STAR TREK: THE ANIMATED SERIES
(NBC, September 8, 1973-October 12, 1974)
Filmation Associates, Norway Productions, Paramount
Television
MAIN CAST:
“Space, the final
frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. It’s five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds,
to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone
before”
These are the words
that opened up every episode of Star Trek, highlighting the overall
theme of the series. Creator Gene Roddenberry conceived of a program that would subtly deal with present-day
issues in an idealized future setting; showcasing what humanity could develop
into if it learned from mistakes of the past. At the center of his idea was the
United
Federation of Planets, or simply “the Federation,” which was a coalition of
planets from various galaxies working together for the betterment of all
sentient beings--like a space-age version of the United Nations. Their exploratory,
peacekeeping and military arm was Starfleet, which
employed a wide range of starships to carry out various missions around known
space. Advanced technology introduced included energy-based phaser weapons,
portable communicators
(imagine a precursor to flip-open cell phones), tricorders that
could read and analyze anything, transporters that
could break anything down to the molecular level and reassemble them in another
location, protective deflector shields
and a warp
drive that allowed starships to travel at great speeds.
 |
| The original Enterprise crew. |
Roddenberry was
greatly influenced by Wagon Train, which his pitches for the series often included comparisons to,
and by Gulliver’s Travels. He intended each episode to act as a
suspenseful adventure and a morality tale.
In 1964, he presented a brief treatment proposal to Desilu Productions, and after
some reworking the series was pitched to NBC.
NBC was interested and commissioned the creation of a pilot. It focused on the
adventures of the crew of the USS Enterprise: Captain Christopher Pike
(Jeffrey Hunter); first
officer Number
One (Majel Barrett); Vulcan science officer
Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy); Lt. Jose Tyler (Peter Duryea) and Yeoman J.M. Colt (Laurel Goodwin).
 |
| The novelization of "The Cage." |
The pilot, known as “The Cage,” was
finished and screened for NBC in 1965. While they found it “too cerebral,” “too
intellectual,” and “too slow” with “not enough action,” they were convinced by Lucille Ball, co-owner
of Desilu and believer in the project, to make the unprecedented move of
commissioning a second pilot. Roddenberry wrote two outlines, which became
later episodes of the series known as “Mudd’s Women”
and “The Omega
Glory”, and commissioned Samuel
Peeples to write a third for consideration. Peeples’ script, “Where
No Man Has Gone Before”, was selected by NBC to be the new pilot (parts of
the original were used in the two-part episode “The Menagerie”).
 |
| The second Enterprise crew. |
The entire cast was
replaced save for Nimoy’s Spock, despite NBC’s petitioning for his removal due
to his “satanic” appearance brought on by his pointy ears and eyebrows. Originally
presented with youthful energy, he was given the emotionless demeanor of Number
One and promoted to first officer. Nimoy would go on to craft much of the
backstory of Spock and Vulcan culture, including the v-shaped hand gesture
accompanying the phrase “live long and prosper.” Hunter was unwilling to
reprise his role as he wanted to focus on a movie career, and he was eventually
replaced by William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk (initially the “T” was an
“R”). Pilot director James
Goldstone cast his friend James Doohan as Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott,
who was named after Doohan decided he could best pull off a Scottish accent.
George Takei was cast as Lt. Hiraku Sulu, initially the ship’s physicist but
changed to a helmsman for the series. Rounding out the cast was Paul Fix as the ship’s doctor, Mark Piper, Paul Carr as navigator Lee Kelso,
Lloyd Haynes as Communications Officer Alden,
and Andrea Dromm as Yeoman Smith.
 |
| The final Enterprise crew. |
Screened almost a
year after the first pilot, NBC was satisfied with the presentation and ordered
it to series. The first regular episode, “The Man Trap,”
debuted on September 8, 1966. Along with new uniforms for the crew, several
cast members were changed. Piper was replaced by Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest
Kelley, who was originally considered for the Piper role) while Kelso’s duties
were taken over by Sulu. Alden was replaced by Lt. Nyota Uhura (Nichelle
Nichols) and Yeoman Smith was replaced by Janice Rand (Grace Lee Whitney). Barrett
would go on to rejoin the cast as Nurse Chapel in the 4th episode, “The Naked Time”,
as well as portray the ship’s computer voice (a role she had in almost every Trek production that followed), and Sulu
would be joined by Pavel
Chekov (Walter Koenig)
at the helm in the second season.
Star Trek (later known as Star
Trek: The Original Series) enjoyed high ratings at the start of its first
season, but they fell dramatically towards its conclusion. It was sufficient
enough to warrant a second season, but NBC threatened to cancel it after that
year. Science-fiction superfan Betty Jo Trimble
(also known as Bjo) led an unprecedented letter-writing campaign to petition
the network to keep the show (she also led the campaign to have President Gerald Ford
change the name of the first NASA space
shuttle to Enterprise, whose dedication was attended by the Trek cast in 1976). It worked, and NBC renewed it for a third
season but at a substantially reduced budget. Roddenberry protested by
resigning as producer and reducing his direct involvement in the series,
leading to Fred Freiberger
taking over his duties for the season. Despite another letter-writing campaign,
NBC cancelled the show after 79 episodes.
 |
| The fan mail just keeps pouring in. |
Sometime after its
cancellation, Paramount Studios bought
the show from Desilu and licensed the broadcast syndication rights to recoup
production losses. Reruns began airing in the fall of 1969 and reached over 200
domestic and international markets. As a result, Star Trek was discovered by a new fanbase (soon to be known as
Trekkies) and gradually achieved a cult following that rivaled its popularity
during the original broadcasts. That culminated in the first
Star Trek convention in January
of 1972. While it was only projected to get a few hundred attendees, it ended
up attracting several thousand.
 |
| The animated Enterprise. |
Paramount took notice
of the series’ newfound appeal and toyed with the idea of bringing it back. Filmation had originally
pitched an idea of adapting the franchise into animation (Lou Scheimer, one of the
founders, was a fan of the original series) shortly after the show’s
cancellation. While giving assurances that the cartoon would look and feel like
original show, Filmation wanted to move the setting to a training ship and pair
up all the crewmen with young cadets in order to have a larger appeal to
children. Paramount passed on that idea, which later became the basis for
Filmation’s Space
Academy, but revisited the notion of turning Trek into a cartoon
series and contracted Filmation to do it. A deal was arranged where Paramount,
Filmation and Roddenberry would each control a third of the program’s rights,
leaving the network out of any kind of creative control. NBC, who desperately
wanted new Trek, readily agreed to the arrangement, as well as ordering
22 episodes up front.
 |
| Running a starship doesn't really require much movement. |
At Roddenberry’s insistence,
original series story editor D.C.
Fontana was appointed the story editor of the cartoon to best help maintain
the voice of Trek. The writers of the cartoon would follow the same
series bible used for the original series, and the use of animation afforded
them the opportunity to introduce larger alien landscapes and less
humanoid-looking aliens for the crew to encounter. However, like other
Filmation projects, budget constraints and the fact they were producing several
other shows at the same time often led to extreme cost-cutting measures. These included
a liberal use of stock shots both created for the series or from other
Filmation shows, or constantly recycling animation from previous episodes.
While the majority of the animation quality was only fair with a number of
errors, some parts of various episodes would achieve a near-theatrical level of
quality. In many instances, the animators would rotoscope over footage from the
original show for the actors’ likenesses and the ship, helping to keep them all
looking as they should. Typical production turnaround for an episode was three
months, and was one of Filmation’s highest-budgeted at $75,000 an episode.
 |
| The animated crew of the Enterprise. |
Filmation planned to
only use Shatner, Nimoy, Kelley, Doohan and Barrett to reprise their roles and
add extra authenticity, with Doohan and Barrett taking over the voices of Sulu
and Uhura, respectively. Knowing that his fellow cast members were having
trouble finding work since the end of the series and feeling that Sulu and
Uhura were crucial for the proof of ethnic diversity in the 23rd
century, Nimoy refused to lend his voice to the project unless Takei and
Nichols were cast. The budget wouldn’t allow for Koenig to reprise his role, although
he was asked to audition for a small part. He did end up making a contribution
by writing the episode “The Infinite Vulcan”, becoming the first Trek cast member to write a Trek story. The producers liked his work
and invited Koenig to write another episode, but after the arduous process of
rewrites demanded by Roddenberry and his own hurt feelings over being excluded
from the show (he only learned of its existence during a Trek panel at a convention), he declined.
 |
| Arex (top) and M'Ress. |
In Chekov’s place were two new alien characters: Lt.
Arex (Doohan), an Edosian
with three arms and three legs, and Lt. M’Ress, a cat-like Caitian (Barrett). The
majority of the additional voices were handled by Doohan and Barrett, with
Nichols and Takei providing several themselves. A few guest stars from the
original series did reprise their respective roles for the cartoon, including Mark Lenard as Sarek, Roger C. Carmel as Harry Mudd, and Stanley Adams as Cyrano Jones.
While the initial episodes were recorded with an ensemble, other commitments
made it so some of the actors—typically Shatner and Nimoy—would have to record
their dialogue wherever they were and send them in to be spliced together onto
the episode’s soundtrack.
 |
| Cyrano Jones returned with even more Tribbles. |
The series’ writing
stable benefited from the Writers Guild of
America, West strike of 1973, which
didn’t affect animated projects and allowed them to make use of the freed-up
writers. This meant that Fontana was able to recruit many of the original
show’s writers; either writing new stories or sequels to earlier episodes.
Among them were Peeples, Fontana, Marc
Daniels, Margaret Armen, David Gerrold and Paul Schneider. Because they no
longer had an hour to work with in crafting their stories, many have come to regard
the more-focused scripts as some of the best of early Trek. Science
fiction author Larry Niven even adapted his
short story “The Soft
Weapon” into the episode “The Slaver
Weapon”. James Schmerer
wrote a single episode for the cartoon, “The Survivor”,
on the basis that he was made to understand it would be geared towards adults
like the original show and not to children as his previous dealings in
animation had been strenuous. The scripts for the cartoon featured a lot of
call-backs to the original series, as well as maintained the same kind of heady
storytelling quality with deep stories and morality tales. Other writers
included Larry Brody, Chuck Menville, Len Janson, Joyce Perry, David P. Harmon, Stephen Kandel, Dario Finelli, Russell Bates, David Wise and Fred Bronson (as John Culver).
 |
| Despite the number of women on the show, Kirk's infamous romantic life was on hiatus. |
Star Trek: The
Animated Series debuted on September 8, 1973; exactly seven years after the
premiere of the original series. While “Beyond
the Farthest Star” was always intended to be the series first episode, some
markets shuffled the airing order to show “Yesteryear” instead. The reason behind that was, at the time, Takei was running for a seat on
the Los
Angeles City Council, and in order to avoid violating the FCC’s equal-time
rule (wherein any radio or television station had to provide the same
amount of air time for any and all political candidates if they requested it)
they chose to stop airing reruns of the original series and aired an animated
episode that didn’t feature Sulu.
The series retained the regular Star Trek naming on its title screen (with The Animated Series or The
Animated Adventures of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek added in later
references to distinguish the two shows), but Filmation opted to use a new
opening theme composed by Ray
Ellis (under the pseudonym Yvette Blais) and Norm Prescott (credited as Jeff
Michael). It was the first Trek series
to also do away with the cold open and began with the opening intro (not
counting the United Kingdom airings of the original series, which moved the
cold open to after the credits). An anti-pollution public service announcement
was created in partnership with Keep America
Beautiful and played throughout the series’ run.
 |
| Life support belts. |
Aside from the new
crewmembers, the cartoon introduced several unique elements to the Trek mythos. It was the first series to
have the holodeck
(called the “Rec Room”), a room on the ship that could create three-dimensional
and interactive holograms of almost anything that can be programmed. It
wouldn’t become a Trek feature until
the follow-up live-action series, The Next Generation. There
was also personal force field technology located in a life support
belt, which allowed the crew to journey out into space. The belt and a glow
were added to the character that wore them, saving the animators the trouble of
designing and drawing environmental suits for the characters. A version of the
belt would be used in an early The Next
Generation novel titled The Peacekeepers. It also became the first Trek
show to show a different class of Federation starship besides the Constitution class of the Enterprise. “The Time Trap”
had the crew come into contact with the first starship to have a warp drive
installed, the S.S. Bonaventure (also its class name), which
resembled the Enterprise except with
bulkier warp
nacelles and a shorter saucer section. Although the ship’s design would
change in later Trek appearances, the name continued to be used. The
cartoon was also the first official use of Captain Kirk’s middle name after
Gerrold blurted it out when asked what it stood for at an earlier Trek convention.
 |
| Even giant Tribbles couldn't bring the kids on board. |
Although the series was popular with adults
and older teens, the targeted younger demographic that NBC and advertisers
wanted wasn’t tuning in. NBC followed-through with the abbreviated
6-episode second season they ordered, which was padded out with reruns from the
first, but let the series end at its conclusion. The second season premiere, “The
Pirates of Orion”, was written by Howard Weinstein,
a fan who adapted it from a short Trek story
he had published in the fanzine Probe. The script was taken on by agent Bill Cooper, who was a
schoolmate of Weinstein’s father, and sent it to Fontana. However, since she had
left the show, it was returned. The script was resubmitted and Weinstein was
contacted by Scheimer, who would buy the script if the ending could be
modified. Weinstein agreed and the episode was made, making him the youngest Trek writer (19 at the time) and the
episode the first to introduce the male Orions. It also opened the door for Weinstein to work on
future Trek projects. During its run,
the cartoon received critical acclaim as well as a Daytime Emmy Award for the episode “How
Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth”; the first of the franchise outside of
technical awards.
After the abandonment
of an attempt to produce the first Trek movie,
The Planet of the Titans, Paramount and Roddenberry began work
on a new live-action series called Phase II. It was intended to be the flagship program for Paramount’s new
television network, the Paramount Television Service, which was hoped to become
the fourth television network (there were only three at the time). However,
when the plan fell through the show was ultimately cancelled (Paramount would
eventually get their own network from 1995-2006, UPN). When Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind became box office successes in 1977, Paramount revisited the Phase II idea and decided to recycle the
pilot’s plot into Star Trek: The Motion
Picture. The entire original series cast was reunited in live-action, and
would be for five more movies.
 |
| "See? I told you one day they'd love us." |
In the meantime,
Roddenberry was hard at work bringing Trek
back to television. This led to the creation of The Next Generation in 1987 as a first-run syndicated show following
a new crew on a new Enterprise. It would be the first of four new programs, most of them under
the stewardship of Rick Berman
after Roddenberry’s death
in 1991, plus a new series of movies based on The Next Generation. At the completion of The Next Generation’s first season, Roddenberry’s office rendered
the animated series non-canonical in Trek
lore. However, while events from the cartoon were not explicitly mentioned,
elements from various episodes such as character moments, alien races, ship
names and characters themselves found their way into the programs,
novelizations, video games and movies. In 2007, the cartoon was made part of
the official canon when it was included in Star
Trek’s official site library, with both Fontana and Gerrold regarding it as
the long-desired fourth season of the original series.
 |
| The series novelization, vol. 5. |
All of the episodes
were adapted into story form by Alan Dean Foster
in ten volumes of Star Trek Logs by Ballantine
Books. Initially, Foster featured
three episodes per book, but the later books featured singular episodes
expanded into full-length novels; sometimes with additional bonus original
stories. They have since been
republished several times. Tuttle Enterprises would release a series of
animation cels taken from the show. “Yesteryear” was reproduces as a View-Master set titled “Mr. Spock’s Time Trek.”
In 2003, Rittenhouse Archives released The Complete Star Trek: Animated Adventures
Trading Cards set.
 |
| The DVD tin case. |
The complete series was released to VHS
by Paramount across eleven volumes in the United States, while the United
Kingdom got theirs across seven
volumes in 1992 by CIC
Video. An Australian release was planned but never materialized. The
complete series was released on laserdisc
in 1990, and re-released in 1997. The
complete series came to DVD
in 2006 in a special tin package, becoming the last Trek series to be released on that format. The international versions soon followed. In
2011, the entire series was available to stream on Netflix.
EPISODE GUIDE:
Season 1:
“Beyond the Farthest Star” (9/8/73*) – Trapped in the orbit of a dead
star, the crew discovers an ancient ship trapped there with them.
*Aired 9/15/73 in some markets.
“Yesteryear” (9/15/73*) – Spock travels to the past to rescue his younger
self.
*Aired 9/8/73 in some markets.
“One of Our Planets is Missing” (9/22/73) – The crew has to protect
Mantilles from a cloud creature that feeds on planetary energy.
“The Lorelei Signal” (9/29/73) – Investigating starship disappearances
leads to the discovery of a race of beautiful women.
“More Tribbles, More Troubles” (10/6/73) – The crew has to protect two
ships of grain and Cyrano Jones from the Klingons.
“The Survivor” (10/13/73) – The crew discovers a ship manned by a
philanthropist who disappeared five years prior.
“The Infinite Vulcan” (10/20/73) – Sulu ends up poisoned by a plant he
picks up on an away mission.
“The Magicks of Megas-tu” (10/27/73) – The ship ends up stranded
inside an energy/matter vortex until Lucien appears to rescue them and take
them to his planet.
“Once Upon a Planet” (11/3/73) – The crew returns to the amusement
park planet for some rest.
“Mudd’s Passion” (11/10/73) – The crew is ordered to arrest Harry Mudd
for selling fake love crystals.
“The Terratin Incident” (11/17/73) – A message in an ancient code
finds the ship while they observe a burnt-out supernova.
“The Time Trap” (11/24/73) – Investigating ship disappearances leads
the crew to be attacked by Klingons and sucked into a spacetime vortex with one
of the enemy ships.
“The Ambergris Element” (12/1/73) – Argo’s inhabitants turn Kirk and
Spock into water breathers, leaving them needing to capture a snake in order to
revert back.
“The Slaver Weapon” (12/15/73) – The Kzinti attack the shuttlecraft
transporting a stasis box to Starbase 25.
“The Eye of the Beholder” (1/5/74) – The crew investigates the
disappearance of a scientific team near Lactra VII.
“The Jihad” (1/12/74) – The crew has to prevent a holy war by
investigating the theft of a religious artifact.
Season 2:
“The Pirates of Orion” (9/7/74) – The crew must encounter pirates for
the cure to Spock’s illness.
“Bem” (9/14/74) – The crew is taken captive by natives to a
newly-discovered planet.
“The Practical Joker” (9/21/74) – The ship’s computer plays practical
jokes on the crew, which gradually become more dangerous.
“Albatross” (9/28/74) – Bones is arrested for causing the plague that
ravaged planet Dramia.
“How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth” (10/5/74) – The crew has to solve
a puzzle or be destroyed.
“The Counter-Clock Incident” (10/12/74) – The ship is pulled into a
universe where time runs backwards.
Originally posted in 2015. Updated in 2020.
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