This weekend’s family night consisted of two treats: carving pumpkins into Jack-o-lanterns and watching The Animated Adventures of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek. If you have never heard of it, despite being an avid Trekkie you aren’t alone. I had pretty much thought I had seen it all in the Star Trek universe, having watched most of all the television series and movies. Although- I never did get a taste for Voyager or Enterprise- I do consider myself somewhat of a Star Trek fan. So believe me even I was surprised to find these videos at the thrift store.
The Animated Adventures of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek came directly after the original series and ran two seasons from 1973 to 1974. I was able to purchase two videotapes each with two episodes on them. I figured they would be sort of nominally entertaining at best. I was actually pleasantly surprised!
The four episodes I watched with my children were actually very entertaining. The stories were very good and followed the original Star Trek stories very well. The characters were even “voiced” by the original actors, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelly, James doohan, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, and Majel Barret (Gene Roddenberrys wife).
The only down side of the animated Star Trek series was the cheap animation that was typical of the early 1970′s. You will know exactly what I mean if you have ever watched the old Scooby Doo cartoon show from the 70′s. Wherein certain action scenes of running are the same cut run over and over again or the background never changes. Despite the animation limitations I really enjoyed the four episodes I watched.
The episodes I had the pleasure of watching included:
Yesteryear
Beyond the Farthest Star
The Slaver Weapon
The Ambergris Element
In November 2006 a region 1 dvd was released with all 22 episodes.
James Doohan did multiple characters too. Apparently, he was good with voices, so he voiced more characters than just Scotty. In Yesteryear, for example, he voiced six characters in addition to Scotty.
If I remember right, the actors did their dialogue and mailed in the tapes, or something like that.
Yesteryear was a good one. I remember watching that a long time ago. It is one of the few animated episodes that is considered “canon”. Portions of Vulcan seen in this episode are also seen in live-action in Star Trek: Enterprise. With Enterprise and some TNG & DS9episodes, the backstory of Yesteryear is essentially brought into the live-action canon.
I thought they were all considered acceptable canon now… I read that the story writers worked pretty hard on the storyline and that it was one guy who was the Star Trek historian who didn’t want the cartoons to be canon. There is a actually a lot of interesting facts for Trekkies coming out of the animated series. One example is that James T. Kirk’s middle name is first used in the cartoon.
About the voices I heard they ran out of money and that’s why they didn’t have Chekov and some of the lesser knowns on the show. However, I can’t imagine that Chekov was that expensive to begin with so not sure about that. They must of spent a pretty penny to begin with to get the original actors that they had already doing the voices.
Ah well- anymore I’ll begin to sound like a full fledged Trekkie.
Live long and prosper! Y
Q’apla!
Is that a threat or a friendly Klingon hello… because if it’s a threat- well let’s just say you don’t want to know what will happen.
I heard Little Too likes tribble in his kibble.