Star Trek Animated Series
Original air dates: September 1973 – October 1974
Executive Producers: Lou Scheimer & Norm Prescott
Captain’s log. With Star Trek continuing to be popular in reruns, and with James Blish‘s adaptations of the live-action episodes proving very popular in prose (with Blish also commissioned to write an original novel Spock Must Die! which would be the first of several published by Bantam throughout the 1970s), Filmation picked up the rights to do new Trek in animation.
Unlike most of Filmation’s other efforts, the show was deliberately produced as being more adult—still watchable by kids, of course, like the stuff airing around it on Saturday morning, but also something to be enjoyed by the same adults who watched the live-action series several years previous. To that end, both D.C. Fontana and creator Gene Roddenberry were heavily involved in the development of the show. Most of the show’s writers were either veterans of the live-action series (Samuel A. Peeples, Margaret Armen, David Gerrold, Stephen Kandel, Paul Schneider, David P. Harmon, and Fontana herself) or new writers who still had strong knowledge of the franchise (Marc Daniels, Walter Koenig, Howard Weinstein, and “John Culver,” a.k.a. Fred Bronson), plus maintaining the live-action series’ tradition of bringing in science fiction writers (Larry Niven). The show also did many sequels and continuations of live-action episodes.
The show was successful enough to commission a short second season—which was SOP for animated series of the era, which would rarely go beyond their single episode order and if they did, it would only be for a few to pepper in among the endless reruns of the first season—and while Roddenberry himself would later disavow it and try to pretend it didn’t happen, the show did have a certain influence. The holodeck seen in TNG was first seen on the animated series in “The Practical Joker‘s” rec deck, and “Yesteryear” and “The Time Trap” would both later be cited on TNG and DS9, respectively.
Highest-rated episode: “The Slaver Weapon” and “The Pirates of Orion,” both with a 9. Both by guys best known for their novels, too…
Lowest-rated episode: Another tie, between “The Magicks of Megas-Tu” and “The Counter-Clock Incident,” which both got a 2.
Most comments (as of this writing): “The Slaver Weapon,” with 90. This is the first time the TOS Rewatch hasn’t had a season with at least one three-figure comment episodes. Ah, well. Maybe ten more people will comment soon…
Fewest comments (as of this writing): “The Pirates of Orion” with a mere 26. One of the best episodes of the animated series, and this is all the love it gets? Sheesh.
Favorite Can’t we just reverse the polarity? From “The Eye of the Beholder“: Spock says the communicator signal is 1.1 kilometers away, but Scotty later says the city (where the signal originated) is 98.5 kilometers away. Scotty also reports that the city is to the northeast, but the Lactrans take the landing party northwest to the city. Nice to see D.C. Fontana was putting that script editor title to good use…
Favorite Fascinating. From “The Survivor“: Spock doesn’t notice that there’s a third biobed in sickbay until after Kirk points it out. Spock then lamely says, “I was just going to point that out myself.” Yeah, suuuuuure, we believe you, Mr. Observant Pants.
Favorite I’m a doctor not an escalator. From “Once Upon a Planet“: McCoy gets to revisit his first trip to the planet by summoning Alice and the White Rabbit, then almost gets his head cut off, fakes Spock’s death, and gets chased by pterodactyls, giant cats, and a two-headed dragon. Busy episode…
Favorite Ahead warp one, aye. From “The Magicks of Megas-Tu”: Sulu uses the magic of the center of the galaxy to create a woman. Uhura says, “Good luck,” but then Lucien interrupts before anything can happen. It’s not clear if this is Sulu’s one true love, his mother, his sister, the grown-up version of his daughter, some random chick he saw on a ferry once, or what.
Favorite Hailing frequencies open. From “The Lorelei Signal“: Uhura realizes right away something’s up, and takes all the right steps—getting Chapel to confirm her suspicions, not taking command until she’s verified what’s happening scientifically, and then kicking ass and taking names when she beams down.
It’s not clear why she needed Spock to tell her to send a security team down, though…
Favorite I cannot change the laws of physics! From “The Lorelei Signal”: While in command of the ship, and under the influence of Theela and her gang, Scotty decides to start singing “Yr Hufen Melyn” (“The Yellow Cream”) by Eifion Wyn. It’s a Welsh ballad, which is surprising coming from the Scotsman, but whatever. It’s certainly grounds for being relieved of command, and at least it sounds nicer than “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen” or “Heart of Oak” or “Maiden Wine.”
Favorite It’s a Russian invention. From “The Infinite Vulcan“: While Filmation couldn’t afford to hire Walter Koenig to reprise the voice of Chekov (they could barely afford Nichelle Nichols and George Takei), as a make-good, they hired him to write an episode. In fact, he’d been approached to do so independently of his exclusion from the cast due to Susan Sackett, Gene Roddenberry’s personal assistant, typing up a screenplay of Koenig’s and her showing it to Roddenberry, who was impressed enough to offer him a gig writing for the animated series. However, he had to do multiple rewrites, which soured him on the whole experience, and when he was asked to write another, he declined the offer.
Favorite Forewarned is three-armed. From “The Pirates of Orion”: Arex is the one who recognizes the ship as Orion, and he’s the one who tracks the ship down.
Favorite Go put on a red shirt. From “More Tribbles, More Troubles“: The security guard in the transporter room whom Kirk asks to secure the room once tribbles show up on board is modeled after writer David Gerrold.
Favorite No sex, please, we’re Starfleet: From “Mudd’s Passion“: Chapel’s unrequited love for Spock leads her to try the love potion on Spock. It does not go well for either of them. Meanwhile, M’Ress hits on Scotty and McCoy hits on an unidentified crewwoman.
Favorite Channel open. From “More Tribbles, More Troubles”:
“Tribbles are well known for their proclivities in multiplication.”
“And they breed fast, too!”
–Spock describing tribbles and Jones failing his saving throw versus linguistic comprehension.
Favorite Welcome aboard. As a money-saver, most of the voices that weren’t the regulars were still done by the regulars. Majel Barrett, James Doohan, and Nichelle Nichols provided most of the secondary voices, with voiceover actors filling in here and there, from Lennie Weinrib to Lou Scheimer to Ted Knight to Jane Webb.
It is notable, therefore, to single out the three other actors they actually got back to voice their characters: Mark Lenard as Sarek in “Yesteryear,” Stanley Adams as Jones in “More Tribbles, More Troubles,” and Roger C. Carmel as Mudd in “Mudd’s Passion.”
Favorite Trivial matters: The one for “The Time Trap,” as that episode was impressively influential on a number of future episodes.
To boldly go. “Emotional Earther!” The animated series had a lot riding against it. One of the biggest is the limitations of animation, both in terms of the sophistication level of Filmation’s work and more generally in terms of the perception of animation as kiddie fare. That perception was not entirely unjustified at the time—the sophisticated cartoons of Warner Bros. and Disney that went before movies (or were movies) had given way to companies like Filmation and Hanna Barbera cranking out mid-level pablum that didn’t require much by way of thinking.
But Trek was a deliberate throwback to those thrilling days of yesteryear when animation wasn’t synonymous with doofy—or, perhaps, a forerunner to the 1990s animation revolution that we’re still enjoying now.
Sadly, they weren’t always able to manage it. For every “Yesteryear” and “The Pirates of Orion” and “The Slaver Weapon” that was able to do a certain amount of complex storytelling, for every “Jihad” and “The Survivor” and “One of Our Planets is Missing” that tells a solid story, there’s junk like “The Counter-Clock Incident” and “The Practical Joker” and “The Lorelei Signal” and “The Magicks of Megas-Tu” and “Mudd’s Passion.”
Still, it was overall a noble experiment. The successes justified the failures, and even the latter had their moments (like Scotty’s pie in the face or Kirk putting his arm around Spock and blithely stating, “My dear friend Spock”).
Best of all, the series enabled Trek to get a bit more alien in its landscapes and creatures, going even further than they went in the third season, where they were heavily constrained by budget. (Though, of course, that was half the reason why they went more alien in season three, but whatever.) It was worth it to give us more far-out crew members like Arex and M’Ress and nifty non-humanoid aliens. Plus, the animated series did something neither the live-action TV series or the movies had the balls to do: put Uhura in charge of the ship, not once, but twice!
Warp factor rating for the season: 6
Next week: Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Keith R.A. DeCandido has two works coming out this month: the novel Marvel’s Warriors Three: Godhood’s End, Book 3 of the “Tales of Asgard” trilogy, available for preorder from Joe Books; and the short story “Behind the Wheel” in TV Gods: Summer Programming, which will launch at Balticon 51 over Memorial Day weekend from Fortress Publishing.
First finally, and autocorrect almost gets away with changing it to forest! DOH!
Seriously, I’ve been fond of TAS practically my entire life, as seeing it on TV, and thinking of it as “the NEW Star Trek,” and of TOS as ‘the OLD Star Trek,” when I was very, very young. In fact, seeing “The Infinite Vulcan” is my earliest recollection. So I have quite a fondness for this show and am grateful for the rewatch, KRAD!
As I pointed out in the “Eye of the Beholder” rewatch, Keith, Spock never said the signal was 1.1 km away — he just said the edge of the desert they occupied was that distance away. And the episode made it clear that the desert was just one of multiple biomes they had to cross through. So there is no contradiction there. You should’ve fixed this erroneous criticism the first time, not repeated it a second time.
I think this is the first time you’ve mentioned Lennie Weinrib as a guest voice on TAS. It’s interesting you should mention him, because some decades ago, I’d convinced myself that he was the “mystery voice” behind characters like Gabler, Kaz, Aleek-Om, etc., but I’ve long since unconvinced myself of that in favor of other theories. So what’s your basis for naming him? Did you come into some new information?
I disagree with the idea that Filmation’s work was normally “mid-level pablum.” The reason I’ve always preferred it over Hanna-Barbera’s output is that I found it smarter and more ambitious — H-B stuff tended to be interchangeable and disposable, but Filmation’s shows often aspired to be smart, informative, enlightening, and inclusive. In retrospect, they didn’t always succeed at those goals as well as I thought at the time, but just the fact that they tried was what made the difference for me.
My biggest regret about TAS was that it never got a revival. Other Filmation shows were given second chances. They did two different Batman cartoons, one in ’67 and one a decade later. And in the late ’70s/early ’80s they did new animated versions of their live-action characters Isis and Captain Marvel. Not to mention that they revived Fat Albert once or twice after years of reruns, and did Gilligan’s Planet as a sequel to The New Adventures of Gilligan. So the Filmation of the later ’70s and early ’80s was more than willing to give its old shows a second life.
Just imagine if Filmation had done a TAS revival around 1980, following up on Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Filmation was at its creative peak around then, with impressive SF/fantasy shows like Flash Gordon and Blackstar and action-adventure shows like The New Adventures of the Lone Ranger and Zorro. Their animation was more dynamic by then — still repetitive, but repeating stock rotoscoped action sequences, some of which were beautifully animated, rather than just still poses. And they’d innovated some pretty sophisticated special-effects techniques like backlit moires and rotoscoped spaceship miniatures, and Ray Ellis & Norm Prescott’s music was as rich and gorgeous as it got. Best of all, some notable writers were working for them around that time or would arrive in the early ’80s, including Michael Reaves, Marc Scott Zicree, Diane Duane, and Paul Dini (the first three of whom would later contribute to TNG, while Duane would become one of the most celebrated early Trek novelists). A TMP-era animated series from writers like that, using the freedom of animation to make full use of the background aliens only glimpsed in passing in TMP, and made at a time when Filmation was at its best, could’ve been really something. And a second animated Trek series — especially if it were the only onscreen thing fleshing out the era between TMP and TWOK — could’ve helped entrench animated Trek as a more significant and legitimate part of the franchise, rather than the afterthought many consider it to be.
I watched TOS and TAS, and had the animated series been revived, post-TMP, as Mr. Bennett (@2) speculates, I would have been back for that, as well. For TAS, I always like to think that we had been promised stories of the starship Enterprise and “her 5-year mission”; TOS gave us 3 seasons, and TAS gave us the other 2.
All in all, TAS has been a pleasant surprise. I bought the DVD set for this rewatch, but didn’t expect to ever watch it again. Now I’m certain that I will.
After watching the first episode, I wrote that I would miss the characters’ facial expressions, and I did. Both Shatner and Nimoy do so much with their faces, and I found it sometimes hard to use my imagination instead. The fact that they weren’t used to voice acting and the rather unnatural scenes of people running added to the problem.
Still, I liked it. I hadn’t expected the continuity bits, and just when I started thinking that there were too many of those, they stopped in favour of original places and plotlines. I liked the alien designs, and to see more of Starfleet, and meet some new crewmembers.
I had expected to learn more about Arex and M’Ress. Those two were mostly decoration.
@2/Christopher: An animated series co-written by Diane Duane would have been cool. She probably wouldn’t have invented the same characters she did in her novels, but your comment still made me imagine animated versions of K’t’lk and the Ornae and Lahit and ;At.
I’m just gonna say it and then you can all hate me for it:
He-Man and Masters of the Universe was a better filmation series than this.
And Ulysses 31 was a better general Sci-Fi animation series than this.
I really dislike TAS. There are a few okay bits and bobs, but most of it was just rubbish. The -Clock Incident was just an insult to the entire human race. I’m not sure any series could have survived having that be part of its canon though. Plus shrink rays from the mini-city episode and the fishtank one…ugh. What was it about the 70s and 80s with their love of shrinking everyone? I think pretty much every show (even Ulysses 31) had to do a shrink ray episode. Weird.
random22: Don’t hate you at all. Not everyone feels the same way about everything, which is what keeps the universe interesting. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’ve never seen TAS before this rewatch, and it was surprisingly good.
Sure it had some stinkers, but so did every other Trek series. All in all, I was impressed.
And now, on to the movies. Anybody cares to guess how low the warp rating for “FInal Frontier” is going to be?
Oh man – we are getting to the movies! Excited!
Nice work, as usual Krad!!! Thanks for your effort and looking forward to the next one!
It wasn’t perfect, and there were plenty of misfires, but I appreciate having the Animated Series as a companion piece to the original show. Even with the limited animation problems, the character and alien designs were more than worth it. And there was an honest effort to tell stories that were faithful to the original show’s vision.
The only thing I don’t understand is why Roddenberry decided to make it non-canon. After all, he had more of a creative input on the animated show than he did on most of the Trek films. From his perspective, shouldn’t he disavow the likes of Wrath of Khan, Final Frontier, etc. as a form of protest? The way I see it, TAS was mostly in line with his viewpoints.
@10 Wasn’t Final Frontier described as apocryphal by Roddenberry at one point? He was going to sue to have the Star Trek name removed from it, or something?
I’m sure I remember some sort of kerfuffle over that movie.
I don’t think it would be a bad thing, either, to have Star Trek V chucked out of canon. As an independent SF story it is pretty okay, just it is a terrible Star Trek movie. Much like the first two JJ Trek movies (okay, that is a lie, Into Darkness would be crap no matter what).
@10/Eduardo: The main reason for the Roddenberry memo “de-canonizing” TAS (which never really had the weight people assume it did, since TNG: “Unification” referenced “Yesteryear” during the time it was supposedly in effect, and other productions referenced various things from TAS in the decades since) was that Filmation had gone out of business and the ownership of its shows was unclear. TAS was made before Roddenberry sold the rights to Star Trek to Paramount (now CBS), so it was produced by Filmation and Norway Corporation (Roddenberry’s personal production company) and only distributed by Paramount. So it was the one part of the franchise that Paramount didn’t unambiguously own at the time, and with Filmation out of business, nobody really knew what to do with it. So the memo was an attempt to avoid the issue. What a lot of people fail to realize is that Paramount eventually did gain full ownership of TAS, so the reasons for “de-canonizing” it haven’t applied for a couple of decades.
The other thing to consider is that Roddenberry did disavow some of the Harve Bennett movies as apocryphal, and by some accounts, he even considered parts of TOS to be apocryphal. At that stage in his life, he was in poor physical and mental health, and he’d become jealous of his creation, not wanting to share credit with anyone. So he dismissed the Trek he didn’t personally make as “not real.” Now, as you suggest, this was hypocritical with regard to TAS, since he was unprecedentedly given full creative control over it (The Simpsons is the only other show I know of that’s been completely immune to network interference). He could’ve made it everything he wanted Trek to be, yet he chose to hand off the responsibility to D.C. Fontana instead. So it was a pretty jerky move to entrust the series to her, then turn around and say it wasn’t real because it was her work instead of his.
It’s worth keeping in mind that this was not long after Roddenberry had actively cheated Fontana and David Gerrold out of their rightful co-creator credits for TNG. By standard practice, any writer who’s credited on the pilot episode (as Fontana was) or co-writes the series bible (as Gerrold did) is entitled to creator credit for the series, but Roddenberry pushed to deny them credit on the grounds that TNG was merely a derivative work from TOS (a rationale that’s rarely been applied to any other spinoff I’m aware of, certainly not to the later Trek shows). So that may have created some hostility between Roddenberry and Fontana, and his rejection of TAS may have been an outgrowth of that.
There’s been rumors for years that Roddenberry had TAS de-canonized to spite DC Fontana, after their falling out over early TNG.
@13/leandar: I hadn’t realized there were rumors about that. The idea occurred to me only recently, when I reflected on the timing of the memo.
As I said, though, Roddenberry didn’t really have the power to “de-canonize” anything at that point. He was a sick, mentally deteriorating man who no longer had direct control over the production of TNG, so he couldn’t actually make them ignore TAS, though Rick Berman did generally try to respect “Gene’s vision” as much as he could. That’s why we did get the “Yesteryear” allusions in “Unification,” and of course there were later references in DS9, ENT, and the ’09 movie (whose Spock-childhood scenes were practically remakes of scenes from “Yesteryear”). The only real enforcement of the so-called “canon” memo was by Roddenberry’s assistant Richard Arnold, who was in charge of approving tie-in fiction and who scuttled DC Comics’ use of Arex and M’Ress in their Trek comic. (They’d appeared in Volume 1 of the comic for several years, but the series was cancelled and eventually restarted after license renewal negotiations, and although the first issue of Volume 2 was written and pencilled with Arex and M’Ress, it ended up with the artwork and text altered, turning Arex into a bug-eyed blue alien named Ensign Fouton and M’Ress into a ram-horned, devil-tailed alien named M’Yra. Both characters continued through the first year of the volume, but Arnold demanded that they be dropped afterward, since he didn’t want the tie-ins to have any continuing original characters to “overshadow” the canonical cast.)
@random22
I’m curious: Why do you consider Star Trek V being better as a non-Trek film? It’s funny, because I personally liked it much more then most people. Not saying it is a good film, mind you, but it isn’t that bad either (which is why I was wondering how Keith is going to rate this one).
That I agree with. ST2009 was a cool sci fi film, but Star Trek it ain’t.
@15. It requires pretty much all the characters to act out of character (even before the laughing Vulcan starts dicking with their minds) for the plot to work. Plus the entire set up for the background of the movie pretty much works against previous continuity, which is a bit odd since that previous three Trek movies and the subsequent one were all about continuity.
@16/random22: I’d hardly cite ST II through IV as paragons of continuity. TWOK had enormous continuity problems vis-a-vis “Space Seed” and TOS. Khan’s followers went from multiethnic to uniformly blond and Nordic, and were somehow in their early to mid-20s despite having been stranded as adults 15 years earlier. They had movie-era Starfleet equipment and insignia pins in their possession despite having been stranded in the series era. Chekov was retconned in as being known to Khan, Kirk was retconned as having a long-lost son, and Kirk claimed he’d “never faced death” despite having killed his best friend in the second pilot and lost the love of his life and his own brother in consecutive episodes. As for TSFS, it claimed the Enterprise was only 20 years old even though it was a minimum of 38 years after “The Cage,” and it retconned the Klingons to be more like Romulans (having cloaked Birds of Prey and talking about honor) because the script was written for Romulans and they swapped out the species names without changing the rest.
and it retconned the Klingons to be more like Romulans (having cloaked Birds of Prey and talking about honor) because the script was written for Romulans and they swapped out the species names without changing the rest.
@17/Christopher: At least that’s one alteration that eventually bore fruit, since Worf’s character demeanor and every subsequent concept of Klingon honor developed by Moore throughtout TNG and DS9 had some previous standing to fall back on.
@18/Eduardo: Well, yeah, plus the Klingons’ continued use of cloaking devices and Birds-of-Prey. But the point is about the movies’ own flexible approach to prior continuity, rather than how later productions maintained continuity with them.
The previous three movies all abided by movie continuity and were pretty strict about it. The Final Frontier movie did not abide by movie continuity. As a movie about a washed up old guy assembling a misfit crew who mostly hate him to go on an impossible but stupid mission, and coming together at the end to all stop feeling misfits and washed up, this was a pretty fair movie. Like, it was the Galaxy Quest prequel or something. However as a Trek movie, nah. Sorry. I’m aware there were a few discontinuities between movies and series, and between episode to episode (I’m assuming Temporal Investigations are on it, Kirk is the largest file on record for a reason) for that matter, but broadstrokes characterization was maintained for them. For this movie, it all took a break. Like I say, there is a decentish sci-fi movie in Final Frontier, just not a decent Star Trek movie.
@20/random22: “The Final Frontier movie did not abide by movie continuity.”
In what ways, specifically? The main continuity issue I can think of offhand is relative to TOS — Nimbus III is supposed to have been a joint Federation-Klingon-Romulan project started 20 years before, but that doesn’t work with the timing of “Balance of Terror,” the first Federation-Romulan interaction in 100 years. (Which is probably why the Okuda Chronology puts TFF two years after TWOK, in 2287, even though there’s textually no more than a few months between them.)
@17/Christopher: Aren’t Khan’s followers in TWOK supposed to be the children of his original crew?
@22/Jana: That was Greg Cox’s retcon of the inconsistency in his novel To Reign in Hell — that they’re offspring who aged at an accelerated rate (explaining why they’re adults instead of teens) and somehow mutated into a pale-complexioned form that was supposedly better-adapted to the harsh conditions. But though Greg did the best he could, it’s a clumsy explanation because the underlying continuity error is too big to paper over effectively.
The problem is, the writers of “Space Seed” had the sense to reject the idea that “eugenically superior” meant “pale blond Nazi type.” Nazis were probably what Carey Wilber initially had in mind — or rather, he probably intended Khan’s people to be the long-term result of one of the many 19th- and early 20th-century eugenics movements that were motivated by racist beliefs, the Nazis being just one. After all, Khan was originally going to be named “Harold Ericsson.” But in the final draft, the decision was made to portray the eugenic supermen as multiethnic, which was a nice subversion of the racist assumption — because it says that the one successful attempt to breed a superior race was the ethnically diverse one (theoretically, though that was only mentioned in dialogue rather than seen in the extras’ casting), and the most superior of the lot was a South Asian Sikh (theoretically) instead of a pale-skinned Christian. But Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer fell back on the original, implicit concept, that the eugenic supermen were an extension of the ideas behind the Nazis, and so they cast them accordingly as a bunch of “Aryan” poster children — with even Khan being far paler-skinned, because they didn’t put Montalban in brownface makeup this time.
But of course, that doesn’t explain what the hell they were thinking casting twenty-somethings as people who’d been castaways for 15 years. That doesn’t add up whether you treat them as the original generation or their offspring. (Well, unless they were assuming they just didn’t age, but then how do you explain the change in Montalban?)
@23/Christopher: I assume that they are teens who just look older because of the harsh life they’ve led. But I agree that they should be from all over the world, and it’s a shame that they don’t look like that.
@24/Jana: If anything, I think it’d be the other way around — teens who’d grown up in such harsh conditions would probably have stunted growth from malnutrition and look younger rather than older.
@25/Christopher: Good point. Anyway, I’m not trying to defend TWOK – it retroactively ruins the ending of “Space Seed”, turns Khan into a cardboard villain and has really bad dialogue – I just never doubted that the people we see are the original colonists’ children.
@26/Jana: Honestly, the idea that they were the original group’s offspring never occurred to me until I read it in Greg’s novel.
@27/Christopher: Please disregard what I wrote above. I just checked Vonda McIntyre’s novelization, and she states that Joachim was one of Khan’s original followers. That means I must have believed the same thing, because I read the book first and accepted everything in it as fact. I guess I came across the idea that they could be the children sometime later and found it so compelling that I forgot all about my earlier theory.
I still think it’s compelling, even if the age doesn’t fit. We see Kirk and his people surrounded by the next generation, so it makes for a nice symmetry if the same is true for Khan.
@28/Jana: Well, regardless of how it’s explained, I still think it’s unfortunate to replace the original idea of multiethnic superhumans with the more cliched all-white approach. I mean, even if the intent is to liken them to the Nazis and thus the villains, the fact remains that, within the story, they actually are genetically superior, so having them be all-white implicitly endorses the racist myth that underpinned the eugenics movement in real life. Whereas their (theoretical) diversity in the original episode subverted the myth.
Which, of course, makes scientific sense. The most robust and adaptable population is the most genetically diverse one — that’s basic biology. The real-life eugenics movements were all doomed because their white supremacism blinded them to the scientifically obvious fact that a uniform population with little variation is an evolutionary dead end. So the only one that could possibly have succeeded was one that rejected that racist idiocy in favor of elementary genetics and bred from a diverse base.
If I remember right from the novel, the children all turned blond, blue eyed Aryans as a side effect of the generic manipulation and Khan thought his mother wouldn’t be thrilled with having realized Hitler’s dream.
We never saw all of the people that were on the Botany Bay. There’s no reason that some of them couldn’t have been children. Or, we’re actually seeing episodes of multiverse versions of Kirk, Spock, Khan, etc. My rationalization for why nuKhan is so different is that he’s actually not Khan Noonian Singh but one of the others. The only person who calls him by his full name is old Spock. All nuSpock told was the name Khan, which is also a title meaning leader. For all we know there was a Khan Harold Ericsson among them. They’d expect their lesser to refer to them simply as Khan, names being used only among equals
@31/kkozoriz: “There’s no reason that some of them couldn’t have been children.” – Scotty tells Kirk that “twelve units have malfunctioned, leaving seventy two still operating. Thirty of those are women”. Wouldn’t he say “females” or “women and girls” if there were children among them?
Khan’s people never call him “Khan”, neither in “Space Seed” nor in TWOK. My interpretation is that he was known as “Noonien Singh”, and that’s why he introduces himself as “Khan” to Kirk. It isn’t a title, it’s the least important part of his name, and thus it allows him to use part of his real name without being recognised.
It was a great move to have Khan be from India and then compare him to Alexander, Leif Ericson, Richard the Lion Heart, and Napoleon (and not Hitler). Obviously the writers of TWOK weren’t interested in that aspect of the story. They not only made his followers blond and light-skinned, they also westernised Khan himself by having him quote lines from a prototypical American novel, of all things. I guess there just aren’t any good books in Asia?
@32/Jana: Khan is a pretty common surname in Muslim cultures (e.g. Marvel’s Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel), but unusual as a given name. It’s not really found as a surname among Sikhs, though, although similar names like Khanna and Khand are found. Still, the fact that he has an unusual first name that’s a common surname would make it easier for him to throw people off by giving it as his only name, because people would jump to the conclusion that it was a surname.
Anyway, Khan explicitly said “Khan is my name” and “My name is Khan” in “Space Seed.” Later, when they identified him, Kirk said “Name, Khan Noonien Singh.” Oddly, they continued to call him “Mr. Khan” even after they knew it was his first name. They would not do that if they were aware that it was a title — that would be like calling Commander Kor “Mr. Commander.” There’s also a point where Khan is on the intercom and says “This is Khan.” Were it a title, he’d say “This is the khan.”
In STID, he also said “My name is Khan,” and Spock Prime identified Khan Noonien Singh when Spock Kelvin said “a man named Khan.” So Khan has always been explicitly and consistently treated as his name, not his title.
As I said, names are only for equals. By saying “my name is Khan” he’s letting them know that that is what they are to call him. Among the rest of his crew, they’re all superior so they are equal.
Ever wonder why nobody looked at him in STID and “probably a Sikh”? It would have gotten a big laugh.
As far as children being on the ship, perhaps they were in smaller units without the glass fronts and Scotty wasn’t aware of them. Or they were teenagers and he referred to them as young women. Either way, we saw a bare fraction of the crew of the Botany Bay. For all we know all the ones we didn’t see were blonde
That transporter guy looks nothing like David Gerrold. At the time, Gerrold had luxurious long locks. Harumph.
@21/CLB
I think Random22 is refering to the characterization of the Enterprise crew, rather than “historical” continuity.
And I see his point. Films 2,3,4 (and to lesser extent: 6) are much more uniform in their characterizations then The Final Frontier. The 5th film is definitely the “odd man out” in this respect. Personally, this never bothered me though.
@36/OThDPh: Personally, I think the characters are far more out of character in TUC than TFF — Kirk is suddenly virulently racist toward Klingons, Spock is willing to mind-rape Valeris, McCoy is willing (and qualified, somehow) to work on a deadly weapon, Uhura is suddenly incompetent with languages.
@37/Christopher: But Kirk also puts his duty before his personal feeelings in TUC, he changes his feelings as soon as he meets Gorkon in person, he questions himself, and he tries to be helpful throughout. Spock becomes the ambassador he is in TNG, and he does what he thinks is right without consulting anyone first. The whole crew work together to save Kirk and McCoy. All of this is very much in character. I agree with the points you mentioned – I flinch a lot when I watch that film – but I still watch it because for me, the well-made, in-character scenes outweigh the out-of-character scenes.
Whereas in TFF, Kirk is uncharacteristically reckless (climbing a mountain without safety precautions), Spock is either careless or stupid (chatting with Kirk while he climbs a mountain without safety precautions until he falls), Kirk is shouty and aggressive (“Spock! Shoot him!”), and all three of them are stupid (Spock doesn’t seem to know in advance that his boots can’t carry the weight of three men, and when they realise that they are going down instead of up in the turboshaft, they don’t change their plan). I don’t recognise anyone in these scenes.
I would have loved to see more animated Trek. Perhaps there’s still hope. Also, Jana, thank you for reminding me that the in character moments of TUC outweight the bad.
@39/MaGnUs: Thank you!
To be honest, I didn’t even like the film when it was new. I didn’t like the crew’s racism, and the blatant USSR-Klingon parallels. But I’ve come to like it quite a lot since then.
@40/Jana: I went the opposite way: I liked TUC at first, with some significant reservations, but I’ve become less fond of it over time.
Regarding movie chronology issues, I’ve always liked a solution that solves all three problems–Khan’s exile needing to be longer in order to have grown children, Morrow’s claim of the age of the Enterprise, and the founding of the Planet of Galactic Peace–by presuming a much longer gap in time between TMP and TWOK than is usually expected. Even that requires hunting for some loopholes in the dialog (for example, figuring Morrow meant how long had passed since the refit), but it does fit well with what is visually and narratively presented.
I hadn’t watched a frame of TAS since childhood until recently. The only episode I’d specifically recalled watching, too, was “Yesteryear” — obviously the one you want to have seen if you only saw one of ’em. But moments in a couple of others jogged my memory and it was delightful.
While I get the complaints over the understated, deadpan line readings on early episodes and the practical considerations behind them, I simply hear them as deliberative and measured, adding to the comparatively adult feel of the show. Many of the stories are impressive for coming off more as Star Trek than as traditional Saturday-morning cartoon fare, and that’s being said by somebody with a great affection for not just Saturday-morning cartoon fare but the Filmation house especially. (I nearly squeed out loud at the reused Aquaman poses in “The Ambergris Element”.)
@2. ChristopherLBennett: Just imagine if Filmation had done a TAS revival around 1980, following up on Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
That would have been fantastic.
I need to thank you for mentioning TAS’s opening theme in our Strange New Worlds conversation, by the way, as I’ve put off reading this wrap-up and finally commenting on the series too long. For me said theme is, due to not being able to hew to Courage’s too closely, more generic but also less weird to the ear than Russo’s for SNW and evocative enough of the original’s for its purposes.
Filmation’s library of musical cues and stings evoke the most wonderful nostalgia. I might love the melodramatic refrain from Shazam! as much as John Williams’ Superman theme.
2023, now, and 50 years after TAS premiered, even the BBC is acknowledging its importance.
I’ve gone back and forth over whether or not I like TAS more than the last season of TOS. Of its twenty-two episodes, I can only say I really enjoyed ten of them, which is a poorer average than season three of the live-action TV show, but there are also four episodes that I have had a hard time making my mind up about (The Terratin Incident, The Time Trap, The Slaver Weapon, and Albatross). If I added those to the tally, then this show would come out on top. I think if TAS had more consistent voice acting and better music, it wouldn’t be a contest at all.
One thing I will have to give it credit for – it almost never felt like just a kids’ show (the only exception being The Ambergris Element, which wasn’t even that bad). I will also say that the three funniest (intentional) gags come from three of its less successful episodes: the slow shot of the Enterprise as Scotty sings Yr Hufen Melyn in The Lorelei Signal, Kirk trying to get an emergency beam up while being ignored by the transporter techs who are dancing with each other in Mudd’s Passion, and, of course, Kirk Is A Jerk.