Star Trek: The Animated Series

Star Trek: The Animated Series (also known as The Animated Adventures of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek) is an animated science fiction television series set in the Star Trek universe following the Star Trek: The Original Series of the 1960s. The animated series was aired under the name Star Trek, but it has become widely known under this longer name (or abbreviated as ST: TAS or TAS) to differentiate it from the original live action Star Trek. The success in syndication of the original live action series and fan pressure for a Star Trek revival led to The Animated Series from 1973-1974, as the source of new adventures of the Enterprise crew, the next being the live-action feature film 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture. TAS was the first Star Trek series to win an Emmy Award.
The series was produced by Filmation in association with Paramount Television and ran for two seasons from 1973 to 1974 on NBC, airing a total of twenty-two half-hour episodes. An early Filmation proposal for this series had children assigned to each of the senior officers as cadets, including a young Vulcan for Mr. Spock. According to interviews with Norm Prescott, Paramount offered Roddenberry a substantial sum of money to abandon creative control of the project and let Filmation proceed with their "kiddy space cadet" idea. Roddenberry refused. Filmation would later develop the idea into its own original live action program: Space Academy in 1977.
The writers of the animated series used, essentially, the same writers' guide that was used for the live-action Star Trek: The Original Series. (A copy of the "series bible", as revised for TAS, is held in the science fiction research collection at the Samuel Paley Library, Temple University, Philadelphia.)

While the freedom of animation afforded large alien landscapes and believable non-humanoid aliens, budget constraints were a major concern and the animation quality was generally only fair, with very liberal use of stock shots (as was often the case with many of Filmation's shows). There were also occasional mistakes, such as characters appearing on screen who were elsewhere, or a character supposed to appear on the bridge's main viewing screen, but then appeared in front, indicating bad ordering of animation plates. These were typically isolated errors however. Occasionally, though, parts of episodes would be animated at a near-theatrical quality level.

Main article: List of Star Trek: The Animated Series episodes

The characters of TAS.

The 22 episodes of TAS were spread out over two brief seasons, with copious reruns of each episode. Most were directed by Hal Sutherland.
All the episodes of this series were novelized by Alan Dean Foster and released in ten volumes under the Star Trek Logs banner. Initially, Foster adapted three episodes per book, but later editions saw the half-hour scripts expanded into full novel-length stories.
Star Trek: The Animated Series was the only Star Trek series to not feature a cold open ("teaser") and started directly with the title sequence (although some overseas versions of the original live action series, such as that run by the BBC in the U.K. in the 1960s and 1970s, ran the teaser after the credits).
The writing in the series benefited from a Writers Guild of America, East strike in 1973, which did not apply to animation. A few episodes are especially notable due to contributions from well-known science fiction authors:

• "More Tribbles, More Troubles" was written by David Gerrold as a sequel to his famous episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" from the original series. Here Cyrano Jones is rescued from the Klingons, bringing with him a genetically-altered breed of tribbles which do not reproduce but do grow extremely large. (It is later discovered that these are really clusters of tribbles who function as a single tribble, and it is decided that the large numbers of smaller tribbles are preferable to the larger ones.) The Klingons, due to their hatred of tribbles, are eager to get Jones back because he stole a creature they created: a predator that feeds on tribbles. This episode was originally written with the intention of being an episode of the live-action original series, but this was vetoed by Fred Freiberger who wanted serious sci-fi episodes instead.^{[citation needed]}

• "Yesteryear" is a time-travel episode in which Mr. Spock uses "The Guardian of Forever", a time gateway from the original series episode "The City on the Edge of Forever", to travel to his own childhood past. This is the only animated Trek episode written by original series and later Next Generation writer D.C. Fontana. This was the first actual appearance of Spock's pet sehlat, first mentioned in "Journey to Babel" and finally named I-Chaya in this episode.

• Larry Niven's "The Slaver Weapon", adapted from his own short story "The Soft Weapon". It includes some elements from his Known Space mythos such as the Kzinti and the Slavers. This is the only Kirk-era TV or movie story in which Kirk didn't appear. This episode also has the distinction of being the only animated episode where anyone dies or is killed onscreen.

• "The Magicks of Megas-tu", by Larry Brody, sends the Enterprise to the center of the galaxy. Its crew find themselves befriended by a devil-like alien named Lucien, whom they must defend against accusations that he has brought evil to the world of Megas-tu.

The USS Enterprise in this series, while supposedly the same ship as from the original series, had a holodeck very similar to the one introduced on Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was set approximately eighty years later. It only appeared once, in Chuck Menville's "The Practical Joker" and was known as the "Rec Room". This feature was originally proposed for the original series (see, e.g., Gerrold, The World of Star Trek) but was never used.
Filmation later went on to produce the hit He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983-85), which occasionally used modified character and set designs from Star Trek: The Animated Series, mostly as background material. (He-Man and the Masters of the Universe also had several Trek-similar stories, most notably "The Arena", which is very similar to Star Trek: The Original Series's first season episode, "Arena"). Later series also shared many of the stock sound effects from both Star Trek: The Animated Series and Star Trek: The Original Series. Filmation also recycled some of the background music for Star Trek: The Animated Series in their later shows Shazam!, Tarzan and the Super 7 and Sport Billy. (Some of the music had already been reused from the previous season's Brady Kids and the Treasure Island feature, and were shared with that season's Lassie's Rescue Rangers).
In addition, a few facts introduced in the animated series have been referred to in the live-action productions:

• Kirk's middle name, Tiberius, was first introduced in "Bem", then subsequently referred to in several Star Trek novels (most notably the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture by Roddenberry). The name was conclusively established as part of the Trek canon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
• Amanda's maiden name, Grayson.
• A second exit for the bridge, referred to in Franz Joseph's Star Fleet Technical Manual and seen in the refitted Enterprise and the NCC-1701-A from the first six Star Trek movies.
• The kahs-wan ritual Spock endures in "Yesteryear".
• Klingon commander Kor's command of the battlecruiser Klothos.
• Doctor Phlox uses Edosian slugs in his medical bay, and Chef once served up Edosian sucker fish, similar to Earth's catfish, as a meal, in the series Star Trek: Enterprise. They come from the same planet as Lieutenant Arex, as do Edosian orchids mentioned by Elim Garak in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
• The Vulcan city, ShiKahr, has been referred to in multiple series (sometimes misspelt "ShirKahr"), and can be seen in an episode of Enterprise. A Vulcan city which looks very similar to the ShiKahr of Star Trek: The Animated Series was shown in the new CGI establishing shots used in the special edition of "Amok Time".
• Some of the worlds and aliens in the series were included in the 1989 book called Star Trek: The Worlds of the Federation.
• Some of Sarek's dialog from "Yesteryear", and young Spock being bullied by Vulcan classmates, are given homage in the 2009 feature film, Star Trek.