Not a masterpiece. Not even having the artistic quality of let's say the Simpsons, Family Guy or South Park. This show doesn't even know whether it is tailored to kids or adults. However, original voices make the show feel like a legit 4th and 5th year of the Enterprise's 5 year mission. A consolation price after TOS's premature cancellation. The artistic freedom an animated series offers leads to a motley array of races and and alien worlds w/on being held back by the tight budget that strangled TOS's 3rd season. The "soundtrack" is great btw. I appreciate that TAS shows more of TOS's minor characters and refrains from focussing on our shirtless, alpha-male captain and his pair of fists. In a sense, character-wise, TAS feels much more balanced. The short duration of each episode works in their favor. Unlike in TOS, only a few episodes drag on.
Some episodes are right from the TOS playbook. Usually that leads to repetitive and very mediocre episodes. Like in TOS they are often trapped and need to find a way out. Some episodes are just crazy and seem like a totally different franchise. A few episodes are entertaining or even smart. I admit that I didn't enjoy TOS. I liked only a few episodes. In a sense, TAS is better than TOS because, compared to TOS, TAS's quality is much more consistent. TAS doesn't have many insanely bad episodes.
My episode ratings for this series are in comparison to one another. A rating of one of these episodes as a "10" is not meant to imply that it is as good as say, "The Doomsday Machine" from the original series. If something impresses as exceptional compared to the typical details from other episodes, it'll spike the rating. The appeal of this show is that it's such a curious thing. What are the stories behind the making of this series? Is it good science fiction? Is it kiddie fare? As an admirer of animation, this should not appeal to me, as Filmation productions are almost always lacking quality. Still, there's something about it. It's probably nostalgia as there are plenty of these kinds of moment-in-time viewing choices I've made in the past, and present for that matter.
Most of these episodes feature some pretty quick resolutions to some awfully complicated problems, though the subject matter is usually far more mature than the standard Saturday morning fare of its time.
The animated worlds are simultaneously creative and shoddily drawn. Backgrounds are at times weird but nearly always very colorful. This is common of everything I've seen and read about Filmation and their traits and techniques. This is something that has to be tolerated, or at times, laughed at. It can be fun to see how long a particular shot is held and how few movements are simultaneously occurring.
The Blu-ray edition of this series didn't get a lot of love. There is a lot of dirt, smudges, and other things floating around, and it doesn't help that the drawings of clothes and faces offer little to no detail. But, the Blu-ray menus are eye-catching and creative.
It's neat that this features voice work from the original cast. It offers additional legitimacy to the stories.
This was potentially a great vehicle to use to explore "those strange new worlds" without having to spend strange new amounts of money to depict them. It's just too bad that Filmation was the company hired to animate it.
Hasn't aged at all well. The best thing about this is that Shatner and Nimoy refused to do it without Barrett, Doohan, Kelley, Nicholls & Takei. The writers must've been as high as fucking kites too. I just couldn't do series 2.
It's a serie that's nice to see once. But not that special. Some aliens a bit too crazy for me and very stiffly animated.
Great premise, I LOVE that they got the original voice actors all to reprise their roles, and I liked that they could show a more alien-diverse universe than live TV technology could do at the time. And some episodes were pretty decent. HOWEVER, this series got worse and more ridiculous as it went along. Since it was a Saturday morning cartoon, that's to be expected I suppose, but it still got harder to watch by the end.
In the end, I just felt like the best thing it did was give us an endless array of hilarious screenshot and animated gif possibilities.
Shout by Dan GigernesBlockedParent2019-11-22T14:28:10Z
I have fond memories of watching this animated "Star Trek" show when I was a kid via satellite dish on Sky Channel. It prepared me for the live action version and when I rewatch these episodes now it is easy to see why I liked it. The series used the same voice cast as in the original series. It had many of the same writers who delivered some interesting stories and even delivered a good background story on Spock. What was not that great was that the animation was pretty static and repetitive at times and that there was not enough character moments to give the show a true depth. It was sadly also disowned by the creator and a long time was not available to see, but luckily it is now possible to see it again. It is not a masterpiece but it gives fans what they want: additional adventures with their favorite crew and it do feel and look like the original show without overdoing it which is nice.