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Star Trek, as it was originally made, ended in 1969. However, that wasn’t the end of the story. Up to that point, it had been something of a limited success, with a hardcore of fans enjoying the adventures of the Enterprise. Once the series ended its run, all the episodes went into syndication, and the show gathered a larger following. A number of animation companies looked to Star Trek as a possible new series for them to produce, and pitched to Paramount for the rights to do so. Gene Roddenberry, the show’s creator, however, had control over what was done with the series; it remained his executive property at the time, and he wasn’t keen on what most of the companies wanted to do with an animated series. If they had had their way, the comedy line sometimes attributed to Captain Kirk ‘We come in peace - shoot to kill!’ would have come to pass. And so nothing came of these initial enquiries. Enter Filmation Late in 1972, Norm Prescott and Lou Scheimer, top executives with animation studio Filmation approached Roddenberry and Paramount about obtaining the rights. Filmation had been in existence for a number of years and would go on to make many popular animated series including Tarzan, Lord Of The Jungle, He-Man and The Masters Of The Universe, Return To The Planet Of The Apes ( based on the movies and tv series ) and The Space Sentinels. Scheimer had appreciated the original series and thought that the property could thrive as an animated series. This pitch was, of course, nothing new, but Filmation promised to commit their best creative artists to the new project and pledged that the show would adhere to the quality and authenticity of the original. Roddenberry maintained creative control, insisting that his colleague, Dorothy Fontana, serve as not only the new show's story editor, as she had done on the original series, but that she also assume the duties of producer. Filmation agreed. Good writing It was down to Fontana that a lot of the original series writers were used, rather than usual cartoon writers. Besides wholey original stories, a lot of sequels were written to tie in with the original series. David Gerrold contributed More Tribbles, More Trouble, a sequel to his popular The Trouble With Tribbles episode and Stephen Kandel, author of the original Harry Mudd episodes, wrote a third instalment, Mudd’s Passion. The original series episode Shore Leave was also given a sequel, this time written by Len Janson and Chuck Menville and called Once Upon A Planet. Fontana herself contributed a followup in part to the classic Harlan Ellison episode The City On The Edge Of Forever, by reusing the Guardian of Forever in her Spock-based tale, Yesteryear. Other writers included former Trek director Marc Daniels, science fiction author Larry Niven, and although he wasn’t able to participate as Chekov, Walter Koenig also contributed a story of his own, The Infinite Vulcan. The look and feel of Trek A lot of effort went into making the animated series look as authentic as possible; this was, of course, one of the selling points to Paramount and Roddenberry. The main characters were all pretty closely modelled on the original actors, although some were better than others. The Enterprise, inside and out, was closely modeled on the actual sets and models from the original. Equipment, like the tricorders and communicators, was also shown pretty accurately. Other ships from the series, such as those belonging to the Klingons and the Romulans, were also well drawn. However, mistakes were made, some of which could have been avoided. Mostly these could be put down to the pressures that the Filmation artists and personnel were under. NBC, the network that decided to buy and broadcast the show, didn’t give the green light until March 1973. Sixteen episodes were ordered, with a further six for the following year. The problem was that the first sixteen had to be ready for broadcast in September the same year, and so with just five months to create eight hours of animation when the likes of the Disney studios would take a year to do an hour, Filmation were under pressure. Limited range The way around this was to reuse shots and use a technique called ‘limited animation’. Unlike the Disney style of animation, where anything up to 25 separate frames of animation would be used for each second of film, limited animation enabled Filmation to use considerably less. The twitch of an eyebrow, one of Spock’s trademark expressions, could be accomplished with as little as three frames. A character smiling could take as little as five or six frames. Also, if head and shoulders shots were being used, or the character was essentially standing still, only the areas that actually moved would be redrawn. The animation was, therefore, more simplistic, but could be accomplished much faster. Voicing the show As many of the original actors as possible were brought onboard to reprise their roles by providing the voices of their animated versions. At first, Filmation planned not to use George Takei and Nichelle Nichols to try and keep their cast costs down. But when Leonard Nimoy learned of this, he said that he would not participate without them. With Spock being one of the ‘big three’, Filmation relented. There was, however, no money left to include Walter Koenig as Chekov, so James Doohan, who provided the voices of a large number of guest characters, had to provide the voice of semi-regular character Lieutenant Arex as a replacement. Majel Barrett similarly voiced numerous female voices including her own character, Nurse Christine Chapel, the semi-regular Lieutenant M’Ress and, of course, the Enterprise computer. George Takei and Nichelle Nichols also occasionally did some guest characters. Filmation were also able to persuade several other guest stars from the original series to return to do the voices of their characters, such as Roger C. Carmel, Stanley Adams, and Mark Lenard as Spock's father, Sarek. Due to the demanding schedules of the voice actors during the show's production, it was sometimes necessary for actors to record their dialogue alone away from the others and send tapes to the studio where they could be mixed together to form the show's soundtrack; Leonard Nimoy recorded some of his dialogue whilst working on a film in England. There was even an occasion in which voice recordings had to be sent in from actors all across America in order to piece together a particular episode. That was an exception, as Shatner, Nimoy, Kelley and the rest of the cast voiced the majority of the episodes together as an ensemble. The high standards of authenticity and quality drove the production cost to about $75,000 per half-hour episode, making it the most expensive animated series of its time. Filmation took all of this in its stride and put forth an admirable effort. At that time, the main problem facing the company was that delivery date from NBC. Strengths and innovations One of the series' greatest strengths over the original was its ability to show alien life-forms, cities, spaceships and phenomena that would have cost far too much or have just been impossible to realise 'in the flesh', some are included above. It also showed things which would later be accepted as canonical in the live-action series. These included the first appearance of a holodeck in The Practical Joker, a device featuring heavily in the later Trek series, the first native American crewmember in How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth, who would later be echoed in Star Trek Voyager's Chakotay, the addition of a second bridge exit, which would later be included in the first Trek movie, and showed the very first captain of the Enterprise, Robert April, a name that been proposed in Roddenberry's original outline for the series in 1964. The series also finally detailed Kirk's middle name as Tiberius, where before only the initial had been known. Award-winning The series was cancelled after its initial 22 episodes, but was still awarded an Emmy Award for the Best Children's Series that year. Critically, it was a success with the Los Angeles Times quoted as saying "NBC's new animated Star Trek is as out of place in the Saturday morning kiddie ghetto as a Mercedes in a soapbox derby. Don't be put off by the fact it's now a cartoon... It is fascinating fare, written, produced and executed with all the imaginative skill, the intellectual flare and the literary level that made Gene Roddenberry's famous old science fiction epic the most avidly-followed program in TV history, particularly in high I.Q. circles. NBC might do well to consider moving it into prime time at mid-series..." High praise at a time when science fiction was not that highly regarded. Disowned A few years after it was aired, Gene Roddenberry asked Paramount to ignore the series as part of the Star Trek canon. Why is unclear, since he had creative control over it originally and had promoted trusted colleague Dorothy Fontana to produce it. Some feel that a few of the stories may not have been as serious as he wanted. It is more likely that he wanted any new series to be pitched more along the lines of the original as he saw it before executives made him mould the original live action series to a less cerebral show, as his original pilot in 1964 had been. At the time he disowned it to Paramount, a new series, featuring the original cast barring Spock, was planned to launch Paramount's own television network. Star Trek: Phase II never happened, and instead Star Trek became a movie franchise before Star Trek: The Next Generation arrived in 1987. Legacy to the future But all the series and movies that followed the animated series owe it quite a lot. Without it adding to the franchise's profile, it is possible that Roddenberry may never have got enough backing to get a new series or movie made, the live action Star Trek living in the past at the time. But with the animated series being taken by fans and critics alike as a good series in its own right, it kept the possibility alive for new, live-action Trek, while providing good entertainment for the fans and the children who grew up watching this new collection of stories. In many ways it was a shame there wasn't more. Episode Guide Season One: Once Upon A Planet ~ The Jihad ~ The Infinite Vulcan ~ The Magicks Of MegasTu ~ More Tribbles, More Trouble ~ The Survivor ~ Beyond The Farthest Star ~ Yesteryear ~ One Of Our Planets Is Missing ~ Mudd's Passion ~ The Time Trap ~ The Terratin Incident ~ The Ambergris Element ~ The Slaver Weapon ~ The Eye Of The Beholder ~ The Lorelei Signal Season Two: The Pirates Of Orion ~ Bem ~ The Practical Joker ~ Albatross ~ How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth ~ The Counter-Clock Incident article copyright PPS / M.Hearn 2000 |