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Star Trek Thoughts: Beyond the Farthest Star
After I'd finished watching the episodes of Star Trek's second season I'd wanted to watch, I never quite got around to opening the third season collection I bought with the others and watching those handful of episodes I have an impression managed to transcend the straitened circumstances of the show's final go-round. That did get to me every so often, but I just couldn't seem to make the time with so many other things to do and watch. However, Netflix did add a good number of Star Trek series just recently, and one of them was "The Animated Series" from the mid-1970s. As a Saturday morning cartoon those episodes were half the length of regular episodes, and the thought did get to me that I could watch them while exercising on weekend mornings, what with more episodes of "Voltron Legendary Defender" still to come. For all I know, seeing news the existing audio of a "lost" Doctor Who serial is going to have animation made for it had a bit of influence too.
I'd seen one episode of "The Animated Series" before, which more or less matched up with expectations of what I'd get, but as I got started into the episodes on Netflix, supposing they were in "production order" or thereabouts had me thinking all of a sudden of those mid-1970s Trekkies repeating the tales of how the series hadn't got a fair shake and hoping for new material to transcend even their own "fanworks." While in some ways all I can really say is that I could have different impressions of what "animation can do" than they did, it was amusing to start into "Beyond the Farthest Star" thinking of it as the introduction to this new version of Star Trek. The first minutes of the episode did have me thinking of "The Corbomite Maneuver," the first regular episode to be produced if not the first to be aired, in showing just how the Enterprise operated, but I did happen to notice that only the main characters were talking. We got to see the three-armed being Arex at the navigator's position (one manned by a rotating collection of characters before Chekov showed up), but he didn't say anything. Once trapped in orbit around something science fiction was still a few years away from calling a "black hole," four of the six speaking characters beam over to an ancient starship using "life support belts," and I got to thinking that this was where the animation, however limited, began to show its "if you can dream it, you can draw it" strengths. I happened to take a break midway through the episode after exercising, though, and afterwards things were a bit more conventional with a mysterious "magnetic organism" occupying the Enterprise. Where "The Corbomite Maneuver" had transcended "other life forms are adversaries," this episode did indeed seem a bit more "simplistic" by the end, as if the reduced running time did mean less time for talking things over.
Even so, having thought of "fans back then" just might help hold me back from jumping to quick condemnations. "The Animated Series" wound up a footnote in the history of Star Trek (although that might be through nothing more complicated than there not having been enough of it made to put it into regular syndication as "The Original Series" was, or even the cartoons of the mid-1980s were), but perhaps that leaves me thinking I might yet be able to watch more of it without feeling as if everything's already known and already vetted. I might not have much more to say about it, though.
I'd seen one episode of "The Animated Series" before, which more or less matched up with expectations of what I'd get, but as I got started into the episodes on Netflix, supposing they were in "production order" or thereabouts had me thinking all of a sudden of those mid-1970s Trekkies repeating the tales of how the series hadn't got a fair shake and hoping for new material to transcend even their own "fanworks." While in some ways all I can really say is that I could have different impressions of what "animation can do" than they did, it was amusing to start into "Beyond the Farthest Star" thinking of it as the introduction to this new version of Star Trek. The first minutes of the episode did have me thinking of "The Corbomite Maneuver," the first regular episode to be produced if not the first to be aired, in showing just how the Enterprise operated, but I did happen to notice that only the main characters were talking. We got to see the three-armed being Arex at the navigator's position (one manned by a rotating collection of characters before Chekov showed up), but he didn't say anything. Once trapped in orbit around something science fiction was still a few years away from calling a "black hole," four of the six speaking characters beam over to an ancient starship using "life support belts," and I got to thinking that this was where the animation, however limited, began to show its "if you can dream it, you can draw it" strengths. I happened to take a break midway through the episode after exercising, though, and afterwards things were a bit more conventional with a mysterious "magnetic organism" occupying the Enterprise. Where "The Corbomite Maneuver" had transcended "other life forms are adversaries," this episode did indeed seem a bit more "simplistic" by the end, as if the reduced running time did mean less time for talking things over.
Even so, having thought of "fans back then" just might help hold me back from jumping to quick condemnations. "The Animated Series" wound up a footnote in the history of Star Trek (although that might be through nothing more complicated than there not having been enough of it made to put it into regular syndication as "The Original Series" was, or even the cartoons of the mid-1980s were), but perhaps that leaves me thinking I might yet be able to watch more of it without feeling as if everything's already known and already vetted. I might not have much more to say about it, though.