If I were being lazy I could probably just post this:
I mean, that sums it up pretty damn well. Good, bad, or other, it's always fascinating. Because they didn't try to make a Star Trek-themed kids show. They made more episodes of Star Trek. Except:
- Half as long
- Only 8 cast members
- No extras
- Guest stars happened like once ever (wisely, it was Mark Leonard as Sarek)
- 70s era animation. You may not have watched as much early-day Cartoon Network as I, but 70s cartoons looked like hot garbage. And those were Hanna Barbara. Filmation was largely worse.
And the compromises they make to get the episodes to fit all those limits are often times not nearly as painful as you'd expect. There's one or two duds in the series, but on the whole they are very solidly Star Trek and while it doesn't have a lot of oomph, it presents interesting sci-fi plots in an engaging way.
The flip side of this though is the bit about guest stars, because... okay, the main strength of original flavor Star Trek is the main trio, yeah? Kirk, Spock, and McCoy form a particular dynamic that covers a full range of emotion, temperament, etc etc. It's the foundation of every episode. The trouble is, this means that in order for an episode to especially stand out, you have to introduce something new for them to react to. And while disrupting some portion of the trinity in a substantial way can work, the Original Series covered a lot of that ground and the Animated Series seems loath to retread it too much. The other way is to throw a new character at them and use that sort of complete humanity dynamic to thoroughly examine this new character and the situations they create. And while they can make up new characters, because of the limited cast and lack of cash to pay guest stars it pretty well has to be James Doohan or Marjel Barret doing a weird cartoon voice, which kinda undercuts the concept a bit.
But this isn't to say the show is bland. It just sorta maintains a steady 6 range in 90% of episodes. There's about three episodes meaningfully below par, and two of them are just the animation failing to back up the story. It looks goofy and jerks you out of the moment.
Weakest Episode- Bem. The planet-side stuff and Bem himself are two completely disparate ideas that shouldn't have gone together. Maybe if Bem was secretly a part of the lady-God on the planet, it miiiiiight have been okay, or at least okay in theory, but as presented just... it's annoying and has no reason to be there.
And there's similarly three stand-out episodes. Tribbles are gonna tribble so I don't have to explain further. As noted earlier they actually sprung for Mark Leonard in one episode, and it's good. But... surprisingly...
Best Episode- The Time Trap. Y'know what? I'm just kinda a sucker for this particular Trek plot. But I feel like this is the best example of it because the Space Wedgie they're stuck in isn't really that bad. No roaming bands of raiders, no meaningful supply shortages, and you're borderline immortal. And the ruling council just acknowledging that hey, people still miss home and have to at least try to get out is honestly very nice. So the drama actually stays on "Okay, we can't trust a Klingon. But can we trust them just far enough to make this work?" which is just kinda refreshing because that's all the drama we actually need. These guys are established enemies with both mutual respect and mutual animosity. They know the greatest harm they can do their enemies is to kill their opposite number, but they can't, and in their own way would miss them if they did. I think the simplification of the plot to fit in the runtime is helping out a lot here.
Rating- 6/10. It's not really spectacular, but it's still a pretty damn interesting watch and I feel like I'd recommend it a lot more than the rating suggests.
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