Rob: We are back.
Welcome back.
It has been some time since the two of us have materialized.
Kevin: The ion storm is passing and I can hear you again.
Rob: We can fi We have finally cleared through that ion storm back into the
nerdy realm that is Subspace Radio.
I'm Rob Lloyd, and with me as always is Kevin Yank.
How are
Kevin: Hello.
Hello.
I'm very well.
I've watched a whole series of Star Trek since we last spoke.
Rob: have I, we set ourselves as a task of waiting for Picard,
but we did not just sit idle.
We were given the duty to go back and watch the show that we have
mentioned quite a lot in this podcast.
And finally ratcheted into our memories now and a part of our, the
ever-growing continuity of Star Trek.
We have gone back and watched the infamous Animated Series, series one and two
from the early seventies of Star Trek.
Kevin: Yeah, it was the last piece of Star Trek I hadn't seen,
so now it's all in my brain.
Rob: is big, this is a big moment.
I'm glad to be sharing it.
Kevin: I was feeling more and more guilty about having not seen it as
Lower Decks, and other bits and pieces of recent Star Trek have referenced
it fleetingly, and I've gone, oh, that's something I don't recognize.
No longer.
I will get all of the little references.
Rob: That was the thing.
Most only while we mostly, while we were doing Lower Decks you were the
one informing me going, actually this is a particular reference to the
Animated series that I have not seen.
But
Kevin: Right.
Quetzalcoatl in that big lizard flying creature appears in the
Lower Decks episode where they're hallucinating stuff in The Mind's Mines.
And yeah.
All the reviews online said That's Quetzalcoatl from the Animated Series.
I'm like, that seems like a weird thing to be in Star Trek.
And sure enough, it was a weird thing to be in Star Trek.
Rob: Yes, it was there.
Kevin: An Emmy award-winning weird
Rob: we will say it again.
Yes.
Star Trek The Animated Series is an Emmy award-winning show.
Most of the, any other Star Trek shows that have won Emmy's have won it from a
technical or production point of view.
Whereas Star Trek The Animated Series won outright in 1975 Outstanding
Entertainment Children Series.
So take that Next Gen, take that Deep Space Nine.
Kevin: You really should start with The Animated Series, I
think is what we've learned.
Rob: Yes.
Yes.
Even though it's set after?
Yes.
So there's a fascinating story to be told about how this show came about how.
Kevin: you wanna start with a story or do you wanna start with like your high level
Rob: Yeah, I think, I think well we're dropping our usual format of
talking about the, an episode and then breaking into the larger topic.
We're gonna give our our first impression, thoughts.
Then we'll do a little bit of a dive into how we got to there, and then
we'll pick our favorite episodes.
And yes, we will focus on a clunker.
Kevin: Yeah.
Rob: So,
Kevin: Will.
All right.
Rob: So Kevin, it has been a massive buildup.
We have mentioned it so many times in our podcast, and, you have been
a Star Trek fan all your life.
But now, finally, in the year of our whatever representation you believe
in or don't believe in 2023, you finally watch The Animated Series.
First impressions?
Kevin: First impressions There were stronger episodes to be had
here than I expected to find.
But the overall feeling I had watching this was bemusement, that this was
made for Saturday morning television.
Rob: Yeah,
Kevin: Just that somehow a series of artists was given a budget to make this.
For kids to watch with their bowl of cereal on a Saturday morning.
It stands out to me as a historical anomaly the scale of which has not been
repeated in Star Trek history for sure.
Rob: It's it is anomaly because but it's amazing how actually modern it
is in the way of We are used to now as nerds and with our IPs and our
franchises and how they go, that we have multiple media to consume of that,
whether it be novels or comic books or TV shows or animated TV shows or feature
films or interactive, VR experiences.
And yes, we have just spent the last couple of months reviewing
two animated spinoffs of Star Trek.
But this is where it all began in the seventies.
And for this, it was quite unique.
It's long before Star Wars hit the screens and before Star Wars had
their attempt at spinoffs in animated form with droids and Ewoks and stuff.
But now it's commonplace.
Like one of my favorite incarnations of Star Wars that hedge back and forth is
the animated series Rebels, which is set just before episode one and Rogue One.
And that's produced for kids' entertainment, family entertainment,
but it deals with some heavy issues.
So going back to watch it now, after spending so much time within
this animated spinoff world, it was quite exciting because you're there
going, oh my god, they got pretty much everyone – apologies to Walter
Koenig – they got the original cast back.
So you are hearing William Shatner, you are hearing Leonard Nimoy.
You are hearing DeForest Kelley, you're hearing the
original cast except for Walter.
Sorry.
So sorry about that.
Kevin: Sorry, Walter.
Rob: So to see it's quite now a modern thing, but then it was so unique.
It
Kevin: Yeah, but I hear what you're saying about comparing it to the Star
Wars, that there are surprisingly modern stories or topics being covered
because that's true here as well.
It's, it is clear in every respect from technical to to storytelling.
They were up against the constraints of Saturday morning cartoons.
You could tell the vision was large and they got as much of it they could do in
the time and money they had to put into
Rob: I have found, a lot of the writers were excited to come back
on board who were part of The Original Series going, oh, we are not
restricted by, by real sets and makeup.
We can come up with anything.
And then it goes, yes, you can come up with any creature you want, but
still it's done on a Filmation budget.
Kevin: Yes.
And it has to not not offend the parents too much.
Rob: Yeah, it was very to read.
They got back on board DC Fontana.
Incredible.
Yeah.
This legendary writer of television and Star Trek.
And they had her on board as an executive producer and script editor.
And her main point was, let, because it's for more family more kids
geared, let's actually make it family.
So let's take out any of that, William Shana's sex appeal or or oily oily, George
Kevin: stuff slipped through.
Rob: stump did stuff,
Kevin: there were very conspicuous things slipping through that was
like, that stands out given that everything else is here is for kids.
But that one lady is borderline harassing.
Captain
Rob: I I'm glad you brought that up.
And I'll be talking about that a bit further on.
And it's not in my good episodes.
Kevin: Okay.
Very good.
Um, Look the other impression that I really got here was
the handmade craftsmanship.
Of what ends up on screen here.
Like you can see the layers of film as a cell moves over a painted background.
And unfortunately that little hair that was stuck to the cell moves with
Rob: That's my favorite.
Yeah.
Seeing the grit the profile Enterprise goes across, he goes,
oh, that grit's going with it,
Kevin: Yeah.
and there were a grand total of four shots of the Enterprise here,
more or less except for the very occasional episode specific artwork.
And similarly, there were four musics cues that were used in every single episode.
Rob: not the actual original Star Trek
Kevin: I know it took me so long to warm up to it because it felt like a bizarro
universe version of Star Trek cuz of the
Rob: That theme was stuck in my head for weeks, and as soon as I
finished watching it, it's gone.
But I kept on ball it like every piece of that music, I think there,
there's only three pieces of music they created and they just repeated
that for the entire number of episodes.
But yeah, there was like, especially after our talk about the last two animated
series, which had so many beautiful space vistas and planet shots and all this type
of stuff to go back to that's the profile image going that way across the screen
and now it's going back the other way.
And that one rather clunky, but I kind of liked it.
The shot of the ship kind of swooping in on an angle and going.
Kevin: we go over the
Rob: Yeah.
So you, so it had to involve perspective and,
Kevin: and I'm pretty sure I don't know if there's any way to know this for sure
all these years later, but it looks to me like that was rotoscoped directly
from a shot from The Original Series.
There is a, in the first few episodes of The Original Series, there's a few places
where we do swoop over the bridge like that, and it looks to me like they frame
by frame, traced it for the animated
Rob: pretty much it looked like that and that type of stuff.
I like when they go outside of, cuz TV animation in the sixties, seventies and
eighties was how cheap can we do it?
And so, especially, especially Filmation who were, this is the
company long before their success with He-man and Ghostbusters.
Not that Ghostbusters, the Ghostbusters, the other one.
Let's go Ghostbusters.
Anyway and She-ra and all that type of stuff.
So I, I that.
That rotoscoping, that little bit of a Ralph Bakshi style animation of taking
footage and animating it into real.
I like that kind of guerilla style animation.
But I'm a big fan of the dark ages of Disney as well, where they did a lot
of facsimile animation and stuff, which is looked down upon by animators, but
it's sort a rough and ready way of doing things, which I but I, that's
my sort of like independent theater.
Kevin: Yeah.
I liked it too.
I think the sh the ship stuff has aged better than some
of the character animation.
There's definite I think I've mentioned it before, there are
running sequences where it's a solid minute of tiny black stick figures
moving across a static background to
Rob: yes.
Kevin: And it's meant to be gripping, but it is quite fast.
Rob: And, And the repetition.
And the repetition of the extreme closeup on one side of the screen and
the same shot of Spock looking into a monitor and slightly looking up.
And if I don't see that that cat woman with her whispery, creepy, if I don't see
M'Ress ever again, it will be too soon.
So just go.
Kevin: She is the progenitor of Catian doctor on Lower Decks.
Rob: But, there's just
Kevin: Dr.
T'Ana, way more fun than
Rob: lot more, yeah, a lot more sweary.
She and T'Ana blinks a lot more as opposed to this one who just stares
with her yellow eyes and whispers.
Kevin: Speaking of the actors, it is amazing that we got most of the cast back.
Rob: do you, how would you feel being Walter?
Kevin: I think he would've been on the list, but he wasn't in the
first season of The Original Series.
And so if someone had to go, I guess Walter had to go.
Uh, He said I was very upset at the way I found out I wasn't part of the
show at a convention everybody thought someone else had told me, apparently.
Dorothy thought Gene had.
Gene thought Dorothy had.
To save money, Filmation wanted Majel to do Uhura's voice and also
Jimmy to do Sulu's voice since in cartoons at the time you got paid one
check to do two character's voices.
To Leonard's credit, he said he would not do the series unless they
hired George and Nichelle since they had been there from the beginning.
Rob: Yeah, it, see, it's so weird that, it's been forgotten.
Then it was ridiculed, then it's been found by us, and I give it a
lot of love, but, and you want it to, you want it to be what kind of
animation stuff is now, but it's not.
It's at that time when animation was looked down upon, Saturday morning
cartoons were looked down upon.
It was just a paycheck.
People missed out.
They wanted to keep out, the African American woman and
the the Asian American actor.
Kevin: Yeah.
Funny that
Rob: Yeah.
And the one of the things I read, Nimoy brought that up and Filmation went, oh
no, actually we are very much into showing representation and stuff like that.
So of course, oh we, that was just not meant to be a blah, blah, blah, blah.
And there going yeah.
It's a shame that you
Kevin: That's the thing about bias.
It's usually unconscious.
Rob: Exactly.
So
Yeah, apparently Filmation said they only had enough money for that amount of cast.
And also
Kevin: And you can tell because that cast is doing every other voice as well,
Rob: was, yeah, I was gonna say you can hear James doing multiple voices.
Nichelle does multiple characters.
Of course Mrs.
Roddenberry had to be in the cast as well.
So we had Nurse Chapel there.
Kevin: Jimmy Doohan in an interview I have from The 50 Year Mission, the
oral history of Star Trek, he talks about how the fact that if you did
three characters, they only had to pay you once, but if you did a fourth
character, they had to pay you twice.
So he was always trying to get that fourth character.
Rob: Oh my gosh.
Oh the economics of animation in the seventies.
But yeah, I read like they'd never recorded in the same studio.
I don't think they even recorded in the same cities like.
Kevin: Some of the interviews talk about later in the run Leonard Nimoy
would just drop by a recording studio in whatever city he happened to be in,
and read his lines to the microphone, put his hat on and walk to his car.
And that was his experience of The Animated
Rob: It's very, he's very much like an episode of The Simpsons
where Krusty just walks in record.
Yeah.
Just speaks all his lines for his thing and then walks off and they
haven't even put the reel in yet.
Kevin: For the fans, for the writers, it must have felt like a return to the
thing that they thought they had lost.
For the actors, I feel like it, in many respects, must have felt like a paycheck.
Just another paycheck.
Rob: Yeah, it does.
It does seem to
Kevin: Because it doesn't seem like they got together.
It doesn't seem like any of them were particularly this, the sense
I get is that they were talked into it and they were like, really?
Saturday morning cartoons?
Is this the bottom of the barrel?
And the creators were like, no stay with us.
Trust us.
We are doing real Star Trek here with real stories, stuff that matters.
You're going to be proud of the work.
And they were said, okay, we'll take your word for it.
And yet the experience was nevertheless just showing up and
reading your lines in the booth.
Rob: Yeah, it's an interesting thing because it's been the punchline of
jokes for so long, and I'm guilty of that, of making fun of The Animated
Series, but never actually seeing it.
But now I've got a little bit more respect for it, that they were trying
to be so serious that the scripts, especially that first season, I remember
we talked a little bit that there's a little bit of a shift in, in season two
to a bit more jovial, a bit more jokey.
Kevin: I found it was, with exceptions, it was really hitting
its stride by that second season.
There's a lot more bumps and weird tone moments in the start of this
series than towards the end where it felt like they had found the formula.
Rob: Well, especially like that first episode, I'm going.
For me, that first episode was really hard to get through and just,
they're going, it was very dull.
But then the second episode is the yes Yesteryear, which is they
go that's what you wanna see.
We want the big vistas of what Vulcan looks like.
Kevin: Tell some epic stories you wouldn't have been able to tell
Rob: Exactly and a lot of sequel stuff.
So return to
Kevin: Again, playing to the kids, apparently.
Rob: Because Yeah.
You know who kids wanna see again?
Mudd.
They
Kevin: That's right.
And Cyrano Jones.
Everydody's
Rob: The kids have been crying themselves to sleep for years
since the cancellation go.
Whatever happened to Cyrano Jones, Daddy?
Kevin: Walter Koenig was not cast in the series, but he was
thrown the bone of a script.
The Infinite Vulcan, and you can't see him, listeners, but Rob is making a face.
Rob: Yeah, I, it almost made my stinker list.
It was.
Kevin: Walter didn't think much more of it is what I'm reading here.
This was the one script I wrote for the show, and it was incredibly frustrating.
Gene decided early on, this is animation so we can do anything we
want, so let's have talking plants.
And I put in the talking plants and did 10 drafts of the script.
And at the time, I didn't know what writers were going through on Star Trek.
I stuck with it and we finally got it done.
They did in fact offer me another script and I said, no, I passed.
I couldn't go along with all the arbitrary decisions that didn't make
the script any better, not that it was extraordinary to begin with.
So to an extent, it was an interesting learning experience, but it was painful.
I was also still upset about not being a part of the series.
Rob: Of course.
So it's heartbreaking to hear how it all turned out that it, of was, just thrown
together and they just had to work with the money they had, and they had the,
like you said, big plans, big sweeping, epic ideas in their head of we can go
anywhere, we can have any creature, any location that we're not limited by
Kevin: did get that here.
There is a lot of that
Rob: They, they do try to have so many non humanoid creatures to
have two non-human crew members.
Kevin: Not all of it successful.
There are some things that, it's true you couldn't do them before
and you can do them now, but should you do them is a separate question.
Rob: So I'm very interested to hear because you're so in tune with
The Original Series, how you found those nods, those sequel follow
ups and those references that have now carried on because there are
some things that were mentioned.
That's the type of stuff I love, things that were mentioned in The Animated
Series that have now become canon.
Kevin: Yeah.
Equal part hits and misses is what I would say.
There are some things that it was like, wow, a sequel to Shore Leave.
I did not, I would never have asked for this, but it feels like Christmas morning.
And then there were other things that felt rather thin and didn't
add anything that wasn't already present in the previous series.
I thought the Tribbles episode had some yucks for the kids, but did it add a
lot to what triples give to our lives?
I don't think so.
I think I would rather go back and watch the original episode
Rob: We did found out we had, a massive like Voltron tribble so well, yeah.
So their big mind is we can have whatever budget we want.
Let's make tribbles bigger!
Kevin: And speaking of Harry Mud, like the second episode of The Original
Series, was rapey enough and they thought, you know what we really need?
You know what we really need to return to is Harry Mudd and his date rape drugs.
Rob: Yeah.
Look it's it is a shame that when you go back to watch
this go, oh no, that's right.
This is in the height of the seventies.
This is the height of, patriarchal privilege and scenes of Nurse Chapel.
Kevin: You don't get it.
It's better because it's Nurse Chapel who is date raping
Rob: Exact.
See, that's better.
And, but
Kevin: It's empowering.
Rob: But she's so easily manipulated by the guy.
No.
She's not manipulated.
She's taking the power like scenes where she's like drowning when
they're miniatures and she, the only way she, the only way that she
can get out is being saved by Kirk.
And you're going, oh, yeah.
Kevin: Just looking at my other notes about like the origin of this series.
My, my closest reading of what I could find is that, this came
about really part of a ca of the campaign to bring back Star Trek.
Ever since it was canceled in the third season and the fans wanted more, gene
was looking for how could it return?
Could it return as another series?
Could it return as a film?
None of that was happening, but there was just this little crack
that opened up in NBC's armor and someone said, we need a strong entry
for NBC's Saturday morning lineup.
And I think probably when it was first suggested, let's bring Star
Trek to Saturday morning cartoons.
It's doing surprisingly well in the young demographics in reruns.
I bet the kids would love a Star Trek show made for them.
That probably made sense.
Somewhere between that idea and what ended up on screen.
There were some negotiations and Gene Roddenberry managed to pull in just
the right amount of favors and he got full creative control, which was really
unusual for cartoons at the time.
It was, my understanding is unusual for Roddenberry at the time, who had burned
some bridges and the relationship with the studios was strained already, but somehow,
some way he managed to get a commitment of full creative control on this.
And he said, great, we've done it.
Now we're gonna forget that we're making a Saturday morning cartoon.
We are making Star Trek again.
That is what we are here to
Rob: unofficial season four.
Kevin: Yeah, and I.
We will never have the ratings numbers or the memos from the studio to prove it.
But my guess is what happens is this thing went out to Saturday morning and
died because it wasn't made for the audience that was watching at that time.
So the world did get a secret fourth season of Star Trek, but a as, as we
learned in our own experience, almost no one watched it, not even us fans
and and so much the poorer for it.
Rob: Exactly.
Yeah.
And it had to be, it wasn't, if it wasn't for Star Wars then this new lifeblood
of the show wouldn't have happened.
And it's the constant thing about Roddenberry as well.
So like his, that balance of his belief in the show and his fight for
it, but also the bridges he burns.
And so it got to the point where, he had a lot of control in The Motion Picture.
And because it didn't do that well, then they went complete other angle and he was
pretty much shut out like unceremoniously with Star Trek two and became, the
greatest Star Trek movie of all time.
But it went so far away from whatever Roddenberry was so,
had his vice-like, grip on this is what Star Trek needs to be.
And it, yeah it's fascinating to see that the animated series is just a continuation
of that cycle that he gets power.
He, he burns bridges, he builds up that power again, he burns more bridges.
It's a fascinating, little glimpse into the how that man worked
within the creative industry.
Kevin: The second season is only six episodes, which to our modern
eye looks like oh, that's bad.
Like, they got, They got a big first season and the network pulled
the plug after just six episodes.
They didn't even get halfway through the second season.
What my research tells me is that after the initial large-ish order,
animated series were made and approved in batches of six episodes.
So it is normal for season two to be six episodes.
That is a full second season as it was made at the time.
Nevertheless, they did not get renewed for.
Rob: Right.
Does it diminish after that?
So then season three is only three episodes,
Kevin: Would just do six, six more at a time.
And it had to do with lead times and scheduling and stuff like that.
Dorothy Fontana and Gene Roddenberry, the two main creative forces of the first
season stepped away in the second season.
And so a lot of the interviews from Dorothy say, I don't really know.
I can't speak for the second season.
It might be bad, it might be great.
I had no creative input.
Rob: And different director as well.
They had like how Hal Sutherland for the first season and then
Bill Reed for the next six.
Kevin: And she, she says, all I know is that they did a bunch of the
scripts we rejected in season two.
But I, I think it turned out surprisingly well.
The one kind of creative force that seemed present throughout is David Gerrold, who
fans will know as the author, the writer of the original Trouble with Tribbles.
He came back and wrote two episodes of this series, but but he was
there from beginning to end and was there for the whole ride.
Rob: Yes.
And I like that type of, tho those connections of of the writers who
were part of The Animated Series staying on and they was very much
top heavy in that first season with so many of those classic writers
coming back and Yeah, it's a shame.
Not all of them stuck around.
Kevin: My only other thought is the.
Getting the lingo of Star Trek, like what does the language sound like?
What does the terminology sound like?
It took them a while to get back into the groove.
Those first few episodes are really heavy with unusually
specific scientific language.
Like they didn't quite have the technobabble pinned down.
It was a little too techno.
A little too sciencey.
Rob: Very dense.
There are some moments where they're using like really hardcore science terms.
I'm going,
Kevin: It felt like someone had they, it was their personal mission to make
Star Trek more scientifically accurate.
And the animated series was where they were let loose.
And it was a it just made it awkward is the word that comes to mind, but
it was, yeah, it took, you, took me out of it that these characters were
saying things that did not sound like things they, those characters would say.
Rob: No, and it did sound like I have a sci scientific prognosis.
Oh, and I have a scientific read to add to that.
I go, oh, scientifically it could be this as well.
I'm going, Woohoo.
Come on.
Kevin: It's not the science that makes Star Trek
Rob: Yeah, exactly.
So let's go into it.
Let's let's do an episode we like each.
Kevin: I mean, there's there's so few episodes here.
There's 22 of them.
I feel like we could just one by one, count them down and if we come to one
that is one of our favorites or one of our we could talk about it at that
Rob: Let's do it.
Kevin: Alright Number one, Beyond The Farthest Star,
you groaned about it earlier.
Rob: It was so dull.
I'm there going, whoa.
This is where we're starting.
A ship that's been dead for however long and just looking at it going,
oh, what happened with this?
And there and,
Kevin: I wrote Pace is shockingly slow for a 30 minute cartoon.
Rob: Yeah, they're going.
Are we still?
Oh wow.
We are only five minutes in.
Kevin: It felt like they couldn't quite believe they were making Star Trek and
they forgot to bring a story to the
Rob: Yes, very much
Kevin: Alright.
But not a high or a low for either of
Rob: No
Kevin: Yesteryear number two.
Rob: Really good one.
Really.
Yeah.
A nice little reference to the City on the Edge of Forever and, going
back into Spock's past and that great, it's a great thing, especially with
uh, Next Generation and stuff like that, where they talk about, ugh, oh,
Kirk, and he's traveling back in time and they're like blase about it, like
Kevin: Yeah, let's just do it.
Rob: And he goes back and he meets himself.
So there's no paradox there.
He is just an uncle,
Kevin: That's right.
I remember myself.
Yeah.
It's amazing.
Rob: His pet is incredible and they killed the pet!
Kevin: Yeah, know, but that is a good thing in the right context.
Treated with the right delicateness for kids to watch on a Saturday morning.
Like There's, that is a life experience that kids are gonna have to face.
And having seen dispassionate Spock deal with it, maturely is a,
it's a good learning opportunity.
Rob: And did they
Kevin: I don't know if you'd call it fun.
Rob: No, it was very much leaning into, this is an episode that
could have been on The Original Series if it weren't animated.
But yeah the detail of the, like the almost like tiger type
pet was fascinating to see.
Did they actually get Mark Lenard back to do the voice of
Kevin: did Mark Lenard!
I did not know to expect another Star Trek performance from Mark Lenard
posthumously to enter my world.
And wow.
That was a
Rob: he was great.
He's a wonderful, wonderful.
Kevin: Yesteryear is frequently called out as the best episode
of The Animated Series.
It was the one I was my hopes were up for, and I don't know if
it's because my hopes were high that I found it a little lacking.
It still had some of those shaky legs of the early episodes of this
series that I was talking about.
Rob: For me, it came across as, oh, as I was watching it, I was
there going, this would be one that the fans would really hook into.
But yeah, it was a little bit still figuring its feet out.
Kevin: Number three, One of Our Planets is Missing.
Rob: Yes.
How did you um, feel about this one?
Kevin: I thought it was very much like an Original Series episode, probably
because it was a mashup of two of them.
It was the Immunity Syndrome, the giant space amoeba, and was Devil
in the Dark, "NO KILL I", Horta.
Was really like those two.
What if we take what's good about two great episodes of Star Trek and mash
them together to make another one.
So it was all right.
It was three episodes in, it was already the second time they
threatened to self-destruct the ship.
And so I would call it a middle of the pack.
Not bad, not great.
Rob: Yes.
Yeah.
The only note of it, it was about the self-destruct thing that we talked
about a couple of episodes ago.
So, yeah, so it, it's canon for us, for our podcast.
But other than that, nothing of note really.
Kevin: Number four, The Lorelei Signal.
Rob: is the big one.
This is a big one that we have mentioned before.
This is it's a little bit Brigadoon, but it's also a little bit, that's
what happens when the women take over.
Kevin: Yes.
The men are incapacitated by a sexy signal and the women have to save the day.
Rob: Yes.
Yeah.
And of the women as in the two women on the on, on the, so it's
Kevin: Majel Barrett and Nichelle Nichols have to save the day, and
one of them is playing four parts.
Rob: Yeah.
Yeah.
We are hearing that voice in so many different pictures and tones.
Kevin: There was a scene in which Uhura talked to the computer that
was also Uhura, and then talked to another character that was also
Uhura, or it was all Nichelle Nichols.
She played three voices in one scene talking to each each other, and I only
noticed it the second time I watched the episode, which is a testament to
her ability to do multiple voices.
Not every Original Series cast member has that skill.
Rob: did very well and that she in many ways she's close to
being the MVP of this series.
The multiple voices she did and how different they were.
Yeah.
Jimmy Doohan, You need a bit of work.
Kevin: For all that.
Not a great
Rob: No, look, that's the thing.
It's it's something we were looking forward to and excited about because
this is the one where, the only way that, that Uhura can actually be the position
of third in command is that the men, all the men are incapacitated by sexy aliens.
Kevin: And the way she saves the day is she disobeys one order, beams
down and asks the men what to do.
Rob: Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
It's it's that clumsy view of the future from a very dated way of doing things.
There's a classic Doctor Who story from the sixties with Patrick
Trouten that got so far to being made, but was canceled at the end.
It's called the Space Prison, where it goes to a planet where, good lord, all
the women are the dominating power.
And the female companion gets caught up by their radical thinking, where women are
the top dogs and the only way for her to be broken out of their hypnotic phase was
to be smacked on the bottom by the doctor.
So thankfully, that episode was never made.
Kevin: The plot of this episode makes about the same amount of sense, I'll say.
Uh, Number five, More Tribbles, More Troubles.
Rob: I You sure it's not called Mo' Tribbles, Mo' Trouble?
Kevin: Might?
Were there are a lot of mustaches?
Rob: Yes.
So the, we got the Klingon here in their old fashioned type of,
almost sounding a bit piratey.
Nah, here we are, Kirk.
Kevin: That's how Klingons were back
Rob: They were, they were very much like that.
So just a good reminder for me to go, oh, that's right.
They were very
Kevin: Yeah.
Rob: of mustache twi.
Kevin: Like I was saying before, I felt this was much
more forced than the original.
It was it, they were a little too self-satisfied with how good the original
episode was, and it was just like, if they reference the same jokes and give you
a bit of a wink, wink, nudge, nudge, it makes a good story and it doesn't really.
This was not a story that needed to be told is what I wrote to myself here.
It was a cheap rehash of what made the original one popular,
but for what it was, it was okay.
There were, ships flying around machinations.
They had the tribble eater and then they had the giant tribble.
Yeah, there was some fun to be had, but
Rob: and it's a bit, again, I'll say the word clumsy, like
at this point the Klingons were just like pretty much pure bad.
So they're, but the butt of all jokes.
I think there's another one as well with the Klingons or the Romulans and like
at the end it's just a case of, oh well they're gonna have to deal with it now.
Wah wah.
I'm going, no, they've actually been left in a very dangerous
situation and Oh, okay.
No, we're joking about it.
Okay.
Cuz they're bad guys.
Haha.
Yeah,
Kevin: Ah, the next one is number six.
We haven't hit any of our tops or bottom episodes yet,
Rob: no, I'm very interested to, I'll see if we have a have a jinx
and whether we hit the same one.
Kevin: The next one is the Survivor, number six with Carter
Winston, or was it Winston Carter?
I kept getting confused.
The guy had two first names.
Rob: That Yes, that's it.
The what?
Pretty much you're correct on both fronts.
Kevin: Yeah.
I'm frankly, I am looking up this episode because it was that memorable.
I can't
Rob: Yeah.
I'm a bit like that as well.
Kevin: This is the one where they rescued the famous guy who turned out to be a
shape shifting alien spy from Romulans.
Rob: he found his previous wife,
Kevin: girlfriend who ha, just happened to be on the
Rob: happened to be and never
Kevin: Wife.
Wife or girlfriend, I can't remember which.
Might have been fiance.
Rob: Yes.
And then it's revealed that he's a shape-shifting spy and he's trying
to break up with her and Yeah.
Yes.
That's all I remember as
Kevin: There was a moment in this where bones was surprisingly not
grumpy, and it was a plot point.
Kirk and Spock know how many bio beds they have in sick Bay, better than McCoy does.
So the Shapeshifter was hiding as a bed in sick bay, and McCoy didn't
notice, but Kirk and Spock did.
I kind of love how many white women Nichelle Nichols played in this
series, but no Uhura in this episode.
There was M'Ress though, so I get the sense they, some, they needed
something for Majel Barrett to do every episode, and sometimes that meant
playing M'Ress, even though Nichelle Nichols was present for the episode.
Rob: Look, it is a little bit of that glorious nepotism
coming through right there.
They're going, Roddenberry's going, gotta make room for the wife.
Come on.
Kevin: interesting choice to have the Romulan battle cruisers still share a ship
design with Klingon ships, even animation.
Like that was something they did to save money in the original series, they reused
the models and shot them with a slightly different colored light on them, so
they looked bluer and therefore Romulan.
And the fans made up a story that the Romulan stole the technology
or bought the technology from the Klingons, whatever it is.
But here you, here you got the opportunity to draw anything you want.
And they drew the same ship design just with a dif, like
a lightning bolt on the side
Rob: Yeah, exactly.
They just want, that's what we've used.
Instead of going, let's think big about everything.
Yeah.
It is a bit limited with the way of imagination goes.
Kevin: My favorite line is Well, he's a shape shifter, so one would have to
assume he could become a deflector shield.
Rob: Yes.
Kevin: And for all that the my parting thought on this one, the Spock McCoy smack
talk at the end almost made the whole
Rob: Yeah, very much they're
Kevin: This was the first time they really leaned into that in The Animated Series.
They remembered what they had with Spock and McCoy, and they, they
did a full on comedy bit between the two of them at the end here.
Rob: It was a great way to finish a, alright.
Yeah.
a forgettable one.
Kevin: Number seven, the Infinite Vulcan.
We've already talked a bit about this
Rob: Yeah.
This nearly got on my bad list.
I'm just there going, why do we have giant Spocks and
Kevin: had heard rumors about a giant Spock of a Spock Two, and
I read about it at some point and I thought, that is stupid.
And then I immediately forgot it until I was confronted with it in this episode.
Surprisingly little Spock in an episode entitled The Infinite.
Rob: Yeah, I think it's a balance thing.
So time wise they spread him out through the whole episode.
I really hope this gag works.
So because they had less time for him, that means he could go taller.
Kevin: Oh, yes.
It's amount of Spock by square
Rob: Yeah.
It's, yeah.
It's the body mass has to be shifted
Kevin: Yeah.
He gets carried off by a screaming dragon, and those things came back
again and again with this same sound effect played over and over.
But yeah, Spock gets carried off at the start of this episode.
Then most of the episode goes by and then we meet giant Spock at the end,
and Spock talks Spock out of being
Rob: Yes, of course.
It's, yeah, it's,
Kevin: The giant scientist who was evil, but then not evil and for some
reason he is wearing a loin cloth.
And it's very strange
this.
Rob: It's very odd.
Yeah, it is weird.
And yeah,
Kevin: Walter Koenig, you are forgiven.
Rob: are forgiven and most of it you had to rewrite anyway, so we'll blame Gene.
Kevin: This one had the super awkward Sulu joke at the end where Kirk says, Sulu,
you're one of the most scrutable people I know, which is leaning into the racist
stereotype of the inscrutable Asian.
Rob: Yep.
Oh, joy.
Kevin: Uh, Number eight, The Magicks of Megas-tu.
Rob: Now this was weird, right?
This was like
Kevin: Super weird.
This was Lucifer.
Rob: Lucifer that they're dealing with, gender and sexual politics
aside of how limited it was.
This is like dealing with let's feel sorry for the devil.
Kevin: Yeah,
Rob: It's weird.
It was so weird.
Kevin: It is weird.
This is my clunker.
Rob: That was your clunker.
Kevin: this is my clunker.
The Enterprise meets Lucifer at the center of the galaxy and
crosses over into a realm of magic.
Spock figures out that if you squint hard enough, you can
do magic in this magic realm.
Eventually they end up being tried as witches in Salem.
Rob: In Salem.
Yes, that's right.
Yep.
Kevin: And the only other thought I wrote here is there's a lot of
pseudo religious nonsense here.
Rob: It's a lot.
It's not, yeah.
For me, it wasn't even pseudo, it was very ham-handed, ham-fisted, hardcore
religious stuff thrown in there.
And it did not match at all.
Kevin: This is Star Trek V, several decades earlier, and
Rob: Well, clearly they couldn't remember.
Kevin: It's the same bad idea, but compared to this.
They did it surprisingly well in Star Trek V.
Rob: Yeah.
That's the thing.
Clearly they must have forgotten all about it because if when uh, Shatner
approached with the script, they would've gone, oh no, we did that before, mate.
It wasn't good, but they clearly forgot about it.
And they went, yeah, okay let's give, no, let's appease Shatner.
I don't think anyone was excited about it.
They just went, okay, let's just write five off.
Kevin: If I never see Lucien, which is the name they gave Lucifer, to make it
palatable to the censors, if I never see Lucien extend his arms again, it will
Rob: much of that.
Oh my gosh.
And spelling magic differently.
Was that something to do with the censors as well?
Yeah,
Kevin: it's weird.
Yeah, I mean there is some interview fodder on this one of just like,
whenever anyone went to Gene for ideas he wanted to do, the crew meets God
and the network said, it can't be God.
This is Saturday morning television.
And he said, how about the devil?
And they said, can you give him a different name?
But no bad one.
This is my worst episode
Rob: yeah.
It was pretty much in my clunkers as well, but there's one a bit
later on that I just went, Ooh.
Yeah.
Kevin: Yeah.
Number nine.
Once Upon a Planet, the sequel to Shore
Rob: Now I haven't seen Shore Leave.
So how was this for you?
Kevin: Tonally very similar.
Like this is very faithful to the so tone set by the original the crew beamed down
to a planet that is seemingly idyllic.
And then immediately start having apparently visions of
things from their imagination.
Bones is thinking of Alice in Wonderland and the giant rabbit
bounces by, followed by a young blonde-haired girl chasing the rabbit.
And quickly these imaginary thoughts become real, get a little out of
hand, someone gets stabbed but it turns out it's okay because the
entire planet is an amusement park.
And y the planet's systems will repair any injury and it's
all a big misunderstanding.
And at the end of it they go, wow, it's amazing.
And Bones is standing there with a woman on either arm that have been
conjured for him by the planet.
They're both wearing.
Apparently pom-poms, like their entire costume is made out of skillfully placed
pom-poms and as much skin as possible.
And uh, Kirk goes, this all checks out.
Beam the whole crew down.
End of episode.
That's Shore Leave.
Rob: All right.
There you go.
Kevin: Yeah.
And this is it is.
I thought it was fun.
It is.
The Original Series is intended to be not taken too seriously.
There are some good character beats in The Original Series where you
get to see what these professionals imagine or fantasize about.
So the, it's another one of those like forcing characters to let down their guard
by revealing their innermost thoughts and
Rob: Of course.
Kevin: Kirk has fist fight with his nemesis from the academy who tells
him he's a, he was a walking pile of books and needs to loosen up.
So there was a lot of that in Shore Leave.
I think there was a little of that missing here.
It was much more plot driven than character driven, this one.
Rob: Yes, and anytime there, Star Trek, lean into, literary inspiration.
So whether it be Shakespeare or Peter Pan or Alison Wonderland, I'm happy.
And it's also sort like that proto version of, and it's mentioned the little line
later on of that kind of representation of what the holodeck later becomes.
Kevin: This for me might have been the high point for
Uhura in The Animated Series.
She has a one of those Kirk style debates with a computer where she tries
to convince the computer that they are wrong and should change their ways.
Sadly, the computer is not convinced by Uhura, but it's a great speech
and I thought gave her more to do and more agency than we got
Rob: Yes.
We're, it's a sad state of affairs when we are reaching for those highlights.
But yeah, Nichelle Nichols was powering on as the champion she was.
Kevin: Yeah.
Uh, a couple of awkward long pauses where it seems like they might
have been in filling time, but otherwise, a solid episode with
a lot of fun stuff for the whole
Rob: Yes, it was, it's not one of my favorites, but it was
definitely one of the better ones.
And they're starting to pick up that momentum of
understanding what they can do.
Kevin: I'd say if you were a fan who enjoyed the original, this I'd bump
this up a notch for nostalgia as well.
Number 10, Mudd's Passion.
Rob: We've we've talked about bringing back old Mudd to really show what
decade our gender politics is.
Kevin: Yes, he brings the, what I wrote as the heteronormative love potion, where
he goes out of his way to say that between a man and a woman, it creates love.
But between a man and a man, it creates friendship.
Rob: That's right.
That's damn right because that's all there is in the way of things.
Yeah.
It's uh,
Kevin: uh, Yeah, not my clunkiest one, but I would not go outta my way to watch this.
Mudd is true to form.
If you enjoyed the performance of Mudd, you get more of that here.
He is pitch perfect for all the good and bad that brings.
Weird that the Enterprise uses ID cards all of a sudden.
Mudd steals Nurse Chapel's ID card in order to make his escape.
Rob: Yes, that's right.
Kevin: McCoy is sitting at a bridge station out of nowhere in this
episode, and it's not commented upon.
There's just suddenly a shot of McCoy sitting at what
looks to be Uhura's station.
And love drunk Spock is the worst acting I have ever seen Leonard Nimoy do.
don't know what happened
Rob: it is, it's quite embarrassing.
It's quite awkward about and how aggressive he is and how much he wants
Nurse Chapel and who, yeah, My Chris.
Yeah, that's, it's yeah.
Kevin: He must have been given a bum steer in direction, cuz I
know he can do better than that.
And it, it was really painful.
It pulled the whole episode an already struggling episode.
It pulled it really down.
Rob: Yeah, I was checking my watch a number of times to
see how much longer we had.
Kevin: Number 11, The Terratin Incident.
Rob: one, I can't really remember that
Kevin: This is the one where they get tiny.
Rob: Oh, okay.
Now I remember.
Okay.
So yeah, this is the one where Nurse Chapel can't save herself.
Kevin: Yeah.
And and Kirk has to throw a needle and thread that happens to be lying around in
Rob: It happens to be lying around in sick bay.
Of course, they've gotta
Kevin: he
Rob: they've gotta stitch up some cuts, don't they?
Kevin: She's in water, and Kirk throws effectively an ultra sharp spear at
her in the water in order to save her.
And.
Rob: heroic.
That's
Kevin: You see him throw it and it cuts to her saved, like
we don't know what happens.
Something good happens.
Rob: They ran on money.
They, there was an elaborate sequence all worked out.
I did the it, the quite juvenile thing of going.
Clearly they're shrinking, but they go, no.
Maybe the ship is growing.
Kevin: Maybe the ship is growing.
Yeah, that's a, that was like a mind blowing for me as a kid.
That would've been mind blowing, sitting there Saturday morning.
I've been like, whoa.
The ship could be growing.
Rob: but no, they go with
Kevin: They were shipping, they were right the
Rob: Yeah, they And that would've been more interesting in many ways,
the ship growing bigger and bigger.
Kevin: Oh, we'll get to the giant Enterprise soon enough.
There is a weird shot of a dude with a mustache, a seventies mustache,
and another guy with glasses.
The crew is getting ready to beam up.
Like the crew that has been kidnapped off the Enterprise, and they're
being held hostage in the tiny town.
They're getting ready to beam up and the transporter will fix everything.
That is the thing that happens again and again in The Animated Series is
the transporter cures everything.
But they're g they're getting ready to beam up and it's just a static
shot of three people and one of them has a seventies mustache and the
other person is wearing glasses.
And I was like, hold the phone.
There is a story here.
It turns out those are three of the animators on the show.
They got permission to put themselves in the show.
Rob: Excellent.
Great.
Kevin: And then the end, at the end, it is clear they really ran out of time
or money because somehow Kirk orders the ship to fire on the tiny city that
they have said they're gonna help.
They're like, we will help you.
Just give us our crew back and send us all the dilithium you got and then
we'll, we will work something out.
He gets his crew back, they've been the dilithium on board and then Kirk orders
the ship to fire phasers at the city.
And I'm like, what?
That seems pure evil.
And sure enough, the ship fires phasers at the city and the city
appears on the transporter platform.
All I can gather is someone got confused between phasers and
transporters and it got a little too far and it was too late to fix.
Rob: Yeah.
Yeah.
That's what happened.
That's where it went.
Kevin: what happened.
Number 12, The Time Trap.
Rob: Yes.
Now this is
Kevin: This is the Enterprise and a Klingon ship.
Both get stuck in a dimension that is full of other trapped ships.
It's like the Bermuda Triangle.
And they've all learned to live in harmony because they've all decided they're never
getting home, and time does not progress.
So none of them age either.
So it's this community of previously warring races all stranded together
and they've decided they've formed a government and they've made
Rob: Yes.
They had the, like the head of each representative council
was Yes, I do remember that.
Yes.
Kevin: But The Enterprise and the Klingon ship connect up and
use their engines together to warp out of there and get home.
But it's almost foiled by the Klingons doing their dastardly deeds and
being tried on penalty of removing their ship's power for many years.
Rob: Again, that's yeah.
One are clearly not that memorable to me.
Kevin: George Takei plays a Klingon captain and it's
unconvincing is what I wrote here.
This is where I went.
Okay, cool.
Not everyone has the talent or experience to convincingly create
multiple characters for an animated TV
Rob: Yeah, look.
Yeah.
Nichelle Nichols is the MVP of that, and all the boys are sadly falling behind.
Kevin: Jimmy Doohan does a decent job if you ask me.
He does a lot of different characters.
And in an interview I read, he was jazzed at the fact that generally he didn't
put it on an accent for any of them.
He just put on a different quality of voice.
So he was having a lot of fun creating characters without Scottish accents.
Rob: I'm glad he had a f I'm glad he had a fun time.
Kevin: I rate this as a solid episode,
Rob: There's some good look from what from Yes.
Thank you for going into detail, not just for the viewers, but for me as well.
Yes, I did like that concept of all these warring races that were, it's very
Star Treky of going, we're trapped here.
No, time is, time means nothing here.
So we have to work together.
Kevin: It's a beautiful dilemma.
It is like, here is the peace that feels impossible in the galaxy.
They made it work.
And we are going to do our darnedest to get the heck outta
here cuz we we wanna go home.
Rob: We cannot stay here.
This is like far too boring.
Kevin: Number 13, The Ambergris Incident.
Lots of swimming.
Rob: Lots of swimming, lots of stuff that you'd never be able to do in live action.
Big sea snakes and venom extraction and Kirk and Spock and not
being able to breathe oxygen.
So they have to stay in, they had to convert areas of the
Enterprise to be filled with water.
And they sound perfectly normal even though they're under water.
Kevin: it is on paper.
It should be a really great episode.
In practice, it was lots of swimming and debating and then swimming, and
then more debating and more swimming.
It was it got tedious for me, it was good to see McCoy get some speeches
as he worked through the medical puzzle of Kirk and Spock's mutation.
Like this for me was first time we got to see McCoy doing his job
Rob: he was very doctory in this.
Yeah, very doctory going.
How do we solve this?
How do we figure this out?
Kevin: Yeah.
A novelty, but not especially good.
This one, I think.
Rob: Yeah, it came across a far more kiddy than it should, even though
it was like boring stretches of talking and discussing and stuff.
But that's a whole thing of let's turn our characters into now underwater creatures.
It's very, Mario putting on a penguin suit if,
Kevin: Yeah.
They, yeah.
Anyway, number 14, The Slaver Weapon.
Rob: This was really good.
Kevin: Oh yeah?
Rob: I like this one
Kevin: We might disagree for the first time.
Rob: And it was particularly interesting cuz there was no Kirk
and so it was just a way mission.
So it was Spock, Uhura and Sulu uh, out on their Runabout and finding a
Kevin: I did like that fit, that made it felt like a Next Generation episode to me.
There are a few great Next Generation episodes that are
like, we're away from the ship on our shuttle or on our Runabout.
And it's a odd combination of characters and we got that here.
It felt ahead of its time in that respect.
Rob: And this is adapted by Larry Niven on his own story the Soft Weapon.
Kevin: Yeah.
Great, great Star Trek writer, Larry Niven.
Rob: Yeah.
Yeah I like the, there was a, yeah, there was just a confidence to it.
There was a the, and seeing the dynamic of those three characters who, you
know, especially with Sulu and Uhura not getting that many episodes in the
forefront, but to have the three of them out on this away mission was great.
And there's a definite threat there and a definite developing of the
history of a culture, which I kind of
Kevin: I think what hurt this one in my eyes was that the, what happened again
and again and again in this episode was, it's let's see what the next setting does.
Oh, it's also a disappointment.
Um,
Rob: it like that.
Kevin: it was a long buildup to a punchline That was pretty good.
I don't, I won't spoil it for people who haven't seen it, but let's just
say this is the only episode of The Animated Series that has confirmed kills
Rob: Yes, that's right.
Kevin: Yeah, but it took a long time to get to where it was going and it
was fairly repetitive in the process, but I did like many of the elements.
Rob: Yeah.
Yeah.
There were elements I really liked about it, and that's one that definitely stuck
out to me of the away mission and the writing definitely seemed a lot, more
confident and definitely understood the characters of Star Trek more.
Kevin: Not one of your two best though.
Rob: Not one of my two best.
The next one is one of my best.
Kevin: Number 15 I of the beholder air,
Rob: Oh, look, I'm a huge Twilight Zone fan and I love those type of
episodes where it's like a step in.
The bazaar and the odd for 20 minutes or so, and then you get out.
And so this one explores, something that's been explored in the Twilight
Zone before is, humans in a zoo.
Kevin: Snuffleupagusses.
Rob: The, and I love the creatures.
I love the big red snuffaluffagus characters.
And even the baby was huge and Scotty having to learn
how to communicate with it.
And a lot of talk about these creatures are eons old and that, that great
human entitlement of going, but when zoos are kept for animals, he goes
Kevin: guess
Rob: Guess what?
To this species, we are the animals.
And just things like always observing them and could get inside Kirk's mind.
There was great oh my head acting of uh, Shatner, which was great and
the, and at the end they go cuz they were telepathic uh, snuffeupagi.
And that moment of going, they, we might be ready for them or we might be ready
for them in two or three millennia.
Kevin: Yeah.
Rob: And Kirk goes well, there'll be somebody else's problem.
Kevin: So much of what this episode does ends up being cliche in Star Trek, but
it was fresh at this time, and I agree.
This is a great episode.
I love.
This is a Kirk Spock McCoy adventure.
The three mains beam down, and there's plenty of bickering and
it is entertaining throughout.
The writing here was pitch perfect.
This, to me, is the best characterization that we get in the animated
Rob: Very much so, and they're all playing their roles.
So you've got, Kirk going, but what is this?
And and Spock going.
This is, not everything's all about you, Jim.
And McCoy going, whoa, shut up.
You man.
You square.
Kevin: I admire the restraint never to let us hear the
telepathic thoughts of the aliens.
Like we're told they're telepathic.
There are long lingering shots of these two pink snuffleupagus on the
screen looking really silly, but they're having deep thoughts at each
other, and we are left to imagine what deep words they're exchanging.
A, a less confident show would've employed someone to do an echoy voice with a bit
of theramin behind it to tell us what they were saying, but instead, it's left
to the imagination and it elevates it
Rob: Oh.
And it was that for me, it was the perfect representation of the animation that
you would never get creatures that size and that design who are so non-human
in the live action Original Series.
So to have that moment of these are huge, you see the scale of them.
And I love that, that classic cliche sci-fi thing of going
we're the, we're not animals.
Well to them, we are.
That, that type of stuff.
That type of stuff I love.
Kevin: Yeah.
Okay.
So that's one of your first best.
I agree with that.
That's a four outta five.
It's right up there.
It's not quite my best though.
Number 16, The Jihad, our season finale for season one.
Rob: From the highest of highs.
We go to the lowest of lows.
This was my clunker.
Kevin: Okay, go for it.
I want to hear all
Rob: Um, Look, I love the idea of a range of aliens trapped on a planet.
All different types.
So we had bird boy, we had green slug, we had monobrowed Amazon woman.
But it's, even with the title Jihad and with the grossly outdated
gender politics stuff there.
And it's just like trying to do this whole epic quest type thing.
And, but it just seemed to going from we're just walking and, oh, now
we're flying, now we're driving and
Kevin: Here comes the lava drive faster.
Rob: Now, oh, here's the sachet.
And and, you could spot the, the betrayer a million miles away.
So there, there's a lot of awkward stuff in there,
Kevin: This is the most Saturday morning cartoon episode of the series.
And I think it, it speaks volumes that makes it your clunker in many ways.
This has, oh, let's go up on the hill and push that boulder down to block the lava.
Like it is very comic like pulp comic stuff.
Very broad strokes.
And the brief was apparently like, make as much adventure
happen in 30 minutes as you can.
Rob: And despite DC Fontana's best efforts to keep out the sex, the the
creepy Amazon woman constantly just going, Hey, Kirk, how you going, there?
You are.
Kevin: The most charitable reading I can give of it is that it was
boundary smashing at the time that, that the creepy person cracking on
to other characters would be a woman.
What?!
Like that's as charitable a take I can, as I can get on this, but it feels frankly
out of place on a show for children.
Rob: You're right.
It's very much like Tar.
It is the equivalent of Kate Blanchard's performance in Tar.
It should be given an Oscar.
What?
No.
I was at Tar, was originally written as a male character and then they
went, no, let's flip it and make this horrible conductor type, abusing their
position of power, make it a woman.
Kevin: I don't get that reference.
So on the one hand I kind of wanna watch it, but your testimonial is not strong.
So maybe I won't.
Rob: Oh, look it's getting all the acclaim in all the regard.
Unlike Jihad, the episode.
Kevin: Much was made at the time of the mature themes in this episode and it
wasn't the uh, super randy woman, it was the talk of Holy Wars and Jihads
and these, which were very political concepts at the time in the world, and
kids being presented with those ideas.
Mommy, daddy, what's a Holy War?
Like the makers of the show were feeling like they were running some risks with
prompting those kind of conversations at
Rob: You, yes.
And it seems, I don't know if it's my sensitivity or white guilt or
anything like that, but those type of terminologies and stuff like that
seem to be in better suited in the hands of, of people connected with
that culture as opposed to white culture going, ah, let's do this way.
Kevin: And also, it's one thing to decide to take a swing at mature
concepts like that, but to do it in such a juvenile episode of television,
it doesn't do it any justice.
Rob: have it in the background while you're focusing on let's push this
boulder, let's chase this lava.
I did like the, the bird-like creatures, though.
I wish they could appear in some way, shape or form in live action.
Kevin: It really stood out to me against all the other episodes of The Animated
Series that like they brought all their guest cast into this one episode.
Most of the other episodes of The Animated Series, there are the familiar
voices and then there are the episodic characters that are also voiced
by the same actors, more or less.
You might have one unfamiliar voice.
This one, it was like, let's take let's take Kirk and is it Kirk and Spock?
Yeah.
Let's take Kirk and Spock and surround them by a bunch of strangers.
That are all voiced by guest actors that, like what I wrote here is were
they cheaper than our regular cast?
This seemed to me like what the intent for the series originally must have been.
That you get Kirk and Spock and you surround them with
some voices of the week.
Rob: And do a lot pushing over boulders and chasing lava and all that type
of fun adventure stuff, as opposed to let's do hardcore sci-fi stuff.
So maybe it's also the end of season type of splurge.
Kevin: Yeah.
Maybe it was the, maybe they had some guest stars they made promises to.
They'd already been paid and they
Rob: summer.
Somebody else's wife or husband or loved one.
Yeah.
Kevin: Season two, number one, The Pirates of Orion.
This is one of my two favorites.
Rob: explain.
Kevin: The opening of this episode is that there is a disease on board the
Enterprise, but McCoy says, I cured it.
It's fine.
I'm really proud of myself.
Just recording a log as my victory lap for having cured this disease.
And then Spock drops out cold on the bridge of the Enterprise.
Turns out Vulcans are not as immune to this disease as
McCoy thought they would be.
Kirk calls for help from sick bay, even though McCoy is standing
next to him on the bridge, which I thought was especially cold of McCoy.
I'm sure it was a mistake, but what my read of it is that Kirk
knows that McCoy is not gonna lift a finger to save Spock's life.
Low budget animation jank aside, I thought this was a strong episode.
It would've gone down like a lead balloon with the kids watching
Saturday morning cartoons, though.
But it was clearly a team determined to make more Star Trek at any cost.
The fight to save Spock life by engaging in a subtle manipulation of these
Orion pirates who needed to save face.
There are like three concepts there that most kids watching, it's
gonna go straight over their heads.
The idea that the Orion's have stolen something and we
know they've stolen something.
They know, we know they've stolen something, but neither party
can say you've stolen something because then Spock will die.
Instead, Kirk has to go through this charade of letting them off the
hook and preserve their neutrality.
And then eventually they beam down to a planet and have a fist fight which
every good Star Trek episode needs.
The bomb is diffused at the last minute by b beaming the dilithium on board the ship.
And then the Orion captain tries to commit suicide with a cyanide capsule
and they prevent him from doing it.
So he has, he no longer has any reason for his ship to self-destruct.
His ship is preparing to self-destruct, so there is no evidence of
their guilt, but they've managed to capture the captain alive.
So the captain calls the ship and says, cancel the self-destruct we've lost.
There is this is such it is more complex than nine out of 10 Star
Trek episodes, and I am here for it.
Rob: There's a lot of, yeah, and showing that the cleverness of Kirk to
manipulate and play the situation while still working on the clock of going,
we've gotta save we've gotta save Spock.
So there's a lot there.
And the culture of, the Orion Pirates and their honor and all that type of
stuff to have explored this heady stuff for a 25 minute animated kid show.
Kevin: Yeah, absolutely.
This episode was written by the youngest writer in Star Trek history.
He was a 19 year old college student when he submitted his
script on typed on loose leaf paper.
I'm showing a picture of that to Rob right now.
It's amazing.
The creators of the show called him up and said, huh we
haven't seen your name around.
What else have you written?
And he is like, uh, I'm a college student.
I've never written anything in my life.
And they said, that's fine.
It's a great script.
Rob: And that's that's Howard Weinstein.
Kevin: Yeah, it's awesome.
Rob: Well done Howard on a great opener for season two.
Kevin: Yeah.
I loved it.
The Pirates of Orion, they look weird.
Like they are, there is a, you could tell that there was a changing of
the guard in the creative leadership because they mispronounce Orion as
Rob: That's right.
Kevin: Even though they are by all by all accounts, meant to be the same
green skin aliens that we have seen previously in Star Trek history, and
that we now see in Star Trek Discovery.
But they're all wearing like swim, like scuba suits and masks and goggles in
this episode for no apparent reason.
And they have blue skin instead of green.
But but yeah it's let, that's the jank, that's the low budget jank I was talking
about, but underneath that surface is a really strong Star Trek script.
Rob: And that's the thing.
That's how I missed the connection because it's mispronounced an they're blue and
I'm there going, yeah, I missed the whole, it went completely over my head.
No, they're the Orions, remember the
Kevin: They're the they're the Tendi Orions.
Rob: Uh, and yeah, and like we talked about all the Orions, now
all the males are like really buff, apparently square jawed.
Yeah.
Kevin: Episode two, bEM.
Rob: Yes.
I don't remember much about
Kevin: This is the alien that can split himself into
Rob: Yes.
Oh, that's like the top goes off running
Kevin: And we've had a return of that species in Lower Decks.
We've had a Lower Decks guest star that is, yeah.
He's like the the trainer who is putting the crew through
the holo deck simulations.
And we can see that his species has been assessing the skills of Starfleet crews
for many years by that time, uh, tracing way back to this episode in which yeah
he deliberately gets himself captured by some primitive aliens who are referred
to as Aborigines in this in this episode.
Rob: That's right.
I do remember that.
Kevin: And yeah, gets himself trapped.
And then when Kirk and Spock get captured as well, trying to rescue
him, he goes, wow you are incompetent.
This was a test and you failed.
Rob: That's right.
And they need to figure out, because they don't know what the first,
that he can separate his body
Kevin: That's right.
Yeah.
So he gets through the bramble bush by separating, he's a colony character.
There's the funny gag in the start where they beam down and Kirk and Spock beam
down over water and fall in the water.
So he jumps in and then he disconnects his bottom half to
go and steal their communicators.
Rob: Right.
Yes.
And then the little tentacle things come out and take it out.
It goes we don't have our communicators anymore, Spock.
Kevin: Yeah.
There's some good parts here, but it adds up to a pretty weak episode in my mind.
Rob: I'd go with that too,
Kevin: some
Rob: because I barely remembered it.
You explained it went, oh, that's right.
I do remember that.
Kevin: There's a, this is a stronger example of Uhura taking command, cuz
she does take command and then Scotty wants to go down and rescue Kirk
and Spock against orders and Uhura, speaking to a superior officer says,
Nope, I'm, I was left in command.
We have our orders.
We are not deviating from those orders.
She quotes regulations to Scotty and it's a power move.
It's really good.
Uhura or Nichelle Nichols also plays the voice of the sparkly cloud god creature
at the end that's really upset that they are all uh, interfering with her children.
Rob: That's right.
Yes.
Kevin: Yeah.
So Nichelle Nichols gets a good outing in this one, but that's about
all I can say for this episode,
Rob: So next up we go to The Practical Joker.
Kevin: The Practical Joker.
Rob: Now for me, this was another one of my uh, top choices.
Kevin: Ooh, wow.
Okay.
Rob: I really liked the silliness of the practical jokes and everyone
laughing and the fact that great reveal of it's actually the ship,
it's the computer, the, the, the, The computer has, developed, gone awry.
And it, yeah, there's, there was just something in it.
It was a breath of fresh air for me.
And I loved that type of, that Star Trek awkward.
It's sort like their approach to sex, is their also their app
approach to a sense of humor?
I'm, they're going, I don't know if anybody on this
crew has ever laughed before
Kevin: Ha.
Ha.
Rob: They have never used those muscles in their body at all.
But there was something, cute and clever about this regimented,
serious, exploration team,
Kevin: I agree.
This is the only time we got to hear some of our original series crew laugh,
and some of them I don't need to hear it
Rob: Never again.
No.
That that one, one was too many, but
Kevin: I agree.
This is a fresh one.
I think this for me is the most successful example of what Star Trek, if written as a
Saturday morning cartoon, could have been.
Rob: Yes.
Kevin: It was not taking itself too seriously.
It was having fun.
It was playing with very broad strokes, but that, that worked here.
The ship creates a blow up balloon version of the Enterprise that's much larger
in order to scare off the Romulans.
And it works!
Rob: But and the episode does end with an awkward thing of the Romulans'
computer starts getting the same thing
Kevin: The Trouble with Tribbles all over
Rob: Yeah.
And they do the whole, oh Romulan
Kevin: We'll tell them how to fix it later.
Rob: Now, was it in this one where they were, there were some people
in something like a Yeah, yeah,
Kevin: This, I wrote an impressively full formed division of the holodeck,
unlike the other week when we were talking about holodeck episodes.
And I said, the first couple of Star Trek, the next generations where
they did a holodeck story, there was a lot of characters standing around
in wonder at the technology, and the story was put on pause for a few
moments while people said, wow, it is amazing that this is even possible.
They moved past that much more quickly in this episode into making it normal for the
characters and therefore magical for us.
Rob: Yes.
Yeah it covered a lot.
It had that holodeck, it had the, I like a mischievous computer reveal as well.
Like it's you.
The ship, the thing that keeps us safe is actually turning
against us is a wonderful idea.
And yes, hearing these humanoids do something called laugh for
the first time ever is a joy.
So yeah, I really dug it.
I liked the breath of fresh air that it was.
And yeah, that's one I'd go, I'd actually go back and watch that again.
Kevin: Yeah.
Great.
Episode four.
Rob: This was a good one as well.
Kevin: This is my other favorite
Rob: Hey
Kevin: Uh, Albatross, in which McCoy previously cured a PLA or
worked to cure a plague on a planet.
And they come back expecting everything will be fine, and everything does go
fine until they're just about to beam up, and they slap McCoy with a warrant.
Rob: And they're so polite about it going well.
This has been a pleasure being here.
Kevin: if you have a moment for one more thing, you're under arrest.
Rob: We have a letter for you.
Oh, yes, you are public enemy number one.
Kevin: That's right.
We've been holding our tongues this whole time.
Rob: Oh, we can't believe we're happening now.
It's we've done so well.
Kevin: Um, And, they capture McCoy.
And basically this culture is reputed for swift justice slash show trials.
And the fear is that McCoy is going to be put to death for his crimes against
this species because he is accused of basically causing uh, a, a plague
Rob: Yes.
Kevin: that wiped out their sister planet.
And uh, the Enterprise racing the clock goes to the sister planet in order to
figure out, find some evidence of McCoy's innocence, which they take on faith.
And I kind of love that, that it like, that is some classic Star Trek, where
not a moment is spent contemplating the possibility of McCoy's guilt.
It is just like, well, obviously he's a saint.
Let's go fix this.
Uh, friends looking after friends.
Rob: They just go.
Who would never do that type of thing.
Let's go.
Is this the episode where everyone goes blue.
Kevin: Yes, the plague is one of the big symptoms of the plague
supposedly, is that people change color from this to that to the other.
And it's like yellow to green to
Rob: right.
And it doesn't affect Spock cuz of course it doesn't.
Kevin: Of course it
Rob: Cuz he is green blooded vulcan.
Kevin: But yeah the ship flies through a suspiciously colorful
nebula on the way, and then it flies through the same suspiciously
colorful nebula on the way back.
And it turns out the changing colors is a false symptom.
Like it is something that happened at the same time as the plague and was
assumed to be a symptom of the plague, but in fact, it was a red herring.
And as soon as you told the computer to stop trying to match against changing
skin colors, the computer was able to identify the plague and synthesize a cure.
And I just really that is a plot twist that feels like it could have been
overdone, but I've never seen it before.
Rob: And it's always good to have a bit of the, the characters' past,
and to talk about McCoy before he was on the Enterprise or stuff like
that is always good to have that expansion of our characters so that
how they lived and breathed before they had the safety of the Enterprise.
Kevin: It's not lost on me that my two favorite episodes are racing
the clock to save the life of one of our favorite cast members.
The, it was Spock in the Pirates of Orion and it's McCoy here.
That, that does seem a little over done by this point, but it's okay.
The series was about to end, so I'll give it to them.
Rob: Yeah.
It is the, third last episode, so well done.
Kevin: I thought the aliens here were really interesting too.
Like they had the novelty of being completely different from like they
had, they were humanoids, but with completely different proportions.
Really big detailed heads and really stompy elephant feet and It was, and
yet they were very full formed, like their face moved in interesting ways.
They went beyond the novelty of let's draw something funny looking, to,
it felt like they actually thought through how would these things move?
How would these things speak?
Rob: Yes.
And their culture as well about the politeness and the rituals and the rules
that they follow and their guidelines that they, we will have you on our planet for
this time, but at the very last moment we will bring out the thing that we've
been wanting to do this entire time.
And they're just like, this is our procedure.
This is how we do things.
Kevin: Yeah.
Rob: And great title as well.
Great
Kevin: oh, yeah, exactly.
Rob: The final two.
Kevin: How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth.
Episode five.
This is the one with Kukulkan.
I said Quetzalcoatl before, but I meant Kukulkan.
Rob: That's, yes.
And this was, yeah, they just happened to have a crew member who is yeah.
He has never shown up
Kevin: He's a Native American,
Rob: American.
And it's related to his culture and it takes the form of Kukulkan.
Kevin: It seems that is what won them the Emmy here is that representation
of Native American culture in the future was as groundbreaking as
having a black woman at comms and a Japanese man at at the helm like that.
It was that level of breakthrough for representation at the time that Native
Americans had a place in the future and they hadn't fully assimilated into
white people culture in order to do it.
Rob: And especially within American culture, especially watching from
the outside, Australia we are uh, incredibly guilty of what we have done
to our in, our First Nations culture.
But as what I noticed from the outside with the US it's, yeah the Native
American cultures and nations ha are not really, never have really had a voice.
You know, it's always the, obviously the injustices of the slave labor
and all this, and slave slavery and all that type of stuff, and the civil
rights movement and white on black.
But the the Native American culture and race, like you hear the languages
of all the Native American cultures are dying out because the youth
aren't learning it, and that's happening here in Australia as well.
And so to have, yeah, this represented and it's a little bit clumsy with Chakotay
um, how they try to bring that in and he's not actually a Native American actor.
So yes, I was a little bit I took a step back at the start going, this
seems white people trying to white write
Kevin: Slightly tokenistic in hindsight, for sure.
Maybe more than slightly, like they lay it on pretty
Rob: As in it's, yeah, it's the representation of
Kevin: Never seen before, never
Rob: seen again, that
Kevin: and the plot of the episode just happens to have to do with
recognizing Native American culture.
Rob: for the only time a Native American crewman is on the deck at that time.
So it is the definition of token.
But yeah.
Reflecting on it, it goes, look, it's better that they did it
as a tribute and an honor as opposed to not doing it at all.
Kevin: Also won a Peabody Award in
Rob: Oh, that, Hey that's nothing to be sniffed at.
Kevin: But yeah, this episode has this really cool looking ship that kind of
looks like a dragon, and then it takes on this holographic mantle around it
that really makes it look like a dragon.
And then it turns out it's being flown by a flying dragon.
So there's dragons upon dragons here introduces himself as Kukulkan, returned
to to take care of his children once more.
The primitive people of Earth.
He, sorry, he's daddy stepped away, but he's back.
Rob: had things to do.
He had to go out for some cigarettes.
Kevin: Yeah, but he will only not kill you if you can solve his riddle.
And he, he gave us all the parts to solve the riddle before,
and he was very disappointed that we didn't put it together.
He's gonna give us one more try.
Now that you know there's a riddle, see if you can solve it.
And they solve it in like 30 seconds.
It's like the most basic video game riddle I've ever seen of
there is a pyramid and there are four mirrors on swiveling statues.
What should I do?
Let's try pointing the mirrors at the top of the pyramid.
You solved it.
My children all is forgiven.
Rob: You're a genius.
You're a genius Kevin.
Yeah, the the color scheme for this is great.
There's some beautiful, colors and representation here to outside of the
usual color schemes that they had.
Yeah, there's.
Kevin: of weird animals.
Like he's got all the other primitive animals stuck in like fantasy
worlds in glass cages on his ship.
So return of that primitive species captured for a zoo like
this is it's starting to get done.
It's done after this.
That's what I'm gonna say.
Rob: Let's do one more episode and then never do it again.
Kevin: Of all the times Star Trek has done the a God from ancient history
turns out to have been an alien visitor.
That trope, and we've seen it many times.
This is one of the more successful ones.
Rob: agree.
And it's got dragons upon dragons.
So the more dragons the better.
Kevin: And the final episode, season two, episode six, the Counter Clock Incident.
Rob: Right with the famous old, captain admiral, who we've never heard of
before, shows up with his wife and they start getting younger, but then they
Kevin: Robert April.
Rob: That's right.
But he decides at the end no.
We don't want to go young again.
We want to be,
Kevin: We've lived a good life.
Make us old again.
Rob: and because of their bravery.
You know what?
Because he's gonna be obsolete.
Which is quite telling, considering they explore that in the movies in the
eighties about, yeah, about the obsolete
Kevin: The old warrior captain ready to retire, but needed for one more
Rob: One more mission and determining whether he's still worthwhile
or whether he can still, get back on that horse and ride in.
And yes.
Some of the dialogue is very awkward and it matches the awkward animation of the
couple standing there look like going, yes, this is what we are doing now.
And now we're relevant.
No, we're getting younger.
You are so beautiful.
Kevin: Uh, Robert April was one of the original names considered for
Christopher Pike in the original pilot.
So the the writer's Bible when the series finally got off the ground,
had some names of past captains of the Enterprise, and Robert April was in there.
So they were tapping like a little known detail of Star Trek lore that hadn't made
it to screen yet, which was great to see.
Rob: Do we know his positioning of where he is?
Was he
Kevin: He was before Pike it was
Rob: he immediately before.
Right.
Okay.
Cool.
Cool, cool.
Kevin: Yeah.
I believe that's correct.
And and we get to see Robert April again in the premiere of
Strange New Worlds last year.
So the guy who's the black admiral who comes to visit Christopher Pike on his
ranch and say, your ship needs you, Chris.
That is that is also Robert April.
Rob: That's right.
And he
Kevin: did, uh, colorblind casting and he's great.
Rob: And he was in it again in a later one when they're trying to do the negotiations
and, and they're doing the checklist.
So the B plot is the checklist.
Yeah.
Kevin: But the detail I had no idea to expect was that his wife was Chief
Medical Officer on the ship at the same time, and they like served together.
Rob: Well, there you go.
Kevin: That's gotta break some Starfleet HR regulations.
Rob: For Gene Roddenberry, it's totally part and parcel with writing Star Trek.
Am I right?
Getting you.
Yeah, look for the, like as a final episode, there's a lot more put into
what a final episode is cuz we've been so used to now what the modern
definition of a season finale is.
But at this point it was just a case of, this was procedural television as in you
write a story, you finish it, you finish up your number of episodes for the season,
and then you move on and you come back and you do the exact same thing the next year.
So there's no sort of like, build up no story arcs.
No.
Yeah.
Especially putting all that onus onto a character we haven't seen of.
It's beautiful to have that sort of continuity tip of a hat, but they
take the major focus in this final episode with the lead characters
taking more of a supporting role.
Kevin: I think this episode came in hot.
There's some notes in the book that I have of Star Trek, The Official Guide
to the Animated Series, where the writer of this episode was on staff and knew
there were six slots and knew they had filled five of them, so he had to submit
the script today or he might miss out.
And so I think some of that rush is visible in the final product.
There is a lot of befuddling logic in the reverse universe that they go into that
causes everyone to start getting younger.
It is very tortured, and my read of it is all there just to justify the
gag of getting to see younger and younger versions of our, of familiar
cast members Uhura and preteen Spock.
It's like the vi the sight gag is neat, but they have to
take a real long walk to get
Rob: Yes.
Yeah.
And it's, again, it's one of those, childhood animation gimmick.
So like now they're underwater, so there's an underwater version.
Now it's the baby version, now it's the giant version.
Yeah.
So they didn't do a really do any body swap ones, but they transformed the
bodies into many different variations.
Kevin: There is an echo of Discovery like the latest season of Discovery,
there are a number of scenes of exposition where our characters all
stand around a giant galactic map and explain the plot that is about to happen.
And that happens here.
They stand in front of a giant galactic map and they point at stars
and they're like, that one's gonna turn supernova in our universe at the
same time as the other one is gonna be a new star in the other universe.
And if, because those two things are happening at the same time, we'll be
able to travel between those two points.
And was like, oh gosh.
I guess you explained it, but it was not worth it.
Rob: Yeah, don't overthink it too much.
Just look at the pretty colors and move on.
Kevin: The ship flies backwards for some reason.
Like they could have done a lot more waving away of the attempt at
science here and created more time for a satisfying story, I thought.
Rob: I agree.
And so it does leave a bit of a, oh, that's it.
Now we're done.
Hmm.
Kevin: Yeah.
But baby Uhura sitting on the bridge is pretty cute,
Rob: It's very cute.
Very cute.
You cannot deny that.
Kevin: So there you
Rob: that is it.
There's.
Our blow by blow.
Kevin: I I have a parting question for you, Rob, which is does it hold up?
If someone out there is listening and like us a few weeks ago has seen a lot
of Star Trek, they like a lot of Star Trek, but they've not seen The Animated
Series, do you recommend the experience?
Rob: Look.
Yeah.
You've asked two different things.
I recommend the experience because as a completist Star Trek now
I have to go back and watch all the other ones that I've missed.
Yes.
So there is some elements in there that you need to see and moments you need to
go, oh, this is good, and you need to go through the same cringes that we did.
It doesn't hold up, sadly.
I wanted it to be so good, and I think I'm warped by how modern animation of
spinoffs of our shows are now after, especially coming off Lower Decks and
Prodigy and my love of Rebels and Bad Batch and Clone Wars from Star Wars.
I'm in that head space where I'm going, that's what I expect and
I was wanting this to go well, especially cuz they're going so
much of the original cast is back.
So much of the original writers, I know their mentality of what they're going
for and what we've been finding out, at every obstacle there was just something
getting in their way and the cast didn't want to really be there and cast who
did want to be there, got to write and they didn't want to be doing that.
So there's all these obstacles taking away from the experience.
Yeah, sadly it doesn't hold up, but it is it, I will say
it's not, it is now essential.
It is essential watching.
Kevin: Yes, certainly modern Star Trek has leaned back into some of those stories and
pulled some details forward and therefore like settled any question of is it cannon?
Did it really happen?
The, that decision is made now.
This is real Star Trek and it's what Star Trek was at the time.
For all of its faults and all of its highs and lows.
Rob: It was trying things.
There are some new ideas in there.
There's rehashing old cliches.
There is an incredibly outdated and, quite infuriating issues of,
gender politics and race and all that type of stuff that we have seen
with watching The Original Series.
But what it was striving for and what it was reaching for beyond
the constraints of its, the society it was in is admirable to see.
Kevin: As a true fourth season of Star Trek, what the best praise I can give it
is that the worst episodes are no worse than the worst episodes of season three
of the original series, and the best episodes are right up there with the best
that Star Trek gave us in season three.
Rob: Yeah, I'd say that as well.
And there are some embarrassing episodes of Star Trek from the nineties, from the
naughties from the last couple of years.
So it's not a case of this is an anomaly of embarrassing cringeworthy stories
or embarrassing moments of going, oh god, I can't believe they did that.
I'm going, oh, I've watched . I've been catching up on Picard.
So there's some moments where I'm going, I have the similar thoughts that
they had while watching the animated.
Kevin: There, there are some good ones here.
There have been suggestions that this series should be remastered or
reanimated using the original voices.
Having watched it, I would say don't do that.
On the whole, there is more le that is best left to history than is worth
bringing into the present of production values, but there might be one or two
or three or four bright spots here that if they as a one off as a bonus
feature as an internet web episode, if they did want to apply the Lower Decks
2D animation polished version to it, I would definitely rewatch it in that.
Rob: Yeah.
It would be interesting to see as a bit of, coming up to the 60th
anniversary of Star Trek, maybe a little bit of a little treat for the fans.
Take one or two of the particularly special ones and give them a bit of
a, an update, keeping the original dialogue and actually have the opening
credits with the actual theme music.
Imagine that.
Kevin: Imagine that.
Rob: So that's it.
That's it.
We've gone from going to talk about one or two of our good ones and one
or two of our worst ones to just going through every single one.
Your memory was amazing.
Mine was disappointing.
Kevin: That's okay.
You did it without notice, Rob.
I am, I marvel at the attempt.
Rob: Thank you so much.
So this was our way of filling in hiatus from
Kevin: Yes.
Next time we speak we will be arguing about whether Star Trek Picard,
season three is living up to our increasingly unreasonable expectations.
Rob: Look, and I'm looking forward to, you yeah.
Me doing this podcast.
I had to go through and watch season two of Picard, which I had been
told not to watch, and I'm watching it going All right, I can see why.
Kevin: Low expectations can help though, Rob.
Rob: Low… Oh, look, yeah, they did help.
I actually enjoyed more of it than I thought I would, but then
I get to the ending where I'm there going, what are you doing?
Why are you embracing Q like he is an old friend?
This does not make any sense.
But yes, I am looking forward to, yeah, the expectations are high.
Everyone is going no, season three is, this is, do or die.
And, uh, it.
And if in doubt, we've got Strange New Worlds coming out at some point,
and we've, as you just said to me, Prodigy season two is coming at
Kevin: Confirmed for 2023.
We're not gonna have to wait as long until we see what happens next.
Rob: Oh yeah.
And there's also the final season of Discovery and yeah, but I've
gotta catch up on that as well.
Damn you Kevin Yank.
Making me watch the stuff that I started watching.
Kevin: See around the galaxy.
Rob: see you around soon.
Looking forward to getting back onto some new Star Trek.