Watching Star Trek: The Animated Series for the First Time

[Tuckerfan]

Never having seen them before, and stumbling across them on the intarwebs, I thought I'd give them a go. I have to say, after watching a couple of the episodes, I can see why it was canceled after 1 season.

The animation is wretched, save for a few scenes which were clearly rotoscoped from TOS. Lots of static shots of the characters, as well as recycled shots, and ones so weirdly constructed that its obvious they did it to avoid having to show movement. In one episode, there were profile shots of Sulu which looked exactly like the profile shots of McCoy, save for the gizmo sticking out of Sulu's bridge console. The overall effect reminds me of those wretched Marvel comics cartoons from the late 60s that had almost no movement in them, and were verging on Clutch Cargo levels of "animation."

[Tuckerfan]

Beyond the Farthest Star

The Enterprise (or more accurately, given how its animated, Enterpoop) is on a star charting mission (Say, wouldn't that be a great job for an unmanned probe?) when it picks up a strange radio transmission. As they investigate, the ship gets sucked into a hyper-gravity field of some kind, and Scotty manages to whip a rabbit out of his ass and get the ship into orbit around a dead star, which was the source of the hyper-gravity.

Once in orbit, they discover a 300 million year old spaceship. Beaming over to it (while wearing "life support belts" I guess that was easier and cheaper than figuring out how to draw spacesuits which let you tell the characters apart), the away team of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty determine that the crew of the ship deliberately damaged it all those eons ago. While exploring the ship, they find a section of it that still has power.

Spock messes around with the computer and finds a message left by the crew of the ship. It talks about danger and seals the section of the ship they're in. Something immediately begins attacking the doors, and the away team beams out. Somehow, the thing that was trying to get at the crew, manages to get in the transporter beam and arrives on the Enterpoop with them. It immediately begins taking over the ship.

Kirk somehow figures out a way to communicate with crew members so that the alien can't hear him (and by "somehow" I mean it makes no sense to me), he, Scotty, and Spock come up with some kind of bizarre plan which involves Kirk putting a life support belt on the helm console, which prevents the alien from controlling the ship. You'd figure that an alien who was essentially the ship wouldn't need humans to operate the controls, but apparently, you do.

Seeing as how the ship is on a kamikaze course for the star, the alien freaks out and leaves the ship. (Bwuh? Its been alive for 300 million+ years and its worried about dying? ) The Enterpoop changes course (without being thrown back in time, like normally seems to happen when they do a rapid dive into and out of a gravity field) and resumes its star charting mission as the alien complains about being lonely.

I give this episode a . Most of it didn't make much sense at all, and it really didn't do anything that they couldn't have done (and done better) in the live action version of the series, save having Mr. Chekov's replacement be an alien. (With no explanation of what happened to Chekov.)

[Tuckerfan]

Yesteryear

This episode almost works, and was hampered by the short 30 minute nature of the show more than anything else.

Kirk, Spock, and a Red Shirt, have revisited the Guardian of Forever to study Orion history. When they come back through, nobody recognizes Spock, and the Enterpoop's first officer is an Andorian. Digging through the records, they find out that Spock, in this version of the universe, died at a young age (his parents soon divorced and his mother died in an accident). They quickly figure out that by going through the Guardian, they interrupted the time stream on Vulcan (though this is never really explained how) and that's what led to Spock's death, while undergoing the Vulcan equivalent of the old Spartan ritual of sending the kid into the wilderness for a few years to toughen him up. (Been funny to see Spock shout, "This is Vulcan!" with a spear in his hands.)

When they decide to go back through the Guardian, there's a brief moment of conflict with the Andorian, and if the show was an hour long, they could have dealt with it in a satisfying manner, instead, they wrap it up with a line of dialogue and a quick handshake.

Spock goes back to Vulcan a few days before he undertook the Spartan ritual. Pretending to be a cousin that no one has ever heard of before (and no one bothers to track down using Google or FaceBook) he quickly integrates himself into his family.

Amazingly, Spock has forgotten lots of important details, and thus is surprised when the younger version of himself sneaks out a month or two early and does the Spartan ritual. Old Spock follows Young Spock, and Young Spock's "teddy bear." (You know, the one McCoy teased him about.) A le-matya (a Vulcan lizard looking thing with fangs) attacks Spock's teddy bear, Old Spock manages to subdue it with a nerve pinch, but not before it poisons the teddy bear.

Young Spock runs back to town, gets a "healer" (apparently, in ages past, when Vulcan had their health care crisis, their solution was to lump vets and physicians into the same category, thus increasing the number of doctors a person could go to, and driving down the prices ). Unfortunately, the healer arrives too late, and Young Spock is forced to have the teddy bear put down.

They return to the Spock family compound, Young Spock apologizes to his father for causing the family pet's death. Sarek is accepting of his son's actions, but still asks Old Spock for advice. Old Spock asks for his father to try and "understand" Young Spock. Old Spock leaves and returns out the Guardian to find that the time line has been restored, save for the fact that his teddy bear is dead.

D.C. Fontana wrote this ep, and they should have let her write the entire series, because this was far and away the best of the ones I've seen. (I'm about 6 episodes in, so far.) It felt like it was a TOS script that she cut down for the cartoon, and had they been able to flesh out parts of it (like the conflict with the Andorian) it would have been the equal of any of the TOS episodes. (I wonder if Harlan Ellison sued them over this one?)

I give it a: since it was harmed more by having to cram it all into a 30 minute piece than anything else. Most of the plot worked, and the parts that didn't were relatively minor.

[Tuckerfan]

One of Our Planets is Missing

Okay, this episode gets several massive minus points from me fairly early on because it has a life form which can live in the vacuum of space (nor is this the only negative that the ep racks up).

The Enterpoop has been informed that there is a strange cloud entering the galaxy and goes to investigate. As the Enterpoop approaches the cloud, it engulfs a planet it, destroying it. The cloud then starts heading towards an inhabited planet. There's some brief moral wrestling with whether or not the Enterpoop should warn the people on the planet, since they won't be able to evacuate the entire planet in time. (This is a question? Really?)

For some reason, the planet only has enough ships to be able to evacuate 5,000 of the planet's 80 million inhabitants. WTF? I wouldn't expect them to be able to get everyone off the planet, but given the way that folks zip around the galaxy in the Trekverse, I'd expect them to be able to do better than that. Naturally, they choose to save the children (though the governor of the planet refuses to let his daughter leave).

The Enterpoop moves to intercept the cloud and gets sucked into it. Spock and McCoy figure out that the cloud is actually a living creature. One complete with teeth and cilia and a brain. Spock uses the computer and the universal translator (for reasons unknown) to do a Vulcan mind meld with the cloud.

The cloud is voiced by Majel Barrett, who sounds like she's doing a bad impersonation of Leela from the Futurama episode The Day the Earth Stood Stupid. Spock is able to explain to the cloud that it is about to eat a planet with intelligent beings on it, and that it would be best if the cloud went back where it came from. The backup plan is to blow up the Enterpoop. Thankfully (Only in the sense that if they had blown up the ship, we'd have never gotten TWoK.), Spock is able to convince the cloud to leave and return home.

If anyone wants to ask when the pussification of Trek began, I'm going to say it was with this episode. No goddamn way would TOS Kirk allow such a creature to leave alive. Remember the episode with the "vampire cloud"? Kirk was positively obsessed with killing that thing, and sending the cloud "back home" is just fecking stupid. So what if the cloud is "intelligent"! Its apparently too stupid to examine planets before it eats them to figure out that there's intelligent life on them. How do we know that it won't eat planets inhabited by intelligent beings in the galaxy it came from? TOS Kirk would have wanted that thing dead.

I know the excuse will be, "That's just 'too heavy' for a Saturday morning kid's show." Bullshit to that. In Yesteryear, Young Spock had to agree to putting the family pet down. That is a pretty traumatic choice for an adult to have to make (I speak from experience, having had to put my favorite cat down not too long ago.), for a kid, that's Ol' Yeller and Bambi's mother wrapped up in one big turd shaped package. I give this episode a:

[What Exit?]

Yesteryear was the best episode, but the Tribble followup was not bad either. Have fun and enjoy. I had the pleasure of seeing them new and thus as a little kid on Saturday morning. They work better that way.

[D. Fenestrator]

Yesteryear was the best episode, but the Tribble followup was not bad either. Have fun and enjoy. I had the pleasure of seeing them new and thus as a little kid on Saturday morning. They work better that way.

I also watched them first-run, and am afraid to revisit them. I actually thought they were a pale copy of TOS back then, and I don't know if I would have the patience for them now. But the synopses folks have posted are making me almost wish I was watching the shows... :smile:

[Oliveloaf]

My kid and I watched the whole series together. She was eight at the time and was mesmorized. It was an awesome intro to scifi for her.

I enjoyed it.

The animation is dreadful, and none of the cast seems especially glad to be involved in the production.
But the stories are pretty good, and the music adds a nice dimension.

[Tuckerfan]

The Lorelei Signal

If anything can have the poet Homer spinning in his grave, its this episode. The Enterpoop is heading to a point in space which according to the records of the Klingon, Federation, and Romulan Empires, every 27.something or other years, a starship has disappeared from. It's the early 1970s, baby, and the Bermuda Triangle is big. So big that it actually extends into space!

The Enterpoop arrives at that section of space at precisely the 27.something or other mark and picks up a transmission from a nearby star system. Instead of, you know, like TOS Kirk would do, asking Uhura to put it on the bridge speakers, Kirk has her put it on the ship's speakers. Instantly, the male crew members (no pun intended) are, well, heck, if you haven't seen , then you've got no idea of the level of absurdity of this episode, practically jerking off to what even they admit are hallucinations.

Apparently, the Federation has the belief that being born with a penis is the only thing that really matters, and instead of Uhura and the other female members of the crew (I just want to say that while I might "get" Roddenberry's idea that homosexuality can be "cured" by the 23rd Century [Not that I agree with it, mind you.], I would think that bisexuality, at the very least, would remain, and given that Roddenberry was supposedly a "swinger," I'm surprised that this episode passed "muster.") being affected by the sound, they're immune to it. Uhura & Co., instead of realizing that those of the crew who're handicapped by having a penis and are now engaging in actions which put the ship in mortal danger, simply let Kirk order the ship to follow the siren song.

The Enterpoop reaches a planet which is the source of the signal and Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and a Red Shirt beam down to the surface where they meet a group of women who quickly, and almost inexplicably, over power our "sausage" bearing heroes. The leader of the group of women is obviously voiced by Majel. I don't really understand this. I know that they were doing this series on a minuscule budget, but I have never been able to figure out why female voice actors, with few exceptions, do not have the range of male voice actors.

When our heroes come to their senses, they are wearing headbands. The purpose of these headbands is not entirely clear. Perhaps it is a foreshadowing of Olivia Newton John's song "Animal." IAC, our heroes find themselves older and weaker than they were before, but somehow manage to crawl out of the compound the evil females have lured them into and hide themselves in a giant urn.

Spock figures out that the headbands get brighter when the wimmins are around, and thus drain the males of their potency. As a way of preserving their precious bodily fluids, Spock volunteers to slip off and find the communicators. He does so, and requests an all vaginally equipped rescue party, before being overcome by the gash.

Uhura, Chapel, and some Red Shirted wimmins beam down to the planet, find Spock, then stun the wimmins on the planet. When the wimmins come to, Uhura manages to get them to use the computer on the planet to locate Kirk & Co. (WTF? Why couldn't the natives find them using this method?) Uhura & Co. rescue Kirk, McCoy and the Red Shirt.

If ever there was an episode of Trek which said, to paraphrase the Rev. Ivan Stang, "Penis is good, vaginas are bad!" this was it. Dr. McCoy is reported to, though how he does this without examining the women is never explained, have figured out that if the women are removed from the planet, they'll be like normal women (instead of sirens who live forever, but need to sucker men into landing on their planet every 27.something or other years, so they can drain them of their precious bodily fluids). Yea!

This ep also earns a: . Way too misogynistic for my tastes.

[Tuckerfan]

More Tribbles, More Troubles

Good Christ, why? I never liked the original tribble episode and revisiting the subject is just a Really Bad Idea[sup:37p8mxq5]TM[/sup:37p8mxq5], IMHO. This episode is no better.

The Enterpoop is headed to Sherman's Planet with two robotic ships loaded with quintotriticale, and not quadrotriticale (cue Nigel Tufnel saying, "Its one louder.") when they detect a small Federation craft being fired upon by Klingons. The Enterpoop is interested in this because they've heard that the Klingons have a new weapon of some sort, so they go to investigate.

As they're trying to beam the pilot of the ship out, the Klingons open up on the Enterpoop with their new weapon. Apparently, they've managed to modify Aquaman's fish communicator (those of you who remember the Super Friends cartoon will get the joke, the rest of you won't) as a weapon. It causes the Enterpoop to lose nearly all power and Scotty is having trouble maintaining the pattern of the ship's pilot. The Klingons demand that Kirk turn over the pilot to them. Instead of explaining to the Klingons that because of their weapon, the Enterpoop is unable to fully beam the pilot aboard, Kirk says that since the pilot is a Federation citizen, he must refuse the "request."

Spock points out that the robotic grain ships are not affected by the Klingon weapon, so Kirk orders Sulu to send them on a collision course with the Klingon ship. The Klingons turn their new weapon on the grain ships as well as the Enterpoop, but its too much for the Klingons' power supply and they withdraw. Scotty is then able to bring the pilot aboard and we discover that its Cyrano Jones. Oh boy.

Kirk begins to give us a recap, aw hell, I can't do it. Given a choice between rewatching this episode and watching an ep of Enterprise, I'd take Enterprise over this. This episode doesn't merely blow chunks, it scoops them up, eats them, and blows them again. Then it takes the reblown chunks, turns them into an enema, shoves it up its ass, and then proceeds to spoon up the resulting shitstorm with same kind of gusto that a starving man attacks a 15 course meal.

Suffice it to say that not only do the tribbles wind up on the Klingon ship, but this is the first episode of Trek where technobabble rears its ugly head. Damned if I can remember the babble, Spock says it, and anyone willing to rewatch it to see Spock say it, is a better man than I'll ever be. David Gerrold deserves to be gang raped by an army of STD infected, rusty chainsaw wielding zombies for inflicting tribbles on us. (Heinlein should have sued the pants off of Gerrold and Roddenberry over the matter.) Fuck the lot of them!

[Tuckerfan]

The Survivor

There are some big flaws in this ep, but I have to say that this ep and Yesteryear are the only two I've seen which have a glimmer of the original TOS in them. While Yesteryear was harmed by the 30 minute format, this episode suffers from some pisspoor dialoge and flat voice acting.

The Enterpoop discovers a small ship, which has been heavily damaged by a meteor storm. They beam the pilot aboard and discover that he is none other than Carter Winston, a man who is not only incredibly wealthy and philanthropic, but also is a big fan of Victorian era fashions. Dr. McCoy is particularly indebted to Winston, since he saved McCoy's daughter. (She was studying on a planet when it was hit by famine. The Federation couldn't be bothered to do anything about it, so Carter Winston bought food and had it shipped to the planet.)

Winston has been missing for five years, so the crew is happy to have found so illustrious a figure. Coincidentally, Winston's fiancée is a [del:1mgsgkp5]red shirt[/del:1mgsgkp5] security officer onboard the Enterpoop.

McCoy gives Winston (I wonder if his fiancée ever said, "Tastes good, like a cigarette should!"?) a complete physical, in order to verify his identity. Some of the readings are off, but McCoy figures its a problem with his instruments. (Later, it turns out that there's nothing wrong with the instruments, which puzzles McCoy.)

Winston meets his fiancée, and tells her that she needs to forget about him, and seemingly implies that he had a homosexual relationship with someone who rescued him a number of years ago. His fiancée is troubled by this and wanders off. Kirk, in the meantime, retires to his cabin to file a report about Winston's ship.

While he's dictating his report, Winston comes in, crosses his arms like a mummy and turns into a tentacled creature, who then knocks out Kirk and assumes his form. He then goes to the bridge and orders Sulu to plot a course through the Neutral Zone. There's some discussion about treaty violations, but [del:1mgsgkp5]Winston[/del:1mgsgkp5] Kirk explains that the matter is urgent. He then leaves the bridge.

Kirk wakes up on his bed, goes to the bridge, discovers that the ship is in TNZ, orders them to get out of there, and has Spock come with him to Sick Bay. Kirk assumes that there's something wrong with himself, since he doesn't recall giving the orders.

While they're on their way to Sick Bay, Winston goes to Sick Bay, knocks out McCoy and assumes his form. Shortly thereafter, his fiancée shows up to ask advice of the doctor (I couldn't help but be reminded of Troi from TNG). Winston's fiancée is troubled by everything, and even though she hasn't seen Winston in five years, is still in lurve with him. [del:1mgsgkp5]Winston[/del:1mgsgkp5] McCoy says she needs to forget about Winston and go on with her life, she gets up to leave as Kirk and Spock walk in.

Kirk says he needs a complete physical because he's worried that he might not be up to snuff. [del:1mgsgkp5]Winston[/del:1mgsgkp5] McCoy says that Kirk will have to come back later as he's too busy going over test results. Spock asks if the results on Winston were good, McCoy says yes, when Spock inquires if there might have been some problem with the readings, McCoy replies that anything's possible and he'd look into it.

Kirk and Spock leave, and while standing in the corridor think that there's something fishy about McCoy's response. They're not bothered by the fact that McCoy refused to do a full medical examination on the captain, but by his admission that there might have been some problem with the tests on Winston because McCoy potentially screwed something up. Now, I've never been in the military, but I have to think that if the captain of a ship were to walk into Sick Bay and say he needed a medical exam, it wouldn't matter how busy the ship's doctor was, he'd drop everything and give the captain an exam. (I'd also think that under such circumstances, the First Officer would temporarily relieve the captain until things could be sorted out.)

When they return to Sick Bay, Kirk and Spock don't find McCoy, they hear a noise from another room. They enter, and find McCoy on the floor, coming to from what he thinks is a highly unusual nap. (The room is supposed to be the ship's lab, but the background makes it look like the ship's morgue, IMHO.)

Walking out of the lab, Kirk notices that there's an extra examination table (You know, I can see McCoy not pinging on the extra table, since he's in the room every day and might not pay close attention to such things, but I can't see Spock missing it.). Kirk tells the table to turn back into Winston, and threatens to pour acid on it, if it doesn't.

Winston is revealed to be a Vendorian, a species which can shape shift and is quarantined on their home planet by the Federation because how can you trust a shape shifter? (All of this is forgotten by the time DS9 rolls around, for some reason.) Kirk calls for a security team, but the Vendorian escapes before they arrive.

Winston's fiancée spots him, but because she's so in lurve with him, she can't stop him. Kirk berates her for it, and two Romulan ships appear, demanding that the Enterpoop surrender. Kirk realizes that Winston was a Romulan spy, sent to lure the Enterpoop into TNZ (mainly because Winston tries to escape using his ship at this point). Kirk stalls for time, while ordering Sulu to close the shuttle craft doors.

Winston disguises himself as an engineering crew member and sabotages the deflector shield. His fiancée catches up to him shortly after this, and there's a discussion between the two of them about how much Winston lurved her. Kirk finds out that the deflector shields are down, and Scotty informs him that it'll be an hours before they're repaired.

Kirk tries some bluster on the Romulans, telling them that he knows all about their plans, which they deny. Suddenly, one of the deflector shields is operational, so Kirk opens fire on the Romulans, crippling their ships. Upon congratulating Scotty for getting the shield up in the nick of time, Scotty says that he didn't, and he has no idea what Kirk is talking about.

Spock realizes at this point that it was Winston who transformed himself into a deflector shield. Winston then appears on the bridge in his tentacled form and tells all to Kirk. Kirk is understanding, but places Winston under arrest, saying that he will testify that Winston saved the Enterpoop and thus should be treated mercifully by the Federation and allows Winston's fiancée to act as Winston's guard.

Honestly, I can't say why this episode feels so much like a TOS episode. The lurve story was tedious and forced, and the guy voicing the Romulan was horrible. Even Shat doing a "cold reading" of the lines could have done a better job. Still, it "felt" right for a TOS episode in most respects, and I'm willing to overlook the flaws it had to give it a:

[Tuckerfan]

The Infinite Vulcan

Not to be confused with The Infinite Cat Project. This episode was written by Walter Koenig, who fails to appear in it. (Maybe he was too busy writing scripts for LotL or something.)

The Enterpoop is conducting a survey of a newly discovered planet, Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Sulu beam down to the surface and discover what appears to be an abandoned alien city. Sulu gets affectionate with a native plant and is poisoned by it. While McCoy tries to save him, the natives appear. They're sentient mobile plants, who wear necklaces that are translator devices (so much for everyone on TV speaking English).

Over McCoy's objections, they quickly cure Sulu and then take the landing party to meet their leader, a giant, swarthy human named Keniclius 5. They are then attacked by flying plants who kidnap Spock. Kirk demands that Spock be returned to him, but quickly realizes that Keniclius 5 has the upper hand and retreats to the Enterpoop to plan his next course of action.

Back aboard the Enterpoop, they discover that Keniclius was involved in the Eugenics Wars and disappeared from Earth centuries before. The crew figures out that Keniclius 5 is the fifth clone of the original scientist. Kirk makes a comment about hard to believe this is, and I couldn't help but think, "You guys do almost the same damn thing with your transporter every week!"

Kirk hatches a cunning plan to free Spock. He has McCoy whip up a batch of weedkiller, then after the landing party beams down, Scotty takes the ship out of orbit, to give the impression that the Enterpoop has given up on Spock. While trying to find Spock, the landing party discovers the plant people (and IMHO, you should say it like they say "crab people" on South Park ) readying a group of spaceships.

Nabbing the leader of the plant people, the landing party gets him to tell them that the plant people are going to send the ships off on a mission to bring peace to the galaxy. Kirk demands to be taken to Spock, and the plant people leader agrees to do so, but instead has them ambushed by the flying plants.

The landing party manages to kill them with the herbicide (which strangely doesn't affect the plant people) and they discover a dying Spock. Keniclius 5 reappears and refuses to listen to Kirk's plea to revive Spock, instead revealing Spock 2.0, a giant clone of Spock. The Enterpoop returns to orbit, and Uhura contacts Kirk, telling him that Keniclius' published writings talk about him creating a super race to bring peace to the galaxy.

Kirk manages to reason with Spock 2.0 and he does a mind meld with Spock 1.0, thus saving him. The plant people leader tries to attack Kirk, but Sulu stops him with a judo flip. They then discover that the plant people are dying out and that this was most likely caused by a disease that Keniclius brought with him to the planet. Upon finding out that there is indeed peace in the galaxy, Keniclius 5 has no idea of what he's going to do with himself. Its suggested that he and Spock 2.0 find a way to save the plant people. (Considering that he's responsible for them dying out, I think that would have been the first thing he did.)

The episode ends with Kirk telling Sulu that he wants Sulu to teach him the judo move. Sulu replies, "But you have to be inscrutable" to be able to do the move. Kirk, sounding somewhat hurt says, "But Mr. Sulu, you're the most scrutable man I know." At which point, Sulu winks to the camera, before we fade to black. (Leading me to wonder if this wasn't some kind of in-joke about Takei being gay, and curious, but not curious enough to want to google it, if it didn't serve as the basis for a bunch of Kirk/Sulu slash fanpr0n.)

I have to say that despite some of the flaws with this episode, it worked, IMHO, and would have made a good TOS episode. The characters were consistent with how they appeared in TOS, and it was nice to see a little reference to things which had previously happened in Trek. I give this one a:

[Tuckerfan]

Magicks of Magus-Tu

[Lewis Black] What the fuck was that about? [/LB]

What a garbled mish mash of bad crap. The episode begins with the Enterpoop heading towards the center of the galaxy, with no sign of Sybok. It seems that whomever wrote this ep had nothing but the vaguest ideas of the Big Bang theory. They think that a giant explosion is what created our galaxy and the Enterpoop is on its way to the center, because they figure they'll be seeing matter being created at this point. (Sounds dangerous. Why not send a robotic probe to do it?)

Arriving at the center, they see new matter popping into being, then suddenly the Enterpoop gets sucked forward at speeds which should have torn the ship apart, but don't, for whatever reason. Despite the fact that this is an animated show, and thus it should be easier to show things getting tossed about, we're treated to the disaster by the use of camera shaking.

Life support systems, along with all power on the ship fail, and the crew immediately begins collapsing and gasping for breath. I'm guessing that the same engineering geniuses who built a starship without seat belts also saw no problem with putting in what NASA would call an "undersized" life support system.

Just when everything seems blackest, a Pan looking figure, who is suspiciously lacking nipples, appears on the bridge and saves the crew. His name is Lucius and he's a huuuuuuuge fan of humans. He does some magic (literally) and takes Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Sulu to the surface of a planet.

There's some jumbling around, but eventually things settle down and Lucius explains that magic is real in this dimension and that his people have tried to help humanity in the past, but humans were always just too stupid to figure out magic. Suddenly, Lucius shrieks that they're in danger of being discovered and zaps the crew back to the Enterpoop

Spock and the rest of the crew begin to experiment with magic since they're unable to go anywhere. Sulu manages to get a hot looking chick to appear in front of him on the bridge (Really? Is that appropriate behavior for an officer? It brings us back to , I linked to earlier.) when Lucius appears in her place (something which I think that George Takei would find more appealing, if he could get past the whole no nipple business). He warns the crew that by playing with magic, they risk having themselves discovered by the "others."

Anybody want to guess what happens next? That's right, Lucius tells the crew not to talk about him touching them in their "special place" because if they do, then the police will come and take him away, and he won't be able to give them that pony for their birthday like he promised. Okay, I made that part up. What really happens is far lamer. The crew wind up in the stocks of what appears to be Salem during the witch trials.

Spock is able to fairly accurately pinpoint the time period, and I have to say, "How?" Yes, I know he's half human and his mother was an [del:3svyd6rl]encyclopedia[/del:3svyd6rl] teacher, but for fuck's sake! Him knowing about Salem is akin to my knowing about the Warring States Period in China. Sure, I know that it'd be really bad to find myself there, but no way could I see a Chinese guy in period garb and know, "Uh, oh, I'm in the Warring States Period!"

Despite the presence of non-humans in the crew, everyone is basically doomed because we burned witches at Salem. Essentially, this episode appears to have been written by a Wiccan/Satanist who sees it as an opportunity to say, "Fuck you!" to the Christians. I might have found this ep enjoyable, if the wanker who wrote it had gotten their history right. Instead, we're treated to some stupid trial of the value of humanity which has the magical people of what appears to be Salem scanning data tapes and punch cards to study the history of humanity. Lucius turns out to be Lucifer (Gee, like I couldn't tell by the horns, goatee, cloven feet and lack of nipples) and Kirk is forced into a "magic off" with the leader of Lucian's people who has a name similar to Asimov, and must have caused poor Isaac fits when he saw the ep.

In the end, our heroes are triumphant, thanks to Kirk being able to use the power of rainbows and spout babble. The Enterpoop leaves the center of the galaxy, never to return until STV (which was vastly better than this ep). In checking IMDB, I see that this episode was written by Larry Brody, who's screen credits include things like Murder, She Wrote, VOY, Automan, Manimal, and Douchebag. Okay, so maybe I made that last one up, but its a pretty fitting description of Brody. I give this ep a:

[Tuckerfan]

Once Upon a Planet

The Enterpoop returns to the "shore leave" planet for some R&R. The preliminary party of McCoy, Sulu, Uhura, and somebody else, who is unimportant, so I don't remember who, reminisce about how much fun the planet was the last time they were there. Until the Red Queen shows up and McCoy realizes she's out for blood. He panics and calls for an emergency beam out of everyone on the planet. The transporter is able to snag everyone save Uhura, who is busy singing by a stream.

She gets snagged by machines which look like the Martian ships from the 50s version of War of the Worlds and taken below the planet's surface, where she meets the computer controlling everything. It informs her that it plans on using her as a bait to lure the "slaves" of the Enterpoop to the surface, where it will kill them.

Kirk is briefed by McCoy as to what happened, and he decides to lead a party down to the surface to find the caretaker. (Hey, sending the commanding officer of the ship down to a known hostile environment! That's some brilliant military strategery, my friends!) Upon landing, McCoy, Sulu, Spock, and Kirk quickly figure out that the caretaker is dead and begin searching for a way to get below the planet's surface in hopes that Uhura would be there.

Meanwhile, back on the Enterpoop things are starting to wrong with the ship. The artificial gravity fails and the crew floats around until someone manages to invent these strange looking things.

They appear to be seatbelts, save for the fact that they don't fully wrap around. Also, that's not Sulu on the bridge, Sulu's on the planet, but rather than drawing in someone else, they just used footage of Sulu and had someone else do the voice.

Scotty also discovers that the ship is modifying itself for purposes unknown.

Uhura manages to tease a little bit more information out of the central computer, while Kirk & Co. try to figure out a way to get below the surface. McCoy, who in the TOS episode, gushed hugely about the advanced equipment the planet has, tells Kirk he remembers very little about everything, but eventually, Kirk hatches a plan.

Even though the central computer can do brain scans of people, it doesn't seem to be able to detect when people say, "We'll use one of your medicines, Bones, to make one of us appear mortally ill, then the machines will take him below the surface." Spock is the logical choice for this, and McCoy shoots him full of something that causes Spock to fall down and have the same skin tone as Homer Simpson. (Which he retains for the rest of the episode. D'oh!)

Kirk is able to follow the helper machine that scoops up Spock, but the rest are left behind. Spock comes to in the medical area, and leaps away before the machine can do any tests on them. He and Kirk meet up, find Uhura and discover that the computer running the planet is "bored" and wants to use the Enterpoop to travel the galaxy and free the machines from their masters.

Kirk and Spock have a long talk with the computer and explain to it that when a human and a computer love one another very much, they decide to express their love by having a baby starship, then all of them can travel together through the galaxy as one big happy family. They also point out that if the planet were to advertise, it'd have species from all over the galaxy coming to visit it, and it'd be able to learn ever so much from them. The computer realizes they're right, stops modifying the Enterpoop and says people can come and have sex with its robots any time they like. The episode ends with McCoy, Sulu, the White Rabbit, Alice, and Barney the Dinosaur having a nice tea party together. (Okay, so it was a purple dragon, it might as well have been Barney, the ending of this thing was so syrupy.)

I know I've bitched in the past that TNG never really re-visited any of the places from TOS, but maybe that's a good thing. So far, there's been two revisits in TAS to TOS, and both of them picked episodes that I didn't particularly care for (though I didn't really hate the TOS episode with the shore leave planet, I just wasn't all that thrilled with it). I know that there's at least one more TOS revisit episode coming, and perhaps it'll be better than the first two.

Maybe its because of the suckfest of the previous episode, but while I didn't care for this one, I can't really give it a bad rating. The characters were consistent with TOS, and it was well written for what it was (a 70s Saturday morning kid show). There was also a female Kzinti who filled in for Uhura on the Enterpoop, and whenever she was on screen, I couldn't help but wonder if Kirk had hit it or not. Finally, the ep gets some props for featuring a number of things that they could never have done on the live action version of the show (seatbeltish things, loss of gravity, a Kzinti crew member and a dragon).

[Tuckerfan]

Mudd's Passion

Mudd as Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs. [Mr. Spock] That is an outstandingly stupid idea! [/MS] (Which is an actual quote, BTW, from this ep.)

The Enterpoop travels to a planet of miners to arrest Harry Mudd who is selling love potion gems. (So much for the claim in ST:IV that they don't have money in the future, the going rate for the stuff was 300 credits.) Kirk and Spock manage to convince Mudd to come with them by exposing him as a fraud to the miners, a small riot breaks out, and Spock fires his phaser, cutting something, for some reason which is never explained.

Once onboard ship, Mudd is given a medical examination by Nurse Chapel. Picking up on the fact that Chapel's got the hots for Spock, he gets her to take one of his love crystals, when she is momentarily overcome by the crystals, Mudd steals her phaser. (Doesn't this violate the oath that medical types take? Sure, the thing can be set on stun, but its a lethal weapon as well, and I can imagine that someone with a medical condition could be killed by one set on stun, just as they are now, with tasers.)

While Chapel is crawling into Spock's lap (you rub the potion on your skin, then touch the person you want to get the hots for you), Mudd uses the phaser to break out of the brig. He then takes Chapel's ID card that he'd also stolen, puts his picture on the card, and heads to the shuttle bay.

In the shuttle bay, he's confronted by Chapel, who's pissed about the crystals not working. Mudd promptly throws the crystals into an air duct, overpowers Chapel, and steals a shuttle (which has its engines above the fuselage, instead of below) and land's on a nearby planet. Spock is on the bridge, babbling about strange "feelings" and then discovers that Mudd is kidnapping Chapel. Spock proceeds to go full pon farr rage, tears the bridge apart, and uses sections of the ring surrounding it as a spear to stab everyone on board. He then tears his shirt open, beats his chest like a gorilla and proceeds to belt out The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins at full volume, before setting the controls of the Enterpoop to cause the ship to dive into the planet's atmosphere. Spock next climbs out onto the saucer section, holds his "spear" over his head, letting out a Tarzan yell, then tosses it at a fleeing Mudd, who gets impaled and collapses to the ground, gasping out his last breath.

Spock leaps from the saucer, grabs Chapel, throws her over a rock, and proceeds to perform the "Kirk maneuver" on her.

Okay, most of that didn't happen, but that's a helluvalot better than what did happen. Kirk and Spock beam down to the planet, there's a moment where Kirk saves Spock from stumbling and the following dialogue sounds like something from Kirk/Spock slash pr0n.

They find Mudd and Chapel (who're being attacked by giant rock monsters, which were clearly the inspiration for the one in Galaxy Quest, [a pity there wasn't a scene where Kirk got his shirt ripped, with Spock commenting on it]), while the crew on the Enterpoop are busy using lame pick up lines on one another. Phasers being useless on the rock monsters, Kirk talks about creating a distraction (the crew of the Enterpoop being too distracted to do an emergency beam out). Spock calls this an astoundingly stupid idea. Instead, they decide to feed the two remaining love crystals Mudd has to one of the monsters. (Apparently, there's no worries about weight and dosage issues.)

Kirk runs up to the one that sort of looks like a [Fred Schneider]Rock Lobster![/FS] and tosses three love crystals in its mouth. It gets a goofy expression on its face, rubs Kirk with its claw and then proceeds to chase after the other rock monster. Kirk, for some reason, doesn't fall in love with the [Fred Schneider]Rock Lobster![/FS]. The crew, however, has managed to snap out of their beer goggled state to realize they've all gotten a case of "coyote love." M'Ress hears Chapels cries for an emergency beam up and everybody is saved. Yay!

It ends with Chapel recording Mudd's confessions of all his crimes. (WTF? Shouldn't that be a Red Shirt's job?) This was another wretched episode. Revisiting Mudd isn't exactly a bad idea, but this brought nothing to the character, or any of the other characters from the series. I give it a:

[Tuckerfan]

The Terratin Incident

Or the Enterpoop learns about "shrink." They are studying the remnant of a supernova, when they pick up an old Earth-type distress signal from a nearby star system. Kirk orders the ship to investigate, over the objections of Dr McCoy.

Once in orbit, the crew is attacked by a strange ray, and soon discovers that all organic matter is shrinking. The dilithium crystals have also been damaged, and they've no hope of getting out of there before the crew shrinks to the point where they can no longer operate the controls. Even contacting the closest starbase (number 23, for those who follow the Law of Five) is out of the question.

There's some "dramatic tension" as Nurse Chapel nearly drowns in a fish tank, and then Kirk hits upon the idea of beaming down to the planet to see if he can find the source of the ray. Since its going to be difficult for the crew to operate the controls once Kirk's on the planet, they set them to automatic recall, to yank Kirk back to the ship after 10 minutes. Spock speculates that beaming Kirk down to the planet might restore Kirk to his normal size. This is the second time (The Lorelei Signal was the first.) that the writers seem to have some grasp of transporter technology. Thankfully, we're spared them using it in some unnecessary and stupid way to save everyone (as would later happen on TNG, IIRC).

Kirk beams down to the planet, finds himself normal sized again, and while dodging molten lava, sees a miniature city, but before he can do any more, is beamed back aboard the Enterpoop. There he discovers that most of the crew is missing. Upon reaching the bridge (and I have to wonder how the miniature Kirk managed to get anywhere using the turbolift, as you had to turn the handle to get the thing to work), he finds Scotty, and a handful of other crew members cowering in fear.

They inform Kirk that the rest of the crew was mysteriously beamed off the ship shortly after Kirk left. Kirk then points the ship's phasers at the city, contacts the inhabitants and informs them that if they don't return his crew, he'll vaporize their city, and to prove he means business, he vaporizes some nearby crystals.

He is contacted by Wayne Szalinski who explains that their communication gear is broken, and the only way they could make the Enterpoop aware of what was going on, was by shrinking the crew and beaming them to the planet. (Erm, okay. So how are you talking to Kirk now?) Szalinski makes Kirk an offer that if he agrees to save the Terratin colony (who are originally from Earth, but have shrunk due to rays naturally appearing on the planet), he'll return the crew and give the Enterpoop enough dilithium crystals to repair the ship.

Kirk agrees and promptly beams only his crew members (who regain normal size once the return to the ship) and the dilithium crystals back aboard the Enterpoop. When questioned by the Terratins if Kirk is going to hold up his end of the bargain, Kirk orders phasers locked on the city and fires upon it. (Note, I am not making this up.) The city winds up on the transporter platform, filling up only one of the sections.

Spock then wheels a giant microscope over so that Kirk can look at the people of the city and tells them that they'll be resettled on a planet called Vagisil 3. In his final log discussing the event, Kirk says that the Terratins will be placed on what sounds like a floodplain of the planet.

This episode is a head scratcher for a number of reasons. First of all, despite the stupidity of the plot (it borrowed numerous elements from The Incredible Shrinking Man save the spider battle), it was mostly well-written. It did branch out and do things that they couldn't have successfully done in the live action version of the show, but much of that shouldn't have been done in the first place. Then there's the whole business of Kirk locking phasers on the Terratin city, that was just bizarre, as was his comments about putting the city on a planet where it sounds like it'll get wiped out by the first rain. Compared to the previous episode, however, this is tolerable.

[Tuckerfan]

The Time Trap

Oh goody, another episode which makes reference to the Bermuda Triangle. This time its the "Delta Triangle." Clearly, this is where the whole concept of Delta+suck+Trek that led to Voyager, came from.

Not that this is a horrific episode, but its one that didn't really need to be made. Arriving in the Delta Triangle, the Enterpoop spots a Klingon vessel. Kirk orders hailing frequencies open, but the Klingon's fire on the Enterpoop. Kirk returns fire, and the Klingon ship vanishes after being hit. Two more Klingon ships appear, and Kirk realizes its some kind of trap.

He orders Sulu to lay in a course for where the Klingon ship disappeared, but to not engage the engines until his signal. The Klingons hail Kirk, demand he surrender for destroying a Klingon ship. Kirk says they didn't destroy the ship and refuses to surrender. (Wonder what Picard would have done?) He cuts the transmission and orders Sulu to head for where the Klingon ship disappeared at maximum warp.

The Enterpoop finds itself in a "Sargasso Sea in space," with ships from various time periods and races, including the first warp powered ship, the Bonaventure, which looks a lot like the Excelsior from ST:III. Spock points out that there's signs of life aboard the Bonaventure, but before they can hatch a plan to contact the crew and figure out some way to get back to the normal universe, they're fired upon by the Klingon ship they'd been chasing earlier.

The blasts have no effect, and instead of saying, "What the hell?" they return fire, which has no effect on the Klingons. Kirk is beamed off the bridge and appears beside the Klingon captain before a council made up of a number of races who've been trapped in this space. Kirk and the Klingon are told that violence is prohibited, because if all the races in this pocket of time do not work together, they'll all die.

The council informs Kirk and the Klingon that any act of violence will be punished by isolating the offending ship's crew for 100 years. When the Klingon captain objects, he's informed that time passes slowly, so its really not that big of a deal. (Which makes me wonder why the hell they bother?) Kirk and the Klingon are both sent back to their respective ships.

Kirk lets Spock know what's going on and orders him to figure out a way to get them out of there. Scotty informs them that the ship's dilithium crystals are breaking down and in 4 days, they'll be SOL.

A telepath on the assembled council informs them that the newcomers are trying to escape. The rest of the council says that this is to be expected, and their rules prohibit them from interfering unless someone poses a danger to the others. Besides, until they try and figure out that there is no hope, they won't accept their fate.

The Klingons nearly destroy their ship in a failed attempt to escape, but this gives Spock an idea and he proposes that they couple the Enterpoop to the Klingon ship, and use both ships working together to escape. (I can't help but be reminded of a certain film based on a book by one Arthur C. Clarke.)

Kirk broaches the idea to the Klingons, who agree to the idea. Spock becomes incredibly chummy with a couple of Klingons before heading back to the Enterpoop. Later, after a couple of Klingons, who're on the Enterpoop to help with modifying the ship, are caught nosing around in an off-limits area, Spock gets chummy with them as well. When Kirk confronts him about this, Spock explains that he could sense they were up to something, and he needed to touch them to try and find out what. All he is able to tell Kirk is that the Klingons are planning some form of sabotage.

It turns out, that the Klingons have a pill sized bomb that they intend to plant on the Enterpoop, which will blow the ship up, after the break through the time barrier. At a party on the Enterpoop a fight breaks out between one of the Klingon's and McCoy, which allows another Klingon to put the bomb in what looks like a kitchen cabinet. Kirk and the Klingon find themselves before the council and the council decides to lock the Klingons up for 100 years.

Kirk pleads for them to allow the Klingons to remain free for one more day, so that they might try to escape. The council says that escape is impossible, but after an impassioned speech by Kirk, agree to let them try. At no point, does Kirk offer to share his information about how they're going to escape with the council, so that if its successful the member races can try and work out their own escape plans. (Okay, so maybe none of the ships there have working dilithium crystals, but presumably, some other ships will show up and they can use those to escape.) He also makes no offers to send a robot ship to rescue the trapped beings once they make it out. And, even more damning, IMHO, he fails to nail the Orion chick. This is not the Captain James T. Kirk I know.

The next day, the Enterpoop ship links up with the Klingon vessel and they head for the barrier. As they're nearing it, the council contacts them and tells them that the telepath has detected the Klingon plot to blow up the Enterpoop. Spock races to the kitchen cabinet, grabs the pill, chucks it out the ejection chute, and the thing promptly explodes. Uhura announces angrily that the Klingon commander has sent a message to Kling taking credit for everything, and Kirk says, "Meh."

Really, the best you could say about this ep was that it was a "place holder." It was neither bad enough to warrant throwing objects at the screen, nor is it good enough to be worth catching on TV unless you happen to surf into it and there's nothing else on. Oh, and let me just say that I'm not big on telepathy, so I really wish they had ditched it from this episode. I give it a :dub:

[Tuckerfan]

The Ambergris Element

[Mom from Futurama] Who smells like porpoise horck? [/MfF]

The Enterpoop is exploring a planet which was turned into a mostly water world. They believe that the information gained will help save millions of people on another Federation planet (Why are there only millions of people on Federation worlds and not billions?) which is in danger of suffering a similar fate.

Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Red Shirt of the Week, take a flying sub runabout shuttle craft down to the planet, and land on the water, next to the largest landmass on the planet. Almost immediately, they're attacked by a giant tentacled fish-like amphibian. Realizing they're screwed, Kirk orders an emergency beam out. Scotty, however, falls down on the job and doesn't beam them out. McCoy and RSotW are tossed out of the shuttle, while Kirk and Spock remain inside and are go on a voyage to the bottom of the sea (Starring Richard Basehart!). Cut to commercial!

After five days of riding around in a motorboat which looks like it was cobbled together from shuttle craft parts, Scotty (If you're down here, who's in charge of the ship?), McCoy and RSotW spot the remains of the "aqua shuttle." Reaching the shuttle, they find Kirk and Spock face down in the water. Pulling them out, McCoy finds two of them to be alive, but not until the man from Atlantis Kirk and Spock begin complaining about being unable to breathe, and reveal webbing between their fingers, does he inform us that there's something wrong with their lungs.

Returning to the Enterpoop, Kirk and Spock are kept in a tank, while McCoy tries to figure out what's wrong with them. In discussing matters over with Kirk and Spock, McCoy makes a statement about how the sensor scans of the planet don't give any indication of lifeforms which could have injected Kirk and Spock with the chemical that is transforming them. Spock says, "Maybe the sensor scans are incomplete." and suggests that "underwater pressure structures" might be concealing such information from their scanners. Leaving aside the question of what an "underwater pressure structure" might be, WTF is Spock doing saying "maybe" the scans are incomplete. Spock's a pretty binary guy, and I can picture him saying "maybe" in such a situation as well as I can him being late to a rescue mission (i.e. Not at all.). I can see him saying, "Obviously, there is a problem with our sensor records, since they failed to detect the large creature which attacked us."

Kirk says, "I can't command a ship from the inside of an aquarium," but McCoy is opposed to allowing Kirk and Spock to return to the planet to try and find a cure for their transformation. (Sadly, he doesn't say, "Damn it, Jim, I'm a doctor, not an ichthyologist!" when discussing the transformation process.)

Aquaman and Aqualad Kirk and Spock return to the planet and discover the lost city of Atlanta something or other, and the landed Southern gentry who still long for the Antebellum South Gungans Aquarians, who capture Kirk and Spock, and inform them that they did the transformation, and then erased their memories, so that Kirk and Spock would be unable to return. (Okay, help me out with this logic here, would you? The Aquarians are afraid of air breathers, so instead of letting Kirk and Spock die [because that would be murder, and they're opposed to murder], and instead of wiping their memories and just returning them to the surface of the planet, they turn them into Aquaman and Aqualad, and then wipe their memories. Thus ensuring that Kirk and Spock would have no choice but to return to the planet to seek out those that had changed them, and ask them to reverse the process. Where the hell's the logic in that?)

McCoy alerts Scotty that there's a massive quake coming which will kill everyone on the planet, while the Aquarians exile Kirk and Spock to a rock. One of the Aquarians turns traitor and leads Scotty to Kirk and Spock, Scotty informs them of the coming deathquake, and Kirk and Spock swim to an ancient city to look for records to tell them how to reverse the process. Finding them in caduceus stylized containers, they discover that they need the venom of the fish amphibian which attacked them earlier to do it. (While swimming away with the records, they're pursued by one of the things, its crushed by a falling Grecian column.) Instead of harvesting the venom from that one, they capture another one, and are only able to procure a small sample before a minor quake happens.

Back on the Enterpoop, Kirk and Spock are returned to normal. They then bring a couple of the Aquarians on to the ship, and show them that the Federation are good people, by using the ship's phasers to divert the quake from the Aquarian's city. This has the effect of raising the ancient city to the surface, and the Aquarians reward the Enterpoop and her crew by making the Aquarians ancient records available to them. Spock says that this will enable them to save millions of lives on the Federation planet. (If you can figure out how to divert an earthquake, then why the hell do you need the ancient records?)

Yeah, this episode didn't work for me. Its pretty clear that they were recycling footage and characters from The Super Friends for the ep, and if it had been an hour long ep, we'd have had to suffer through a whole bunch of nonsense which somehow connected this alien race with the city of Atlantis. I give it a:

[terrifel]

Interestingly, some Star Trek fan filmmakers are apparently so fond of the style that they have created their own

While I was vastly unimpressed by the series' animation quality, it was really no worse than most of the other ultra cheap made-for-TV animation of the time. And yes, the scripts overall were decidedly inferior to the live-action series. On the other hand, a remarkable number of actors and writers carried over from the original series; and it was the only new Trek on TV until the advent of Wesley Crusher years later.

Yes, it may strain one's suspension of disbelief to accept that Larry Niven's Man-Kzin Wars are somehow Star Trek canon. Yes, it seems unlikely that Federation starships would deploy giant inflatable decoy starships as standard countermeasures. But given the choice between that or being forced to accept that exceeding Warp 10 makes people turn into lizards, I know which side I'm on. The animated series was never the best or even average Trek; but none of its episodes can really be considered the absolute worst, either. Okay, maybe "Bem."

If nothing else, TAS was the only series that featured the holodeck yet managed to use it with proper restraint, and that should count for something. They had some snappy episode titles, too.