In the long run, is this series worth it?

SPACE channel ran a marathon of episodes in December. After going through what I was able to record, I ended up saving four ("Yesteryear" was particularly well written and would've made a terrific TOS episode). The 70's animation is limited in range, but it's the acting and quality of the writing that are the real draws. It's certainly the most adult show I've ever seen done for a Saturday morning audience.

I have it on DVD and watch occasionally. Works for me and enjoy the original voices. I don't have high expectations. Yesteryear is my favorite and also have that on view master. It uses The Guardian to go back in time and takes place mostly on Vulcan.

There's another that feature's Lucifer, which I thought was interesting. Has the voice of the commander from the British UFO in the mix.

Bottom line is I like it. )

There were a number of eps of this one that were actually good enough on a dramatic level to have been live action episodes. "Yesteryear", "Albatross", "The Pirates Of Orion" just to name a few. "The Slaver Weapon" was a great ep, but it connects the Trek universe with that of Larry Niven's "Known Space" universe. I doubt if it would have been a live action ep without major re-writes. There were also good, more action oriented "fun" eps such as "One Of Our Planets Is Missing", "The Jihad" and the Emmy winning "How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth". Lastly, there were three comedic eps in the spirit of "The Trouble With Tribbles" and "A Piece Of The Action". They were "More Tribbles, More troubles", "The Practial Joker" (widely hated by most fans, but I loved it) and "Mudd's Passion".

So, to answer your question after rambling on for a minute, (sorry) YES, IMHO this series was worth it.

Trivia Note:The Late Majel Roddenberry told me at a con that they had all thought the series was going to use beautiful Disney style animation. They were all disappointed by the end product. The animation wasn't the worst style out there, but it was definitely limited.


In our screwed up world the light at the end of the tunnel is likely an oncoming train

Majel thought filmation was going to attain Disney quality ??? What was she smoking

The stories are first rate; many from Trek veterans. Filmation went to town on story, since they couldn't on animation, on tv budgets.

Visually, Filmation had good character models, inventive alien designs, and great backgrounds. Where they fall down is in repeated use of stock footage. This isn't as noticeable watching a single episode. Watch two or more in a row and it is glaring. They also recycled music cues; but, so did the original series. The voicework is a bit subdued at times, which is a problem Filmation had, in general.

On the whole, I think the series is pretty darn good. from a story standpoint, it stands up to the original and any of the later series. It looks great visually; but, isn't filled with a ton of motion. I'll tell you waht, though; in 1973, we didn't care. It was Trek. All we had were reruns, a few books, and the Gold Key comics.

Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!

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grendelkhan hits the nail on the head: It's what we had. Besides, there was no other rational reason for a then-college student to be awake on a Saturday morning let alone watch TV. And "Yesteryear" standing alone was pretty d'd good.

I'm not sure I could ever get enough original Trek, and this provides a little more. The stories aren't the greatest, but they're not the worst either. They use some of the same writers from TOS. They're all very short though, and there are only 22 episodes, so they're a small investment of time.