episodes such as All Our Yesterdays Spock was sufficiently self-aware to notice his own odd behaviour. This is a 10-year-old’s version of “being in love”, which is disappointing even in the context of a show aimed at children.

Nurse Chapel is given more to do here but she is once again defined almost entirely as “having the hots for Spock”. And McCoy refers to a fellow officer as “that pretty little Lt Uhura.” Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

TAS S01E11 The Terratin Incident (). Some sources give this as the 12th episode, not the 11th. I don’t know what’s going on there. This gives us another venerable science fiction idea but not one that Star Trek has attempted before – the crew is shrinking. It’s a wonderful use of the animation medium – it could never have been achieved in live action. Even making the crew suddenly smaller would have wrecked the budget, let alone slowly decreasing their size. All of the usual scientific inaccuracies with size-shrinkage are present here, but it seems churlish to complain about that when this is such fun to look at. Once again, the transporter is used as an all-purpose biological reset switch.

Stray thoughts

• The original series began as a meditation on the nature of being human, and quickly became a strikingly thoughtful science fiction adventure show with particularly strongly-characterised leading characters and a remarkably coherent vision of the future.
• Although produced under heavy budgetary constraints, these affect the final product differently, and it takes a fair few episodes before The Animated Series discovers the possibilities afforded it and begins to make real use of them.
• Red shirts have a much longer life-expectancy. In fact, death is a very rare occurrence in this incarnation of Star Trek.
• The Animated Series flirts briefly with the more thoughtful elements of the live action show, but when it tries to tell a personal human story and neglects the interplay between the regulars (which is always) the results are often dull. The episode with the most depth of characterisation – Yesteryear – suffered precisely because Kirk wasn’t there for Spock to bounce off. It never really recaptures the magic of the live action show, not least because William Shatner in particular is barely giving anything in his line readings.
• That said, the best episodes are better (and certainly shorter) than a great deal of those in Season Three.
• The key cast of this series is (in order of importance) Kirk, Spock, Chapel, McCoy, Uhura, Scotty, Sulu. Poor Sulu.