Month: February 2010

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect going in to The Animated Series. It was the only series that I had not seen a single episode of before starting on this project.[^1] Overall I was expecting something consistent with most 1970s animation, which is to say not very good. So it was quite a pleasant…

The second episode in this season that just didn’t feel like much of a Star Trek episode. The format (basically a road trip plot) was unusual, and no one but Kirk and Spock of the regulars had much time on screen. The story was pretty good, just not Star Trek. 95 down, 642 to go.…

Ah, the super-advanced aliens again. It had been a while. Although I thought these ones were kinda cute (in a giant slug way). The telepathy stuff drags a little, but the accidental kidnapping is an interesting way of resolving things. On a side note, this seems to be the first time that non-Enterprise Star Fleet…

Ooh, a Star Trek cross-over. Although, sadly, despite being familiar with the existence of the Man-Kzin Wars series, I’ve never actually read any of them. This is also the first time that the Animated Series has gone in a direction that felt really alien to Star Trek. Maybe it’s because of all the later material…

From the title I was hoping for Moby Dick. But the initial monster attack was more like Godzilla. But then the rest of the episode settled pretty solidly into The Little Mermaid. The underwater race was just a little bit too mindlessly antagonistic for my tastes. 92 down, 645 to go.

Some of the voice acting in this episode was distractingly bad. But beyond that, the episode just felt like a bunch of ‘stuff that happened’. There might have been too much plot, but really the episode just felt confused, with too many parts. 91 down, 646 to go.

An episode that could only have been done in animation at the time, with the whole crew shrinking. I did laugh at the 30 second explanation of why everyone’s clothes were shrinking with them. It really felt like the 23 minute format hurt this episode – there could have been a lot more done with…

Argh, not Harry Mudd again. I liked this one more than the previous two rounds, but there’s really only so far you can go with ‘love potion’ based episodes. They always rely on the same silly tricks. 89 down, 648 to go.

Back to the *Shore Leave* planet. And this time the poor old computer is bored with providing amusement for everyone. Some nice writing, and some good use of the special effects advantage of the animated series. But it seemed like a strange ending that you could convince the computer to stop by telling it that…

Overall this was a pretty bad episode. “The Enterprise runs in to The Devil”? It just didn’t work for me. But there were a couple of interesting points. Firstly, we have the first ‘humanity on trial’, which would become a significant feature with Q in The Next Generation. And secondly, the episode does show off…