Star Trek: The Animated Series

Video:
Animation was not nearly as advanced in the early Seventies as it is today. Sensibilities were also quite different and a wealth of detail and eye-popping visuals were not exactly considered necessary. Take a quick look at any "Peanuts" cartoon and you can see the beauty of simplicity. "Star Trek: The Animated Series" was meant to be Saturday morning television for the younger folk and the animation had to be conservative to fit a television production schedule. The resulting animation style of "Star Trek: The Animated Series" results in a campy, yet clean animated look. The original series suffered from cheesy visual effects and sitting back and thinking about it, the style of animation is a nice mirror to what was done on camera initially. "Star Trek: The Animated Series" will not impress with its visuals, but it is very clean, colors are wonderfully recreated from the thirty year old plus stock. Without the coloring technology, modern processes and such, "Star Trek: The Animated Series" does look its age. There are no visual flaws in the 4:3 image; compression artifacts and other problems that plague animation are completely absent. I really can´t find any reason to complain about the visual quality of "Star Trek: The Animated Series."

Sound:
Both the original English Mono soundtrack and a newly remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 English soundtrack are included on the new DVD release of "Star Trek: The Animated Series." Unfortunately, the multi-channel surround mix didn´t offer much of an upgrade over the mono mix. The advantage was sound populating the left and right speakers and not simply the center channel, but there was not great increase in stereo imaging. Rear surrounds and .1 LFE bass were practically absent during each of the twenty two episodes. The dialogue was clear and the all-too-familiar theme sounded very good. Again, "Star Trek: The Animated Series" was created in the early 1970s and doesn´t muster anything overly spectacular in its source materials. The soundtracks are pretty close to flawless in their transfers. I heard one or two dropoffs in audio, but aside from these hardly noticeable moments, they sounded quite clean.

Extras:
Before getting into the bonus materials, I´d like to take a look at the disc´s packaging. The plastic clamshell case matches the three seasons of the original series. That series was in red, yellow and blue. This time, a white case with a translucent orange window and trim holds the animated series. It is hinged along the bottom edge. Inside the box, a slipcase holds the plastic tray device that holds the four individual discs. This slipcase fits a bit too tightly and is easily damaged when trying to shove the discs back into their packaging. A small booklet gives a quick plot synopsis for each episode. I´m not particularly keen on the unusually shaped plastic box. For me, it doesn´t fit too well with its friends on the bookshelf and there is no labeling on the side to tell me what I´m looking at. Don´t get me wrong, a plastic box is nice and it definitely gives the set a more valuable appearance, but without the other series to keep it company, it is lonesome in its design. A cardstock slipcover is given with the packaging, but this is intended to be tossed in the can after opening. I, for one, cut the rear sheet off and put it into the clamshell casing for save keeping and did not opt to throw it away.

Paramount´s packaging lists Audio & Text Commentaries. Unfortunately, to find which episodes contain said commentary supplements, an Easter Egg hunt is required. Each individual episode will have an option to turn on the optional commentary, but without going into each episode´s menu or looking on the artwork of the disc before inserting it into the player, you have no way of telling which episode contains which features. Sadly, only three commentaries of each type exist. The text commentaries are presented by Michael and Denise Okuda. The first disc has a text commentary for "Yesteryear" and an audio commentary by writer David Gerrold for "More Tribbles, More Troubles." The second disc features a Storyboard Gallery for "The Infinite Vulcan." The third disc has only a text commentary for "The Eye of the Beholder" and the fourth disc contains a text commentary for "The Counter-Clock Incident" and audio commentaries for both "Bem" and "How Sharper Than a Serpent´s Tooth." The commentary tracks are informative and I especially enjoyed David Wise on the third and final track.

Aside from having the most commentary tracks available, the fourth disc also contains a few extra bits of value-added content. Dawn to the Final Frontier: The Making of Star Trek: The Animated Series (24:21) looks at the history of the show, its creation and how the show fits into the overall franchise. There are a lot of talking heads and I´m still not sure who most of the people involved in the documentary were. It was interesting, though I felt it put a tremendous amount of positive spin on an otherwise lackluster series. What´s the Star Trek Connection? (5:44) has eleven small vignettes that link the animated series to the films and other television series. Each bit is narrated by the same female voice and accompanied by photos showing the various connections. Finally, History is a text driven series of screens that detail the various involvement of the voice talent. Each disc has a few previous attached for other "Star Trek" products.

Closing Thoughts:
I´m a Captain Kirk fan. Or perhaps, more correctly, I´m a William Shatner fan. I love his album "Has Been" and think that his weekly performance on "Boston Legal" is one of the better characters on television. I grew up on "Star Wars," but also on the "Star Trek" television episodes in syndication. There was no cooler cat in outer space than Captain James Tiberius Kirk. Seriously. When you ask me that question of Kirk versus Picard, I´ll give you an odd stare, because I did not like "Star Trek: The Next Generation." I want blasters, blue alien sex and Kirk kicking intergalactic ass. I do not want a bald guy thinking about things. The animated series promised to boldly go where no man has gone before and bring adventures that were only possible in the animated realm. Unfortunately, Kirk was not the same being in ink that he was on film. The animated series was landmark in having all the primary actors resume their roles and it offered a bridge between the series and the movies. Unfortunately, it does not quite succeed in delivering a weekly dose of intergalactic adventuring that I had loved with the original series. The DVD release is a respectable four disc set that pays homage to the original series in its packaging and provides a few extras to be had. I missed out on the LaserDisc box set when the Columbia House LaserDisc club went out of business and am pleased to finally own the series, but was disappointed in the overall episodes. There were some I really liked, but they were offset by an equal number of stinkers and a large mess of mediocrity.

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