Available from Paramount

Release Date: Nov 21, 2006

Movie

Well I can honestly say I did not even know there was a Star Trek that was animated.  So when I got the set I was really looking forward to it.  Before getting the set I did some research.  The series was produced by Filmation and ran for two seasons, 1973 and 1974 airing a total of twenty-two half hour episodes.  The cool thing was that show featured most of the original actor’s voices.  The other thing that gave the show credibility is that the shows were written by the same people who wrote the episodes for the live action show.  The first episode I watched was called “Beyond the Farthest Star” The plot description of this episode is “Pulled towards an imploded negative star mass, the Enterprise encounters a strange starship inhabited by a shapeless evil being.  When the creature takes control of the ship, Captain Kirk uses bold tactics to convince the creature that it is being lured to its death.” So as you can see the plots were really close to the original show.  After watching the rest of the season I was very surprised how good these episodes were.

8 out of 10

Video

Paramount did a great job of cleaning up these episodes.  There is minimal dirt that shows up in some scenes but it does not detract from the show at all.  The colours come across wonderful.  The episodes have never looked this good.  Again I was impressed.

8 out of 10

Audio

All the episodes have been re-mastered in Dolby Digital 5.1.  The tracks do a good job of keeping the audio centered in the center channel with rest of the channels adding certain effects.  Bass is not used to any degree but remember this is a cartoon.

7 out of 10

Extras

There are text commentaries from Michael and Denise Okuda and there are audio commentaries as well.  There is a storyboard gallery for the episode, “The Infinite Vulcan” which just has some rough sketches of the episode. 

Up next we have Drawn to the Final Frontier: The Making of Star Trek: The Animated Series.  This is a good detailed assessment of the show from the writers and the producers.  They also talk about the real reason that Chekov is absent from the bridge.

Next is “What’s the Star Trek Connection?.”  This is an explanation on how this animated series is tied to the live action incarnation.

Finally there is Show History, which is a very brief text history of the show.

7 out of 10

Overall

Overall if you’re a fan of Star Trek you should have this in your collection.  Paramount has done a great job of bringing this back to life on DVD.  If you’re a fan of the original series it will be a treat to get to see the old Enterprise crew back in action.

7 out of 10