Star Trek: the Animated Series [DVD]

I didn't think I would like this but wow was I surprised! Turns out it's my favourite season of the original series. Yes I consider it a season, it has all the original actors, Gene Roddenberry, and even a few cross-overs to earlier episodes. The animation style is very basic, but it still allowed for things that just weren't possible or would have cost too much to do in live action. Like the life support belts, or the living ship, or my favourite a glimpse of a Vulcan city. I never considered the animated series to be a "real" part of Star Trek; I stand corrected. Give it a chance, you won't be disappointed.

I've always wanted to watch this series and until today I never got the chance beyond two full episodes and a minute or two of other episodes, I had always been interested in getting the DVD box set that had come out several years ago, but at the time I wasn't able to afford it.
With the release of the remastered Original series, which I'm almost finished completing at the time of writing this, the Animated series box set got a re-release.

Now most likely a lot of those who have bought this series got the earlier metal box set and so didn't feel that this was anything worthwhile, and I guess if I had bought that set I would agree, but I hadn't. So I may as well explain what this set is like.

Unlike with the Original series remastering, this series hasn't been cleaned up at all, it's still it's original footage. That means all the dirt, hair, animation errors, mismatched colours and more has remained.
I'm sure there'll be people scoffing at that, but I think it's cute to see the footage not remastered and cleaned up, it shows how animation was back in the 70s.

All the episodes are shown by broadcast date and not by stardate, it does seem messy, but again that's just just due to how things were when the series was made.
The sound is the same as ever and the action is as you would expect for a cartoon of the 70s.

The box itself is plastic, fairly solid, the same size as the Original Series Remastered box sets, minus the metal casing addition. The four discs are placed on two plastic discs and are back to back, with neither touching the main disc section. They're easy enough to remove and put back in.

The rating is U, since there's nothing offensive about the series, though I'm sure there's some out there who would find something minor to be offended about.
In full the box set doesn't really last all that long, it's only 22 episodes, the full series, and each episode is around 23 minutes long, some about 22 minutes long. But what stands out is how good the stories are, from the truly excellent 'Yesteryear' to 'How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth', every episode has a really good, if somewhat short, story.

Plus until the era of CGI came about, live action TV was limited in what could be done, animation allows for things to be done that couldn't be done on live action TV at the time. Like the Enterprise crew being shrunk in one episode to them becoming younger in the final episode.
You can tell that the story writers had a lot of fun with the series and it's hard not to love it as you watch it.

Now that the Animated series has finally been accepted as canon in the Star Trek universe, although one error sticks out in 'The Slaver Weapon' since the 200 years mentioned since the last war between the Federation and the Kzinti couldn't have happened - The episode is set around 2269/2270 or so, 200 years previously humanity was still learning how to go faster than warp 1, the Federation was almost a hundred years away from being founded and Starfleet was also almost a hundred years away from being created.
But back then the Star Trek Universe was still being created a story at a time.

Also you'll see pink tribbles, Klingons, the smooth headed ones, in pink as well as the newly introduced Kzinti race wearing pink and flying a pink ship, due to the man who did the colours being colour blind and they didn't release that till it was too late to change the colours.
Pink pride for sure. Worf in pink...that should have been done!

Don't expect anything new added, there's the same extras from the earlier version of the box set.
This series would be a good way of introducing the Star Trek universe to your own kids or young family members, well this and the Original series since they did come out first back in the 60s and 70s.

I really enjoyed this series, finished watching it all an hour ago and loved it. It's not perfect, but that's it's charm. Great stories can make a difference, so if you still collecting the Trek DVDs and you've not seen Animated, then this comes highly recommended.

Now I wonder if Jadzia Dax ever had Worf wearing pink? That would have been interesting.

Well, this is indeed an oddity, and not something I'd ever even heard of before seeing it here on Amazon. A follow-up to the classic / okay / past-its-best (delete depending on your point of view) TV show from the 60's, Star Trek: The Animated Series isn't so much a sequel to, as it is a continuation of, that idea. It features the voice talents of all of the original cast (with the exception of Walter Koenig as Chekov, who was left out apparently for budget reasons) as well as similar settings and story lines, and the same old mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, etc...

The overall quality of the print is excellent and the sound is also first-rate, I would guess virtually as good as the day the show was first aired. There are very few motion artefacts to detract from the viewing experience or to betray the show's age, in fact the only give-away is that the animation is of the classic 70's style, the kind you may well have seen in Hanna-Barbera shows of the same period. And although making a cartoon (I use that term loosely) did allow the makers to explore plots that would have been prohibitively expensive for a live-action show, a lot of the time settings and backgrounds are, understandably, overly colourful but lacking in detail, so don't expect the kind of quality you might see in a big-budget animated movie or even in some of today's cartoons. What it does give you is more of the classic series but in a different form, and rather than it being Star Trek on-the-cheap, I think that you'll quickly see this as nothing less than the original show in slightly different trousers.

However, looking at this with a severely critical eye, at times the show's producers seemed a little constrained by each episode's 20-odd-minute run time, having to squeeze in stories that I feel should have been given the full 45-minute treatment. On a few occasions, events and reasons were rushed through or not explained quite as fully as I felt they should have been, leaving the viewer to make assumptions about why things were happening. The key demographic of the show is also a little uncertain - at first glance I would have said pre-teens; after watching a few of the episodes I would have said teens; a few more and I'm not so sure. Some have story lines with a maturity that rivals those found in the original series and whilst they may be acceptable for today's kids, I fear that much of what was pitched by the writers will be lost on a younger audience. Then again, both are accusations that could be levelled at the original series, which positively serves to promote this as more of the same.

The box houses just the 4 DVDs containing the complete 22-episode run of the show; there's no booklet, no postcards and no posters, even though there are clips for them in the box's interior spine. The episode listings are printed on the inside of the box's inlay card, so are obscured by the DVDs until you take them out. All told, I'm guessing that this is the 'cheap' release made for viewing purposes only, so if you want anything more than the bare minimum you should probably seek out the premium version.

To get the most out of this set I think you have to feel at least a modicum of love for the original Star Trek series; I'm not one of its greatest fans by any means, but I do appreciate it as a science fiction trailblazer and as the father of several (and, in my opinion, much better) Star Trek shows. My concern before buying it had been that it would be nothing more than a low-cost cash-in on the Star Trek brand, but fortunately I was proved wrong and after only a couple of episodes I was drawn in by the familiar storytelling and voice acting, almost forgetting that it was a cartoon. In a nutshell, if at least a part of you enjoyed the original series and you want more of the same, I think you'll get a kick out of this. If you didn't like the original, or if you think that 70's cartoon shows are best left in the past, then it almost certainly won't be for you.