Star Trek: The Animated Series is the last of Star Trek's episodic television adventures to make it to DVD, and the resulting digitally remastered four-disc set is a time capsule—one with 22 more journeys of these legendary characters, frozen in time as two-dimensional animation cells. The 22 episodes immortalized here offered a way for Kirk, Spock and McCoy to gallivant through the galaxy once more, before the events in the movies. The series hearkens back to a time when no
Star Trek aired in prime time and, indeed, fans of the original series were eager for any morsel of
Trek they could get their hands on. The episodes were written with the
Star Trek audience in mind, and follow the
Trek creed in philosophy and dialogue, going far beyond the show's intended timeslot audience of Saturday-morning 10-year-olds.
While this strategy sometimes worked, more often the dichotomy proved frustrating to watch onscreen: The stories themselves wrestled with who their audience was supposed to be. Sometimes a satire, sometimes a well-executed story (not surprising, given that the show won an Emmy and used many of the original series' screenwriters), the Animated Series nonetheless often ended up with cringeworthy, super-hero-like dialogue interspersed with a Bam!- and Pow!-worthy melodramatic soundtrack. The schism is enough to make one wonder about the limitless potential the animated series could have had—open-ended, creative storytelling without the pesky limitations of special effects and budgets, and all with the original triumvirate's voices—had it aired in prime time, as
The Simpsons does today.
It's for the show's strengths as well as its (dated) weaknesses that it's a worthy addition to your DVD shelf. The
Animated Series has some bright spots that are fun to watch, notably David Gerrold's "The Trouble With Tribbles" sequel, "More Tribbles, More Troubles"; "Yesteryear"; and "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth." However, other episodes remain equally entertaining, as much for their mix of dated '70s music and dialogue as for the on-cue vocal deliveries of the core cast (William Shatner as Kirk, Leonard Nimoy as Spock, DeForest Kelley as Bones McCoy and James Doohan as Scotty; Nichelle Nichols and Majel Barrett Roddenberrry also make regular vocal appearances). If the plots sound familiar or rehashed, invariably that means they are—and you'll recall some later
Trek episodes that owe a nod to the
Animated Series. But that's part of the fun of watching the series now, forearmed with that knowledge.
A future that never gets old The four-disc set features well-designed menus and navigation. (One gripe: The prominence and frequency of advertisements for other
Star Trek sets gets to be annoying, quickly.) Each disc lets you configure the audio setup options (English 5.1 suround sound, English mono, Spanish) and subtitles (English, Spanish, Portugese). These options may be set for the whole disc or you can adjust individually directly from individual episode menus.
The set includes a handful of special features, some scattered throughout the set with their respective episodes, others lumped together unceremoniously on disc four, under the mantle of Special Features.
Three episodes—"Yesteryear" at the beginning of the first season, "Eye of the Beholder" and the last episode of the series, "The Counter-Clock Incident"—offer pop-up text commentary. While the commentaries can be a fun boon to follow along with the story, sometimes, they're misplaced. For example, "Yesteryear"'s text offers interesting background on why that episode was aired first in Los Angeles (George Takei was running for Los Angeles city councilman at the time, and the series had to be pre-empted during its premiere week), but, in "The Counter-Clock Incident," the commentary more often has nothing to do with the episode itself (the first five minutes' commentary revolves around the NBC publicist for the
Animated Series and the series' early reception by critics).
Another three episodes carry audio commentaries. David Gerrold supplies two commentaries, on "More Trouble, More Tribbles" (yes, Virginia, there is a reason why
Animated Series tribbles are pink) and "Bem." The third, and most entertaining, commentary is offered up by David Wise, creator of
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, on the second-to-last episode, "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth." He co-wrote the episode with Russell Bates when in his late teens.
One other random feature lives on disc two's "The Infinite Vulcan." There you can view the storyboard sketches that accompanied Walter Koenig's writing debut. Koenig's alter ego, Chekhov, was written out of
The Animated Series due to its insufficient budget.
Under the dedicated Special Features tab on disc four lie the remaining pieces of bonus content. Handily, the best is the 24-minute documentary "Drawn to the Final Frontier: The Making of Star Trek: The Animated Series," produced by CBS DVD. The first two minutes are weak, packed with reminiscences and sound bites in a hyperkinetic fashion, but it segues into a thoughtful piece with perspectives from producer Lou Scheimer, frequent director Hal Sutherland, writer David Gerrold and writer/associate producer D.C. Fontana.
Far weaker is "The Star Trek Connection," which identifies 10 areas of
Trek lore, with background on how
The Animated Series fits into the
Trek universe (for example, holographic technology appeared for the first time in
TAS, then was seen later in
Star Trek: The Next Generation's holodecks). Weaker still is the "Show History": Four quick screens of text offering a brief background on the series for the uninitiated ... and oh, yes, it's saying the same thing that's written in the accompanying booklet.
Kirk and Spock are always fun to observe, even in their crudely drawn animated personas. I'd never seen The Animated Series before, and even though I, at times, found myself cringing as I watched, it never got old hearing Shatner, Nimoy, Kelley and Doohan together again. This alone is worth the price of admission to this DVD set. —Melissa
