Star Trek: Top 5 Animated Series Episodes
So it’s been a while since I did the 45th anniversary-related, Top Ten List of Original Series Star Trek episodes (Part 1 & 2) and I thought I might take the next step in the sequence and look at The Animated Series. Shorter, it only ran 22 episodes and while I think all of them were at least decent (I may be biased), picking 10 out of 22 for a list seems excessive so I thought I’d do a top 5 instead.
I don’t think I could have seen these first run. My dad was definitely a Star Trek fan but he was never big on Saturday morning cartoons. I do think that I probably wasn’t all that much older than when I first started watching the original series with him—five, maybe six—and I certainly watched them a bunch of times over my childhood. When they came back on Teletoon before my kids were born, I videotaped them all, making sure I got them in order. I may still have those VHS tapes even if we now longer own a VCR.
So, coloured by memories and nostalgia, here are the top 5 Star Trek Animated episodes as selected by me at the moment.
5. How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth (Season 2, Episode 21, Air Date: 05 Oct 1974)
The idea of aliens visiting Earth and posing as gods in the ancient past wasn’t a new one even in the early 70s, but it wasn’t all that tired then, either, and it had been done in “Who Mourns for Andonais?” is TOS Season 2. Kukulkan, however, is a bit of a twist, I think, as Central American mythology hadn’t been explored all that much yet and an intelligent flying snake isn’t something that could have been done on TV until CGI, at least not outside of a cartoon. I remember this one clearly from an early age, with Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and a throwaway character by the name of Walking Bear solving the puzzle of the city to get the “God” to come back. Of course, then still have to escape his benign clutches, saving his life from the chaos they create in the process.
Best Line: “Vulcan was visited by alien beings. They left much wiser.” (Spock)
4. The Time Trap (Season 1, Episode 12, Air Date: 24 Nov 1973)
I like this episode not so much for the silly “Bermuda Triangle in space” idea as to the multicultural aspects of it, the variety of species who, trapped as they are, have learned to work together to survive. Representatives of a variety of major powers and species inside the Federation are gathered here. Throwing the Klingons into the mix made things extra fun.
Best Line: “Now just a minute. All I did was ask her to dance. She didn’t have to say yes.” (McCoy)
3. The Eye of the Beholder (Season 1, Episode 15, Air Date: 05 Jan 1974)
Hyper-intelligent giant slugs who use their noses as manipulative appendages? A zoo on a planetary scale filled with giant critters ready to eat passers by? A daring rescue? Localized whether control? Mind melds?
This episode has enough fun elements for the most diehard Trekkie. Tonnes of fun and worth every moment spent in front of the screen.
Best Line: “My shoes are full of sand.” “Doctor, your lack of scientific interest is amazing.” (McCoy & Spock)
2. Beyond the Farthest Star (Season 1, Episode 1, Air Date: 08 Sep 1973)
I’m not sure if this makes my favourites for the concepts or just because this was the first return of Star Trek to the small screen (speaking of which, Paramount really needs to get on that), but it’s a solid story with a malevolent alien entity and an ancient derelict starship that looks almost organic, drawn in a period before the idea had even occurred to most people that just because something might be made of ceramic and metal it could also look natural (if alien in this case). One of the things I really love about this episode is the casual introduction of personal force fields (life support belts) instead of space suits.
Best Line: “Compared to the people who built this ship, we are primitives. Even you, Mr. Spock.” (Kirk)
1. One of Our Planets is Missing (Season 1, Episode 3, Air Date: 22 Sep 1973)
Spock performing a mind meld with a giant interstellar gas creature. Need I say more? Well, maybe a little.
Sort of a cross between the giant space amoeba (“The Immunity Syndrome”), the planet killer (“The Doomsday Machine”) and any randomly selected energy creature from any of the Star Trek series, this cloud creature actually proves to be intelligent, and can be communicated with and reasoned with by one very skilled Vulcan. Throw a colony planet in danger of being swallowed whole to ratchet up the tension and you’ve got a nice little space adventure here.
Best Line: “Am I doing the right thing, Bones? Once I said that man rose above primitiveness by vowing, ‘I will not kill, today.” (Kirk with a nice reference to “A Taste of Armageddon”)
So there it is, my top 5 of the 22 episodes in Star Trek: The Animated Series. Almost as hard to narrow down as for the Original Series. Did I miss anything?
(Images in this post come from the Star Trek Animated series website, not official, but built by an obviously major fan of the show.)
(Oh, and there will probably more posts in this series, but I’ll space them out a bit so there’s not a tonne of Trek all in one spot.)
Small Realities 