TAS S02E01 The Pirates of Orion (2.5 out of 5 stars) opens with a disease sweeping the ship that is now under control and is said to be no worse than pneumonia. God, when was this written? Only after Spock collapses does McCoy determine that the pathogen is fatal to Vulcans. Did nobody think of self-isolation? This is a McCoy-centric episode but he does little but exposit. The pirates feel fresh but their motivation is woolly – if the Orion captain was determined to destroy both ships, why bother beaming down with the drug? And the pacing is sluggish. “You’ve already made up your mind.” “Yes but the episode is two minutes short so we’d better sit around the conference table discussing it for a bit longer.” No major changes for season two, including no extra music so they keep using the same three cues over and over again which is driving me slightly crazy.

TAS S02E02 Bem (3 out of 5 stars) is the name of the exotic alien observer on-board the ship for a first contact mission. He talks like Yoda and his body parts can float around independently in a way which looks more like magic and less like science-fiction. The saurian aliens are good fun too, but I wish Kirk wouldn’t keep calling them “aborigines”. The pacing here is sluggish in the extreme. Stately shots of the Enterprise crawling across the frame. Long conversations which repeat information we already know – including Kirk’s middle name which is repeated three times.

TAS S02E03 The Practical Joker (1 out of 5 stars). No sooner are the titles off the screen than the Romulans are firing on the Enterprise, but they duck through an energy field and suddenly everything is fine and the crew are celebrating with a slap-up meal, complete with trick glasses and wonky forks. The dialogue is full of clichés this week, both Trek clichés and pre-existing ones (“discretion is the better part of valour”, “I’m going to get to the bottom of this”, “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”, “Method to this madness.”). On the whole a series of unimaginative practical jokes do not make for an engaging episode. This episode does give us our first look at the Rec Room, later to  become the holodeck on TNG, but this is lazy, tiresome stuff. The plot is resolved because Romulans fear disgrace more than death. Sure, let’s go with that.

TAS S02E04 Albatross (3.5 out of 5 stars) More plague. This time, McCoy has wiped out a whole planet with a dangerous vaccine. It’s a little known fact that this episode was the early work of Joe Rogan. As if this wasn’t all problematic enough, the virus causes a change in skin colour. But, in the end, the truth is exactly what we thought it would be. McCoy is a goodie after all. Again, the plotting is woolly. McCoy, who cured the plague, didn’t tell anyone how to cure it because medical knowledge is not to be shared. On the other hand, this McCoy almost sounds like the character from the live action show (although Kirk is still just a cipher and Spock only an exposition machine).

TAS S02E05 How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth (4 out of 5 stars). In a hugely imaginative turn, the Enterprise tackles a mysterious alien probe which presents as a giant glowing cloud thing. Even more mysterious is the presence of a Mr Walking Bear at Sulu’s station. And, wouldn’t ya know it, the one day Walking Bear is on the bridge, a ship appears which takes a form he can recognise. In a familiar move, the probe zaps key crew members and takes them on board. Kirk, Bones and co figure out in minutes what defeated the intelligence of different civilisations over countless generations. It all builds to another pair of familiar tropes – the gilded cage and the pacifist Federation – but thoughtfully presented and the characters glimmer through here and there. Unaccountably, this decent but fairly routine episode won itself an Emmy.

TAS S02E06 The Counter-Clock Incident (2.5 out of 5 stars) The televised adventures of Kirk, Spock, Bones and co conclude with this reverse re-run of The Deadly Years which features the key crew members regressing to childhood. Robert April was one of the names considered for the character who became Christopher Pike. This episode ret-cons that to make someone of that name the first captain of the Enterprise. I really object to the ludicrous speeds given here, including a mysterious object said to be travelling at warp 36, and once more the transporter functions as a biological reset switch, but I do appreciate the wild alternate universe time-travel fantasy as the kind of story which maybe only this incarnation of Star Trek could have attempted.

Final thoughts

  • Obviously done on a shoestring, the limited animation, often flat line-readings, and endlessly recycled music cues do a lot to obscure some occasionally quite decent scripting, but the short run times sap character details as well as providing less time for stories to build in complexity.
  • Very little in these episodes is referred to again, so they end up sitting a somewhat outside the framework of the series as a whole. Roddenberry would claim they were and were not canon as the mood struck him.
  • Average episode score for The Animated Series is 2.95, slightly better than Season Three of TOS, but behind TOS as a whole. Stand-out episodes include The Slaver Weapon, The Infinite Vulcan, The Magicks of Megas-Tu but nothing here is a nailed-on classic. Worst episodes include the idiotic The Practical Joker and the deeply unfunny Mudd’s Passion.