Starfleet still prospering in animated form
With the recent premiere of the animated “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” the scifi franchise boldly goes into its ninth television series.
But the world of animation is far from a strange new world for longtime Trekkies.
The franchise’s first foray into animation was with “Star Trek: The Animated Series,” which premiered as part of NBC’s Saturday morning cartoon lineup in the fall of 1973. The show reunited legendary heroes Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and the rest of the “Enterprise” crew after the original liveaction show’s cancellation in 1969, and before the first bigbudget film warped into theaters in 1979. Not only did it garner considerable acclaim over its 22episode, twoseason run, but its very existence proved the “Star Trek” brand could continue to live long and prosper.
Produced by Filmation, the animated “Trek” had the distinction of being supervised by original series creator Gene Roddenberry, who negotiated for full creative control from NBC. It also had scripts by many of the same folks who wrote for the liveaction show (Dorothy Fontana, David Gerrold, Samuel Peeples and others), and featured most of the original cast reprising their roles, which gave the animated series a bit more legitimacy than other spinoffs of the time.
“Lower Decks,” which premiered Aug. 6 on CBS All Access, follows the travails of a group of Starfleet personnel far removed from the “Star Trek” action fans are accustomed to following. And while this latest spinoff, created by “Rick & Morty” veteran Mike McMahan, seeks to set itself apart from other shows in the franchise by leaning more heavily into comedy, it also takes more than a few cues from its animated predecessor — in both content and tone — demonstrating how far ahead of its time that first “Star Trek” cartoon really was.
Discussions about bringing “Star Trek” to animation began while the original show was still on the air in the late 1960s, only to be sidetracked when the series was canceled, according to Filmation historian and “Star Trek” novelist Andy Mangels. The show’s success in reruns, and the emergence of its very vocal fandom, propelled its next incarnation.
“Hollywood had to take notice. And because nobody would commit to a new liveaction series, ‘The Animated Series’ — which had already been in process — was the best answer,” Mangels told The
Chronicle in a phone interview from his home in Oregon.
The spinoff series had its own set of issues. While the animated “Trek” featured the vocal stylings of original stars William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley and the rest of the crew (except for Walter Koenig, whose Ensign Chekov was left at Spacedock due to the limited casting budget), the actors were rarely recording their parts at the same time. Instead, they would lay down vocals wherever and whenever convenient, leading to some notably detached, barely interested readings by Shatner.
Also not helping matters was Filmation’s propensity to use stock animation and catalog music at every turn to keep production costs down — one pitfall “The Lower Decks” has managed to avoid thus far. While the format theoretically allowed the Enterprise to traverse frontiers unimaginable in the preCGI era of the first liveaction show, the cartoon often ended up looking even chintzier.
But despite all that, Saturday morning’s “Star Trek” series still stood above a lot of contemporaneous fare of the time thanks to its nuanced, mature approach to storytelling. The Los Angeles Times referred to the show as “a Mercedes in a soap box derby” in 1973, and it took home an Emmy for “Best Children’s Series” in 1975.
Things changed once again after the franchise found new life on the big screen with 1979’s “Star Trek: The Motion Picture.” Roddenberry did his best to distance himself from the cartoon, deeming it “noncanon” late in his life.
This always seemed a little silly given that, contentwise, the animated show wasn’t any goofier than some of the story lines on the first show. And with so many key creatives back to play and so many beloved elements of the original series — villainous Klingons, furry Tribbles, even the Guardian of Forever time portal — in the mix, the show is at least as “real” as anything before (or since).
“You would be hardpressed to find a series that was created with more love for the core
concepts of what ‘Star Trek’ was at that point than ‘The Animated Series,’” Mangels said. “Everybody involved wanted to do ‘Star Trek’ justice.”
Clearly many modern “Star Trek” creatives feel exactly the same way, as many elements of the cartoon found their way into shows and films in the franchise released after Roddenberry’s death in 1991, including “The Lower Decks,” which features the catlike Caitians and multilegged Edosians for the first time since being introduced on “The Animated Series.”
Today, like every other TV incarnation of the franchise, “Star Trek: The Animated Series” can be found streaming via CBS All Access. As an extension of the brand that’s gone unseen by many, it may prove, as Mr. Spock might say, “fascinating.”