MovieChat Forums > Star Trek (1973) Discussion > TAS vs the animated Return to the Planet...

TAS vs the animated Return to the Planet of the Apes.

posted 18 years ago by aac7294
2 replies | jump to latest

I just got both DVD sets for Christmas...not having seen these since they first aired in the 1973-1976 era it was a real treat.

Both have held up pretty well over the years.

In the positive category for TAS-it was great having almost the whole cast do the voices...but from the episodes I have seen so far Mr. Arex has been just sitting their mute. They might have well have hired Koenig at half pay or something just to speak every so often. The episodes really do feel like a lost season and a few of them would have been excellent (though expensive) live action. The animated Enterprise is a thing of beauty.

The minuses are the overuse of stock shots (particularly one where you see a CU of Kirk's eye and whoever is behind him) and its too easy to pick out that Doohan is doing multiple voices.

RETURN TO THE PLANET OF THE APES can put its animation clearly in the positive column. This was one of the last few series to really give a damn about their animation. Its use of shadow and background drawings is right up there with the standard bearer-JONNY QUEST. Then there is the writing actually featuring a continuing storyline from week to week. Fantastic...in retrospect its no wonder it failed back when I was a kid because I imagine the majority of children fed a steady diet of simple fair as a rascally rabbit outwitting a hunter and a cat chasing a bird or a mouse probably didn't want to follow the complexity of it all (ironically in 2006-2007 season I think that is a main reason the arc based shows failed this year).

In the minus column it too did overuse certain stock shots due to budget concerns...however in a cleaver dodge they used still shots that were very atomospheric...if you've seen the series you know what I'm talking about.

So in the end I think if the two series were to be compared...APES would edge out TAS in terms of quality in the animation and writing...but both are light years ahead of the mindless anime garabge being churned out for today's kids.

[–] borg_queen 18 years ago

I do agree that most anime are garbage, but there are also some gems (although my favorite is the action packed Yu Yu Hakusho.) Never underestimate the Japanese when it comes to story-telling.

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Kid Rock:I dont need any water
Cameron Diaz:You need water 2 make beer
K Rock:Oh my God!

[–] profh-1 12 years ago

Interesting that you mentioned JONNY QUEST, as its creator, Doug Wildey, later worked on RETURN TO THE PLANET OF THE APES !

I'm sure there's been good and lousy cartoons from each decade or country. For Japanese cartoons, my favorites remain 8TH MAN (a perfect mix of action, melodrama, and slapstick humor), ASTRO BOY (ditto, but with the addition of some really intense emotional stuff-- and coming from a robot, too!), STAR BLAZERS (surely this was the new "high bar" of the 70's, Japan's "answer" to STAR TREK, except filtered entirely through the eyes and mindset of Japanese culture and history-- it was also, very obviously, the main inspiration for BATTLESTAR GALACTICA), and ULYSSES 31 (made in Japan but for a French company, France really seems to have an obsessive love with Greek mythology).

Animation-wise, the best stuff I've seen made for American TV stil has to be JONNY QUEST (1964), the 1st season of SPIDER-MAN (1967), and THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN (1980).

The 2nd & 3rd seasons of SPIDER-MAN, made by an entirely different studio, have som GREAT visuals, and FABULOUS "production" music, but the animation is almost non-existent. If they'd only had the budget to bring Gray Morrow's designs to full animated life...!