Star Trek: The Animated Series (TAS) is an American animated science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry. It originally aired simply under the title Star Trek, subtitled Created by Gene Roddenberry, on Saturday mornings from September 8, 1973, to October 12, 1974, on NBC, spanning 22 episodes over two seasons. The second series in the Star Trek franchise, it features mostly the same characters as Star Trek: The Original Series. Set in the 23rd century, the series follows the further adventures of the Starship USS Enterprise as it explores the galaxy.
After the cancellation of The Original Series (TOS) in 1969, the live-action show proved popular in syndication and generated significant fan enthusiasm. This resulted in Roddenberry's decision to continue the series in animated form, with the medium allowing for spectacular imagery and non-humanoid aliens the original series could not practically depict. Much of the original cast returned to provide voices for their characters. Series writers David Gerrold and D. C. Fontana characterized The Animated Series as effectively a fourth season of The Original Series. After the conclusion of The Animated Series, the adventures of the characters continued in live-action theatrical films, beginning with the 1979 film Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
The Animated Series was critically acclaimed and was the first Star Trek series to win an Emmy Award when its second season received the 1975 Emmy for Outstanding Entertainment – Children's Series.
Premise Star Trek: The Animated Series is set in the 23rd century in the Star Trek universe, in which Earth is part of the multi-species United Federation of Planets. The Federation's military and exploration division, Starfleet, operates a fleet of starships that travel the galaxy establishing contact with alien races. It follows the adventures of the Starfleet vessel USS Enterprise under the command of Captain James T. Kirk as it explores the Milky Way galaxy.
Voice cast and characters William Shatner as James T. Kirk, captain and commanding officer of the USS Enterprise. Leonard Nimoy as Spock, first officer and science officer. DeForest Kelley as Doctor Leonard McCoy, chief medical officer. James Doohan as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, chief engineer. Doohan also voiced Arex, a navigator. Nichelle Nichols as Nyota Uhura, communications officer. George Takei as Hikaru Sulu, helmsman. Majel Barrett as Christine Chapel, medical officer. Barrett also voiced M'Ress, a communications officer, as well as the ship's computer.
Episodes Series overview
Season 1 (1973–74)
Season 2 (1974)
Production Development Lou Scheimer of Filmation was in talks with Star Trek producer Paramount Television, TV network NBC, and creator Gene Roddenberry to create an animated spin-off series while The Original Series was still on the air, during its third season (1968–69).
Paramount's director of special programming Philip Mayer and Filmation writer/animator Don Christensen worked together to create a proposal for a series that would target a young audience and have an educational spin. The main cast of Star Trek: The Original Series would train the teenage crew of a ship called Excalibur about space exploration; the new teenage crew included a Vulcan named Steve, an African-American boy named Bob, and a Chinese boy named Stick. Due to the bitter relationship between Roddenberry and Paramount at the time, however, Scheimer was not able to get the two parties talking to each other in order to agree on a deal for several years. During this time, the project in its original form was phased out.
A deal was finally reached in early 1973, and publicly announced in early March 1973. Because of NBC's strong interest in the series, Roddenberry and Filmation were allotted very generous terms: a guaranteed minimum of two seasons with a combined 22 episodes; a budget of US$75,000 () per episode; and full creative control in Gene Roddenberry's hands.
Roddenberry and Filmation agreed that the series should be for all ages, rather than the children-oriented approach of the original proposal, and at Roddenberry's suggestion The Original Series script editor D. C. Fontana was hired as the series' story editor and associate producer. Despite the meager payment for writers—$1,300 per script (), with no residuals—the opportunity to write a Star Trek episode without the special effects limitations of live action proved appealing, and many of The Original Series writers joined the staff. Fontana steered the series away from the romantic and sexual elements of The Original Series, as she felt children would not be interested in them, and she wanted The Animated Series to appeal to children as well as adults.
Writing The series' writing benefited from a Writers Guild of America, East strike in 1973, which did not apply to animation. A few episodes were written by well-known science fiction authors:
"More Tribbles, More Troubles" was written by David Gerrold as a sequel to his episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" from the original series. Here Cyrano Jones is rescued from the Klingons, bringing with him a genetically altered breed of tribbles which do not reproduce but do grow extremely large. (It is later discovered that these are really clusters of tribbles who function as a single tribble, and it is decided that the large numbers of smaller tribbles are preferable to the larger ones.) The Klingons, because of their hatred of tribbles, are eager to get Jones back because he stole a creature they created: a predator called a "glommer" that feeds on tribbles. "Yesteryear" is a time-travel episode in which Mr. Spock uses "The Guardian of Forever", a time gateway from the original series episode "The City on the Edge of Forever", to travel back to his own childhood. This is the only animated Trek episode written by original series and later Next Generation writer D. C. Fontana. This was the first actual appearance of Spock's pet sehlat, first mentioned in "Journey to Babel" and finally named I-Chaya in this episode. One element from "Yesteryear" that has become canonical by depiction within Star Trek: The Original Series is the Vulcan city of ShiKahr, depicted in a background scene wherein Kirk, Spock and McCoy walk across a natural stone bridge (first depicted in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock) in the remastered "Amok Time". Elements of Spock's childhood from "Yesteryear" are also referenced in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Unification" as well as the 2009 Star Trek feature film. Larry Niven's "The Slaver Weapon", adapted from his own short story "The Soft Weapon". It includes some elements from his Known Space mythos such as the Kzinti and the Slavers. This is the only Kirk-era television or movie story in which Kirk did not appear. This episode is also the only animated one in which characters are shown dying or being killed.
Casting and voice recording The Animated Series featured most of the original cast voicing their characters. The major exception was the character of Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), who did not appear in the series because the series' budget could not afford the complete cast. He was replaced by Lieutenant Arex, whose Edosian species had three arms and three legs; Lieutenant M'Ress, a female Caitian, sometimes stood in for Uhura as communications officer. Besides performing their characters Montgomery Scott and Christine Chapel, James Doohan and Majel Barrett also performed the voices of Arex and M'Ress, respectively. Barrett also voiced various other characters and the main computer.
Initially, Filmation was only going to use the voices of William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Doohan and Barrett. Doohan and Barrett would also perform the voices of Sulu and Uhura. Reportedly, when Nimoy arrived at the initial recording session for the first few episodes, he immediately noticed the absence of George Takei and Nichelle Nichols; when informed they had not been hired for the series due to budgetary reasons, Nimoy refused to voice Spock unless Takei and Nichols were added to the cast, stating that Sulu and Uhura were proof of the ethnic diversity of the 23rd century and should not be recast. Nimoy also took this stand as a matter of principle, as he knew of the financial troubles many of his Star Trek co-stars had experienced after cancellation of the series. According to Scheimer, when Nimoy pointed out that the casting would cut the only two minority actors from the series, "We were horrified at our unintended slight, made all the worse because we were the one studio who had been championing diversity in its output." Takei and Nichols were quickly hired and the recording session was rescheduled. Koenig was not forgotten, as Filmation were able to assuage Nimoy's complaints on his account by buying a script from Koenig for one episode ("The Infinite Vulcan").
Voice recording began in June 1973, with the first three episodes recorded as an ensemble, i.e. all the voice actors for the episode in the room at the same time. Later episodes used the now more typical model of recording the voice actors separately to work around their other commitments. William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, who were both touring in plays at the time, recorded their lines in whatever city they happened to be performing in and had the tapes shipped to the studio. Doohan and Barrett, besides providing the voices of their Original Series characters and newcomers Arex and M'Ress, performed virtually all of the "guest star" characters in the series, with exceptions such as Sarek, Cyrano Jones and Harry Mudd, who were performed by Mark Lenard, Stanley Adams and Roger C. Carmel respectively, the original actors from The Original Series. Other guest voice actors included Ed Bishop, who voiced the Megan Prosecutor in "The Magicks of Megas-tu", and Ted Knight, who voiced Carter Winston in "The Survivor". Nichelle Nichols performed character voices in addition to Uhura in several episodes, including "The Time Trap" and "The Lorelei Signal".
Because of the FCC equal-time rule, the premiere episode was not aired in the Los Angeles market. Takei was a political candidate for a seat on the city council, and KNBC feared that allowing his voiceover work to be heard would force the station to provide equal time for Takei's opponents.
Animation and design
Similar to most animated series of the era, the 22 episodes of TAS were spread out over two brief seasons, with copious reruns of each episode. The director of the first season (16 episodes) was Hal Sutherland and Bill Reed directed the six episodes of season two, though the first four episodes of season two erroneously credit Sutherland.
Don Christensen, creator of the original proposal, remained involved as art director. Other animation staff included Reuben Timmins (who oversaw all shots involving the Enterprise) and Bob Kline. The animators rotoscoped the animations for the Enterprise and the original cast from 35 mm film footage of The Original Series. The chevrons were enlarged to make them easier to animate, but otherwise the crew's uniforms were unaltered from The Original Series. Due to the hiring of nearly the entire regular cast of the original show, little money was left in the budget for the animation, so Filmation cut costs by using stock footage and shortcuts such as having a character put a hand to their mouth while speaking (thus eliminating the need to animate the lips) and silhouetting characters in action.
Star Trek: The Animated Series was the only Star Trek series not to be produced with a cold open ("teaser"), instead starting directly with the title credits sequence. However, some overseas versions of the original live action series, such as those aired by the BBC in the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s, were edited to run the teaser after the credits.
Music