Saturday, April 12, 2014

Star Trek Animated Series:

This is an old article pending revision.

Star Trek is a series that began in 1964 with captain Robert April, and Christopher Pike. The series continued two years later with Jim Kirk commanding the U.S.S. Enterprise, and the series went through a very rough start which ended after three seasons.

Several Years later, Star Trek continued this time in animation. Most of the original actors provided the voices for their now animated characters, and also provided the voices for most of the guest stars, and also some of the other cast members. Mr. Kyle appeared on the series, but was not voiced by John Winston. He was voiced by James Doohan instead. Checkov did not appear at all in these animated episodes, but Walter Koenig became a writer for the show. New Bridge Officers were added such as Lt. Arex and Lt. M'Ress, and there is a much wider variety of characters, including an anthropormorphic bird, cat, and also tripedal aliens.

Filmation Associates produced the cartoon, and twenty-two episodes were made. The production staff was Lou Scheimer, Norm Prescott, Hal Sutherland, and D.C. Fontana. Technology and props were both extrememy limited at the time that the live action episodes were filmed, but the use of animation provided a wider variety of technology, graphics, and ideas and immaginations were expanded. They used an under water shuttle craft to travel below the surface of water on planets, life support belts for any place where the crew wouldn't be able to survive, and holodecks.

The series was made on a limited budget, resulting in several scenes that did not include the animation of their mouths when they were saying something. Instead, the characters were usually off screen when they were speaking. They had reused the same sound and music, (but so did the original series) and, of course, Checkov didn't appear at all in animation and most of the guest stars were performed by the regular cast members. There has been several arguments if that the original animated series is canon with the rest of Star Trek. However, there are numerous things that were introduced in this series that was used later on. This is also the only appearance of Robert April.

Until recently, this has been the only animated series of Star Trek. There is a new series in development set in the future beginning in the year 2528 with the characters named Capatin Alexander Chase, Commander Barric Holden, and Commander Kaylen Donal. This new animated series is very similar to the animated series that was made in the 1970s. The series is in between the original series and the motion pictures, since it has some advanced technology, but much of the ship and style of uniforms did not change. The series in development has uniforms that are very similar to this series, since the gold and red colors are identical in both animated series. The captain, for example, does not wear a red uniform. Kaylen Donal, however, does wear a red uniform. The look of the new animated series looks very similar to the look of the other animated series. The Enterprise series ended shortly and the new animated series was made as a response to Enterprise's shorter run. This is also very similar to the original series, which had many problems and ended after three years, and was followed by an animated series a few years later.

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