[Gates McFadden] At the dawn of the '70s, Star Trek looked like a doomed mission.
Officially canceled, Gene Roddenberry's wagon train to the stars
had come to a halt.
It was the beginning of years out in the cold.
The only hope for Star Trek lay in a mysterious, unknown parallel universe,
otherwise known as Saturday mornings.
What are you talking about?
So beam aboard and hold on tight
as we boldly go into the depths of Star Trek.
And you can see it all from here in The Center Seat.
[Captain Kirk] These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.
Its five-year mission: to explore strange, new worlds.
Yes, there was a Star Trek animated series.
It was not a fever dream.
I don't understand.
It was, you know, like finding a whole missing season of the original series.
I watched the animated series religiously when it came on. I was very excited.
What was interesting is the darn thing won an Emmy.
[bell dings]
[McFadden] The story of how Kirk and his crew
went from three to two dimensions
is the story of Star Trek's greatest demotion.
The original series was canceled in 1969.
The third season, the ratings just weren't there,
and NBC moved the show around so much.
[McFadden] Roddenberry had been promised a prime time 8:00 PM slot,
but Star Trek would sink to the depths of late night,
to die a quiet death.
So they gave Star Trek 10:00 on Friday night.
So Gene quit the show.
[McFadden] Star Trek had lost its creator,
its time slot, and the backing of its network.
But even drifting through the abyss,
the show still had the backing of a loyal band,
the very first members of a brand-new species:
Trekkies.
[Rich Schepis] You had the first convention,
the Star Trek convention in New York City,
and it just became a phenomenon all of a sudden.
[McFadden] Away from prime time,
NBC had inadvertently scattered the seed of Star Trek
through syndication, and it had taken root.
Star Trek was growing in popularity in syndication. It had taken off.
People who hadn't seen it originally got a chance to see it
on kind of a daily basis after school or after work.
And a whole new audience was born.
As soon as Star Trek hit the after-school market,
you know, the audience has doubled.
[McFadden] Reruns had connected Star Trek with a new legion of fans.
Like this guy.
My name is Fred Bronson.
[McFadden] And when it came to their favorite show,
Trekkies weren't going to stand by and watch it die.
I marched on NBC to protest the cancelation of Star Trek.
The fans refused to let the show die,
and they were determined to bring it back on.
[McFadden] Their protests were too late to spare the original series,
but they had caused ears to perk up at NBC.
[Aaron Harvey] In early 1973, Gene had a meeting with NBC,
and they expressed interest in wanting to bring Star Trek back.
[McFadden] The question was, how?
[Marc Cushman] Because they had destroyed the sets,
they had given away the Enterprise to the Smithsonian Institute,
and the expense was just too high.
[McFadden] They needed a cheaper version of Star Trek,
and it just so happened that someone working in a little-known studio
had thought of one about four years earlier.
[Harvey] The animated series came about in 1973,
but a lot of people don't know that it was actually originally pitched in 1969.
[McFadden] The animation house Filmation
had conceived a kind of junior version of Star Trek
and took it to NBC.
[Harvey] It was going to be a Starfleet Academy show.
Each of the crew members of the Enterprise
having basically a cadet in training with them.
Spock was going to have a Vulcan named Steve.
[laughter]
[McFadden] Sadly, Steve the Vulcan never came to be.
Gene Roddenberry didn't see Star Trek as just an educational tool,
but he was intrigued by the possibilities of animation.
He liked animation because his big thing was you can animate lava.
He'd always wanted to do lava, apparently, on the original series.
Go!
[McFadden] Of course, Gene had a much bigger goal
than simply indulging his love of molten rock.
[Cushman] His ultimate goal was to get Star Trek back into production,
and he felt that the animated series, if it did really well,
would bring that about.
[McFadden] But fans hungry for more
had no interest in a smaller serving of Star Trek,
let alone one ordered from the kids' menu.
And there was a lot of resistance.
The audience was very unhappy.
[Harvey] At conventions, people were passing around petitions
to stop the animated series from coming to television
because it wasn't real Star Trek.
[Larry Nemecek] There were a lot of people who thought that a cartoon show
would be the death of any kind of Star Trek revival
because it wasn't real life, it wasn't live-action.
And you know, and then we'd say to them,
"Yeah, but you're getting more Star Trek. Shut up."
[laughs]
[McFadden] Gene had his own concerns, not wanting to see
his sophisticated sci-fi creation reduced to child's play.
Gene really just was not interested in a kiddie version of Star Trek.
[McFadden] But desperate to keep the franchise alive,
he agreed to an animated series.
The only thing that convinced him was the idea
we will do real Star Trek as an animated series.
[McFadden] To guarantee that, Gene brought in
one of the original series' most respected writers to run the show.
Dorothy Fontana came aboard as the producer.
[Bob Kline] She was the guiding force.
She was the one that really wanted this to be wonderful.
[McFadden] Dorothy, or D.C. Fontana, was a very talented screenwriter.
But as a woman, she could not yet afford to trade on her name.
[David Gerrold] In those days, it wasn't common
for a woman to be a scriptwriter.
Women were hiding behind their initials,
V.N. McIntyre and C.L. Moore and D.C. Fontana,
because there was this belief that women couldn't write.
I was trying and I had an agent, but people, they were saying,
"Oh, I don't think she can write our show. I don't know."
"But why not?"
"Well, she's a woman."
"Okay, fine."
So I wrote it a Ben Casey, and I put "D.C. Fontana" on it.
They'll at least read it without knowing I'm a woman.
That helped me get in that door.
But there were very few actual women writers doing action-adventure.
[Nichelle Nichols] She was a great writer.
The stuff she wrote was just so darn good.
Star Trek, she knew what she was doing.
She was a fan. That was her show.
[McFadden] Not only was she a woman who was young and in charge of men,
she also had the intimidating task of marshaling
some of the foremost minds in science fiction.
Gene and Dorothy brought in all these amazing talents
of science fiction authors:
Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, Larry Niven.
Dorothy Fontana invited me to write a Star Trek cartoon,
and that sounded like fun.
[McFadden] But Gene Roddenberry kept a hand on the tiller.
[Harvey] He still had the last word,
much like anybody who's creative has that need to want to influence
whatever is going out, if it's under your name.
[Larry Niven] Gene Roddenberry's big breakthrough,
he used science fiction writers instead of scriptwriters,
and taught them how to do the scripts.
[McFadden] But D.C. Fontana and Gene Roddenberry
were united by the same prime directive.
Gene said, "We're gonna do Star Trek in a cartoon.
We're gonna do it as Star Trek."
[Gerrold] Dorothy, she brought in Star Trek writers,
and she said, "Write a Star Trek episode."
"And we can show things that we could not do live-action,
so you can be a little broader in what you design."
[D.C. Fontana] The glory of the animated show
was we could do anything on any planet, any kind of creature,
any sort of situation that you could dream of
that could be drawn was there on the film.
[McFadden] So for years after first floating the idea,
Filmation was contracted to create a new animated universe for a Star Trek cartoon.
Filmation was an animation company out of Reseda, California.
[McFadden] Which had grown from humble beginnings
to become part of a cartoon cartel.
Very humble beginnings.
[Harvey] They literally had a mannequin dressed up
just so it looked like there was somebody at the front desk.
They were doing industrial films and religious cartoons,
but it just wasn't making it.
DC Comics came to them when they were just about ready to shut down.
Look! Up in the sky!
[McFadden] And oddly enough, Filmation was saved by Superman.
"We want you to do the Superman cartoon."
They actually started
the first superhero cinematic universe on television.
[Fred Bronson] Lou Scheimer and Norm Prescott
made the decisions and ran the company,
and it was a well-oiled machine.
[McFadden] Dorothy Fontana's first challenge
was convincing the original cast of something
that even most fans didn't believe,
that an animated Star Trek was worth doing.
[Bronson] If you had somebody else doing the voice
of Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock, that just wouldn't have been right.
[McFadden] But even if she could convince them,
could she afford them?
Originally, they did talk to everybody,
and they realized that the budget wasn't supporting it.
You had somebody like Shatner and Nimoy, the amount of salary that they commanded,
it just became a very expensive show.
[McFadden] The producers' solution, the Enterprise key crew would return.
But for two of the actors, an honorable discharge.
Can you give us any more?
They, for cost savings, were going to have Majel Barrett and James Doohan...
Aye.
...voice Nichelle Nichols' role and George Takei.
[McFadden] But NBC had underestimated
the esprit de corps of the Enterprise crew.
[Harvey] When Nimoy was in the studio,
Leonard realized that Nichelle Nichols and George Takei, two people of color,
were not going to be in Star Trek.
[McFadden] Leonard didn't need his Vulcan logic
to realize this wasn't right.
And Nimoy, when he was there, he said, "Where's George?"
And they were like, "What do you mean?"
"Well, why isn't George back? Why isn't Nichelle back?"
And they told him, "We don't have the money for it."
[Cushman] When he found that out, he said, "I will not come back and do this show
unless you bring back the entire original cast."
Yes, that's quite true.
[McFadden] Before a single frame had been drawn,
Star Trek: The Animated Series was already in need of reanimating.
[Spock] Captain, we're underway.
[McFadden] Day one of recording for Star Trek: The Animated Series
would prove to be one of the few days the whole cast would gather in one studio.
Well, almost the whole cast.
The day they had the first recording session
with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy,
DeForest Kelley, James Doohan,
but no Nichelle Nichols, no George Takei.
We came here looking for some friends.
And Leonard was very upset.
[Schepis] George and Nichelle, they represented diversity in Star Trek,
and Leonard felt very strongly that if you're going to continue to do Star Trek,
you need to have their representation, that Pan-Asian character,
the African American character on the bridge,
how powerful those two roles were.
And so he made it known to Filmation
that if Nichelle and George were not gonna be part of this,
neither was he.
[McFadden] The producers relented.
Well, obviously, they did not wanna lose Leonard Nimoy.
[McFadden] George Takei and Nichelle Nichols were enlisted.
Standing by, sir.
[Bronson] I wrote the press release,
and my press release didn't say that Leonard Nimoy was upset.
My press release said, "Nichelle Nichols and George Takei
added to the cast of Star Trek: The Animated Series."
[McFadden] And really, it's just as well.
Let me tell you something.
Star Trek, to me, is the type of show
where you can close your eyes and listen to it.
And it's beautiful because you're dealing with voices of people
who are trained in whatever, you know, a character they're doing,
but they're trained voices, and so it's lovely when they come together.
[McFadden] Well, it would almost be lovely.
Nimoy had managed to get most of the band back together,
but there was still one player missing.
Phasers armed and ready, sir.
I wasn't going to be in the animated series.
I didn't know that. I found that out from a fan at a convention in L.A.
Chekov as supposed to be a part of the animated series.
They drew the character, but they couldn't afford to bring everybody back.
[McFadden] It was a double blow for the descendant of Russian immigrants,
who perhaps more than any of the original cast
needed the work.
[Walter Koenig] After Star Trek, I didn't work at all.
You know, I spend three or four years never having the phone ring,
resorting to writing and actually writing for television.
[McFadden] So Roddenberry threw Walter a bone.
He asked me if I'd like to write one of the episodes of the animated Star Trek.
[McFadden] With all the original cast now playing a hand
and Nimoy signed on, Star Trek: The Animated Series,
known simply as Star Trek, was starting to look like Star Trek.
Just like that, Captain?
So it would appear, Mr. Sulu.
Star Trek was back.
Wonderful!
They handled the animated series like they did the original series.
They got the same writers, the same voice cast.
The animation department
used Matt Jefferies' blueprints for the Enterprise.
So they made Star Trek.
[Captain Kirk] Captain's Log, Stardate 5554.4.
[McFadden] Make that "Start date 9-15-1973."
The animated series set out to go where no Star Trek had gone before.
Where?
[McFadden] To Saturday-morning kids' cartoons.
When we talk about the animated series,
we always make a point of saying "animated."
We don't say "Saturday-morning cartoons."
[McFadden] And yet that's exactly where the Enterprise found itself,
rubbing shoulders with Saturday-morning celebs,
like the Jetsons, the Bradys,
a pair of crime-fighting dogs, and civic-minded superheroes.
The funny thing about the animated series was it was too good for Saturday morning.
Ugh, I've got a hangover to shame all previous hangovers.
[McFadden] With the nation's most impressionable minds
now in their care, Star Trek producers naturally played it safe
by sticking with gentle, easily understood materials suitable for kids,
like suicide.
All unsuccessful Orion missions end in suicide.
That was not for kids. It should not have been for kids.
[McFadden] It was a subject matter rarely dealt with on network TV anywhere.
But Star Trek had its own hot take for kids,
called "The Pirates of Orion."
Destroy the Enterprise.
And the only way to do that is to destroy ourselves too.
Suicide bombings, to even think about that in those days.
Your ship will be destroyed.
But so will yours.
Having those stories be that mature and fun to watch
from a story standpoint was just splendid.
We're not going to let you commit suicide.
Disarm the self-destruct system.
[McFadden] Dorothy Fontana was determined to continue Star Trek's mission,
and that meant an intrepid approach to subjects like death.
Murderer! You've killed Spock!
[Bronson] Because they wanted it to hit adults as well as children
and also to honor what Star Trek was, was never to dumb it down.
[McFadden] But in just the second episode, Dorothy Fontana went much further
with her own life lesson for an unsuspecting audience.
"Yesteryear" is by far everybody's favorite episode.
That is a brilliantly written episode.
One of the best.
It would be in the top five episodes of all time, of any series.
[McFadden] A half-hour cartoon was putting the backbone
into the backstory of Star Trek's most loved characters.
"Yesteryear" represented everything that Gene and Dorothy wanted to do
with the animated series.
[Harvey] "Yesteryear" is kind of a seminal history
of the Spock character.
What Spock became, a lot of it is due to that episode.
[McFadden] Writer Dorothy Fontana returned to her perennial Star Trek theme,
time.
[Captain Kirk] We are in orbit around the planet of a time vortex,
the focus of all the timelines of our galaxy.
Dorothy was very excited about the fact that there was a wide-open canvas.
They could go back in time and tell the story about Spock's childhood.
What happened?
[McFadden] In "Yesteryear,"
the Enterprise crew discover a rip in the fabric of spacetime.
They go back in time and when they return to our time,
nobody knows who Mr. Spock is.
Who's he, Jim?
What do you mean, who's he?
When we were in the time vortex,
something appears to have changed the present as we know it.
[McFadden] His mission is immediately obvious.
Spock has to go back in time to fix things.
So they use the Guardian of Forever to send him back in time,
to basically save himself.
I wish to visit the planet Vulcan, 30 Vulcan years past.
Spock goes back in time and sees himself as a child.
You could never be a true Vulcan.
He helps himself through a maturity test in the Vulcan Forge,
their desert.
[Spock] A personal ordeal upon which I embarked
was meant to determine the course my life would take.
This was the time that he basically tried to prove himself
by doing the kahs-wan.
A survival test, traditional for a young male.
[McFadden] And the episode even referenced some backstory
that had been set up in the original series.
No, I-Chaya, this is my own test.
I have to do it alone.
[Harvey] They had mentioned in the original series
in "Journey to Babel" that Spock had a childhood pet, a sehlat.
Sehlat?
It's sort of a... a fat teddy bear.
And McCoy goes, "Oh, really? You had a teddy bear?"
A teddy bear?
And so we finally got to see Spock's sehlat.
I-Chaya, what if I'm not a true Vulcan like they say?
[McFadden] The shaggy look of Spock's previously unimagined pet
owed something to the musings of fans.
[Harvey] The fanzine Spockanalia had a lot of fan art.
Alicia Austin had speculated on what a sehlat would look like,
and the illustrators at Filmation used that as the basis for their design.
[McFadden] But this fat teddy bear brought to life by fans
was now to be sacrificed on the altar of life's lessons.
[roars]
[Harvey] Spock, he is attacked by a mountain lion.
I-Chaya tries to prevent him from being attacked
and unfortunately is mortally wounded.
They try to save I-Chaya.
They go back to the city and bring back a healer.
I can prolong his life... but he will be in pain.
Or I can release him from life.
It tackled the idea of euthanasia.
[Harvey] So Spock had to choose between letting his pet die
or having him be alive in great pain.
And he made the decision.
Release him.
It is fitting he dies with peace and dignity.
[McFadden] And so an adolescent Spock
decides his pet can't live long and prosper.
Dorothy was really concerned that people might have a problem with this.
[McFadden] Somehow, Star Trek had conspired to air
one of the most controversial issues in American society,
on children's television.
And NBC was really worried about this,
showing a pet dying on Saturday-morning television,
and NBC actually got a flood of telephone calls
thanking them for tackling such a difficult subject
on Saturday-morning television with their kids watching.
[Harvey] It really cemented the character of Spock
and how he treats his Vulcan and human side.
[McFadden] The theme of sacrifice
was something Spock was destined to explore to its logical conclusion.
It's logical. The needs of the many outweigh...
The needs of the few.
I give you credit, human, you are not afraid to die.
[McFadden] But when it came to embracing the big issues,
the animated series had only just begun.
[McFadden] Star Trek: The Animated Series had shown a willingness
to slaughter the sacred cows of Saturday-morning cartoons,
and it was just getting started.
[Schepis] "The Slaver Weapon" is a real interesting episode.
First of all, the only time any characters die on the animated series.
I give you credit, human, you are not afraid to die.
Characters die. They end up being killed by their actions in the episode.
[groans]
[McFadden] Don't blame the writer.
If there was a rule about this, no one told Larry.
To my knowledge, I don't think they had barred killing from children's shows.
Kids aren't used to seeing that Saturday morning.
[McFadden] A bold choice of subject matter
was not all that distinguished the series
because an animated Star Trek
could do things its predecessor could only dream of.
Commander Bem, what are you doing here?
[chuckles]
[Gerrold] We could write a character that splits himself into parts.
In those days, you couldn't do those alien characters live-action,
but you could do on the animated show,
so we got a lot of very interesting aliens.
An uncharted star system ahead, Captain.
[McFadden] For the first time,
the original series Star Trek cast was expanded,
and new crew members made an entrance.
[whistles]
I really liked the alien character who was at the helm.
[McFadden] That would be this guy.
You can have Lt. Arex or Lt. M'Ress.
[purrs] Lt. M'Ress here.
[McFadden] And so Star Trek fans
got to meet a purring communications officer.
[purrs]
[McFadden] And a tripodal lute-playing navigator.
M'Ress was cat-like. I always thought of Arex as kind of a camel.
Anybody keeping a trace on the Captain and Mr. Spock?
What I was trying to do with that character
was to make him humanoid
and make him an appealing and accessible-looking character.
Hey, wait a minute.
He was a truly alien character that you could not have seen on
the live-action television series, and I loved that.
[McFadden] Ron Moore wasn't the only one.
I always feel that the animated series is like
if the original series had an unlimited special effects budget
and was renewed for a fourth season.
I absolutely love it.
I know that it has its detractors.
Their opinions are absolutely valid, but for me, I'm crazy about it.
I think it's great.
[both laugh]
[Gerrold] You could do the M'Ress makeup if you want in live-action,
but it would be three hours in the makeup chair
every day that you wanna use that character,
and it would be a budget thing, so you don't want to do that.
I mean, Spock was spending an hour in the chair
getting his ears put on.
We weren't getting Disney level of animation,
but we were getting to do a much broader palette of Star Trek.
[McFadden] While animation meant a world of new possibilities,
it was not without its limits.
It was all hand-done, artists sitting there,
painting in the cells and all of that stuff.
The one big technological advance we had
was you could Xerox the black-and-white cells
that were standard cells for backgrounds
or maybe facial expressions, things like that.
You could Xerox those, but they still had to be painted in by hand by artists.
Animators were cutting corners every way they could.
They gave it a low budget, not thinking it was gonna be popular.
[McFadden] Director Bill Reed became adept at using a system
Filmation had perfected to deliver with a smaller budget.
The thing that saved Filmation was the stock program.
The stock system was a cornerstone of all of the Filmation products.
[Bill Reed] The main characters each had a stock scene of close-up,
a medium shot, a walk, and a run,
and those were used over and over again.
[McFadden] And so Mr. Spock became Mr. Stock.
Most logical.
[McFadden] Lending the animated first officer even more Vulcan serenity.
Spock is looking into his viewer. That's a stock scene.
You can spot a stock scene
because they use the same setup over and over again.
It saved them a lot of money.
[upbeat music playing]
[Schepis] I love those scenes of Spock and Kirk running and the music because
because it's the same Kirk-Spock running scene every time.
I just love it.
Oops!
Amazing.
[Bronson] The animation it, may seem a little primitive.
But back then, it might have been a little cut below some other animation,
but it wasn't that far off.
I think it was a product of its time.
[McFadden] However clunky Captain Kirk's groove may have seemed,
there was no denying his 2D likeness was a dead ringer for the real thing.
This is Captain James T. Kirk of the starship Enterprise,
representing the Federation of Planets.
[McFadden] Spock was spot-on too,
and Bones looked like the real McCoy.
McCoy here.
[McFadden] It was all thanks to the keen eye of one man.
[Kline] Herb Hazelton was really important to the show,
in that he designed all of the prime characters.
I mean, he was a fine artist. He drew people better than anyone.
He worked from photographs to create these likenesses,
just the way an artist would draw from a model.
[Schepis] For a little television show with a quick turnaround
for all these episodes, what they did was pretty impressive.
It looked like Star Trek.
But something was changed.
[McFadden] The animated series was Star Trek in all its true colors.
Except when it came to true colors.
There are some interesting color choices.
Most peculiar.
[McFadden] Producer D.C. Fontana knew fandom did not like random.
[Nemecek] "This ain't no other Saturday-morning show.
People care about this.
We will be drowned in letters if you put the wrong color here."
[McFadden] Sure enough, there were quibbles over tribbles.
Captain, these are safe tribbles.
You know, you've got pink tribbles.
[grunts]
[McFadden] So what was behind this kaleidoscope of color?
[Gerrold] The tribbles are pink in "More Tribbles, More Troubles"
because the man who chose the colors was colorblind.
Aren't you going to sit down, sir?
I think I'll stand.
[McFadden] That would explain it if the truth were that simple.
So color blindness on the animated series is one of those fun urban legends.
[McFadden] Right. Would a colorblind person paint like this?
Well, yes, the art director did have some color blindness issues.
[McFadden] That's art director Don Christensen.
Don Christensen was colorblind.
He wasn't the one choosing the color palette.
That was Irv Kaplan.
And that was his color palette of choice.
He loved to use those colors.
[Kline] I disagreed with Irv every time he painted something pink or red
or that was just outrageous for that character.
He did pick out some pretty strange colors.
You're saying we can't escape?
[McFadden] Which meant some of Star Trek's more menacing villains
were surprisingly pretty in pink.
We are prepared to go to war if we have to.
When you saw the purple-pink Klingon uniforms,
the Kzinti from "The Slaver Weapon."
Identify yourself.
[Kline] That was one of the famous situations
where Irv Kaplan decided they needed to have pink outfits,
and it was just astonishing to me that that was his solution. [laughs]
[groans]
[McFadden] Dorothy Fontana, who had little control over art direction,
found she could only apologize to her writers.
It was like, "No! It can't be!"
I thought that was just fine.
[Schepis] Larry was, like, totally okay with it because he's like,
"Well, there's orange and red vegetation on the Kzinti homeworld anyway."
I'm not sure I can take too much of this.
[McFadden] But on at least one occasion, it was the color yellow
that raised eyebrows in the screening room.
Ted Cortez and I would go over to Filmation to view the episodes.
You know, he did it for broadcast standards.
I did it for publicity.
We'd sit there in front of a Moviola, crowded in, watching the episode,
and we're watching the one called "Once Upon a Planet,"
which was the sequel to "Shore Leave" from the original series.
There's a scene where Dr. McCoy is out in a field,
like in a Southern plantation,
and I'm looking, and I see a yellow stream coming out of him...
hitting the ground.
And it goes on. I said, "Wait a minute."
I turned to Ted and said, "What did we just see?"
He said, "I don't know."
So we asked them to roll it back.
And we look. He's taking a piss.
Ted said, "You can't do that!"
And they said, "We know, we just put it in for you." [laughs]
[McFadden] But an unpalatable palette
would prove to be the least of the producers' concerns.
It doesn't matter. It's gonna be seen once on Saturday-morning cartoons.
And who cares?
[McFadden] Because where the animated series
was about to take its young viewers was wholly uncharted territory.
I want to protect her,
hold her in my arms.
There were two things that Gene Roddenberry always had notes for,
for the writers for Star Trek episodes.
He wanted to have more relationships.
[McFadden] Just like its live-action sibling,
the animated series wasn't afraid of live-action...
-Love? -Yes.
[McFadden] Nor one other big thing.
The other one was God.
Excuse me, I'd just like to ask a question.
What does God need with a starship?
[Gerrold] This was Gene's story.
Whenever the story got bogged down or he didn't know what to do,
he said, "Let them meet God."
Magic.
[Schepis] Larry Brody, who wrote "The Magicks of Megas-Tu,"
knew that Gene would love a God story.
So he pitched the story with God in it.
[McFadden] But on network television in the '70s,
God might find an audience on Sunday morning,
but not Saturday-morning cartoons.
But NBC said, "No, no, no, no. The crew's not meeting God.
But you know what? You can meet the devil instead."
It is not logical.
[laughs] Which is crazy.
[McFadden] To the writers of Star Trek, this was a temptation too good to resist.
Ah, humans. Lovely, primitive humans.
Can't you do anything right?
[Nemecek] "The Magicks of Megas-Tu" is an episode
that the newest generation of fandom is all kind of, like, woke up to.
Call me Lucien. Call me friend.
Oh, my God, it's Kirk, Spock, and the devil! What?! What?!
[McFadden] The character of Lucien certainly looked the part,
but Star Trek's devil was no traditional Satan.
Never could I abandon those who come to rollick with me.
[McFadden] He was less devilish.
I knew eventually humans would come searching for me.
[McFadden] More devilishly charming.
[laughs]
Captain, good Captain, always so curious!
That must be why I've always liked you Earthlings so much!
Eight-year-old kids were watching this on Saturday morning. [laughs]
Let us leave this vessel and go where true delights lie!
Wait a minute, you're glorifying the devil?
[McFadden] Not only did Star Trek dare to give Satan
an acceptable, even child-friendly face,
it went to bed with him on the big issues.
To isolate someone like Lucien,
that's the same as sentencing him to death.
Kirk was defending the devil in a courtroom, basically.
He's a living being, an intelligent life form.
Would you defend him still if you knew he had another name too?
Lucifer!
He's like, "Hey, no, he's a good guy."
[McFadden] And what better thing to do with a good guy then share a drink?
Why I love the episode is because it's not the devil.
[McFadden] And if this handsome devil wasn't enough,
how about a side of the occult?
[Schepis] Inhabitants of Megas-Tu had hoofed feet, had horns.
They actually were on Earth during the 1600s,
and they could do magic.
That idea that Lucian was something evil was because humanity made him that way.
When the aliens put our crew on trial, it looks like we're in ancient Salem.
We are gathered here today, good citizens, to see justice done.
The whole idea of Salem and the witches, it probably triggered something
in people about Satanism or witchcraft.
[McFadden] The idea of Satan on the bridge
proved a bridge too far for some Southern viewers.
[Bronson] A lot of people, especially in religious areas, the Bible Belt,
took offense to it and complained to NBC.
They mobilized, they called, they hammered NBC.
They did not get a lot of positive phone calls for this episode.
The funny thing is, is that NBC was the one that said, "Make it the devil.
That'll be okay."
[McFadden] Following the outcry, NBC caved.
"The Magicks of Megas-Tu" got pulled because 40 rabid Baptists
wrote in letters of protest.
"How can you make the devil a nice guy?"
They actually did make some adjustments from the time it aired originally.
It's one of those things that, with a little hindsight
and a fresh filter, you're thinking, "What?"
It was just a trippy episode.
[McFadden] But the trip was just beginning.
Star Trek had other children's television taboos in its sights.
These are the most beautiful women in the galaxy.
Oh, sorry, sir.
Are you injured?
No. No, I'm-I'm fine.
[McFadden] Adult themes were surprisingly interwoven
throughout the animated series, including the most adult of them all.
My world, there's a lot of females, not so many men.
Come we find a man attractive, we say so.
I'm sayin' so.
[McFadden] Whether it was Friday night or Saturday morning,
Captain Kirk would still be a sex object, even in 2D.
You're more handsome than ever.
It goes back to that whole idea of Kirk
being that, you know, ladies' man from the original series.
How do you find me?
Mm... fascinating.
[McFadden] In "The Jihad"...
It definitely wouldn't get that title today.
[McFadden] Lara, the expert hunter, brings sexual tension
where no sexual tension had gone before.
You know, she's flirting with him the whole episode.
But we're not here on a pleasure trip, Lara.
All the more reason to take what pleasure there might be in it.
[chuckles]
It's hilarious because, again, it's adult subject matter.
If we were together, the trip would be easier.
You know, she says something about "we can make green memories."
And if anything happened, why, uh, we'd have some green memories.
You know, she's talking about making green memories and Kirk's like...
-I already have a lot of green memories. -Oh.
[McFadden] In case you're wondering about green memories,
it's true, Kirk had formed a few over the years.
[Schepis] I can only imagine a kid talking to Mom and Dad and going,
"Mom, what's a green memory?"
It was on purpose, but it wasn't like a plot.
"Oh, we'll fix them."
I think they wanted to tell great stories.
Goodbye, James Kirk.
Too bad.
[McFadden] But telling great stories meant having great scripts,
and Dorothy was about to run out of those.
Star Trek: The Animated Series wouldn't have turned out the way it did
if there wasn't a writers' strike at the time.
[McFadden] But being a writer herself, Dorothy knew a clever workaround.
[Harvey] The Guild rule, you could not write live-action television
if there was a strike, but you could do one animated episode.
Yes, that's right.
[McFadden] Dorothy exploited this little-known loophole in union rules
to keep her writers working and the show in production.
Dorothy approach people who had written original Star Trek and said,
"Hey, you can't write anything right now, but you can do this animated show."
[McFadden] As the animated series was a unique gig,
it was a chance for pigeonholed riders to flex their muscles.
It was enticing to somebody like David Gerrold,
who was able to do his Bem character.
[McFadden] This David Gerrold.
I always wanted to do Bem.
So with the animated show, they said, "You know, we can do Bem now."
[Captain Kirk] Honorary Commander Ari bn Bem.
[McFadden] Bem stood for "bug-eyed monster."
Because we don't have to build a costume, it's easier to draw this character.
This one must disassemble.
That was an idea that came over from the original series into animation.
[McFadden] Also picked up from the original series,
Star Trek's continuing mission for diversity.
Gentlemen, we've just been through one civil war.
Let's not start another.
[Schepis] Gene Roddenberry didn't do an interview saying,
"Hey, we've got a black woman on our bridge.
Hey, we've got a Japanese American on our bridge."
They just did it.
[McFadden] The animated series did it too,
and did more.
Infinite diversity in infinite combinations.
[Harvey] The characters all got something to do.
They didn't have to just be one-liners.
All right, you lovelies, hold together.
[McFadden] In this universe,
Star Trek's minorities could even take control.
Lt. Uhura, place the ship on yellow alert.
Aye, sir, yellow alert.
Lt. Uhura had a whole lot more to do than she did in the original series,
when you look at it.
Fire!
She actually finally got to take control of the Enterprise.
What are you doing?
Taking command of this ship.
When she read the script, she yelled out loud, "Finally!"
I am assuming command of the Enterprise.
Uhura got to captain the damn bridge.
It was so satisfying and I loved it.
[McFadden] And while the show was among the first on many fronts,
including Kirk's split-focused interracial kiss with Lt. Uhura,
there was one notable and unexpected first
the animated series could claim.
A legend of a winged serpent god who came from the skies,
bringing knowledge.
It was one of the first times that they actually brought in
Native American culture into Star Trek.
[McFadden] Writer Russell Bates was invited to introduce
his own culture into the Star Trek universe.
[Schepis] He was a Native American.
Dorothy wanted him to write something towards his experiences.
Aye, sir, warp factor two.
So that's how we have Ensign Walking Bear.
Mr. Walking Bear.
[Schepis] The first Native American in Starfleet.
[Walking Bear] I am a Comanche, Captain.
Another one of those groundbreaking moments for Star Trek.
[McFadden] On a Saturday morning in the '70s,
the kind of ethnic culture that American kids encountered
was usually no more than phooey.
♪ Hong Kong Phooey ♪
♪ Number one super guy ♪
Not the best portrayal of people of color, unfortunately.
We work only to create peace.
[McFadden] The humble animated officer Ensign Walking Bear
was light years beyond earlier brushes with Native American cultures.
Give him the medicine badge.
[McFadden] The episode entitled "How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth"...
Which is a quote from King Lear.
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child.
[McFadden] ...went on to win an Emmy for...
Outstanding daytime children's television series.
[McFadden] The Emmy ceremony itself was also outstanding.
This was the first and last year that the Emmys were done on a boat.
[Monty Hall] They told me this is really the way to do a show.
Well, I suppose it is, but what I wouldn't do for a cooling breeze.
-Yeah. [laughs] -Jeez.
[McFadden] Well, it was the '70s, and they simply didn't know any better.
[Harvey] Lou Scheimer heard that the winner
was actually Captain Kangaroo.
Lou got drunk, and they announced that Star Trek has won the Emmy.
To all those great, great people who produce for us
in the art of animation at Filmation those wonderful shows.
He is about ready to fall over.
Thank you very, very much.
[crowd cheering]
The animated series, to this day, whatever you think about it,
is the only Star Trek to win an Emmy as a program.
[McFadden] Star Trek shows have won twice for makeup,
but the animated series stands alone for writing honors.
Despite the accolades,
this chapter was always going to be Star Trek's least watched.
[Bronson] We did get high praise from television critics.
I think they saw that children could appreciate the show.
Adults could appreciate the show.
The stories had the quality that the original series had.
[McFadden] The L.A. Times called Star Trek: The Animated Series
"A Mercedes in a soapbox derby."
I like the fact that they said it was a Mercedes.
[McFadden] Nonetheless, Saturday-morning cartoons
was not a race this Mercedes was destined to win.
[McFadden] For a kids' show, Star Trek: The Animated Series
had achieved something very grown-up.
It won an Emmy as best children's show, and there was nothing children about it.
[McFadden] That was something the original series
never managed in 79 episodes.
Nevertheless, this upstart cartoon would suffer the same fate as its mothership.
After 22 episodes over two seasons, the show was retired.
The animated series was not canceled for bad ratings.
It just was a point where we have enough episodes,
and now we can run these forever and it doesn't cost us any more money.
[McFadden] The animated adventures had found an audience,
but it was the wrong audience.
Star Trek might have actually continued if it didn't have sort of this dual identity
of being a children's program and original Star Trek at the same time.
[announcer] The Star Trek USS Enterprise gift set
with five Star Trek action figures.
[Harvey] The advertisers didn't quite know what to do with it.
Are you advertising to the dad that's watching the show with the kids?
Or are you advertising to the kid that wants the toy?
[announcer] Star Trek action figures sold separately.
It's kind of charming when you see some of the toys back in the day
that, you know, they have a mustard-yellow Kirk,
and you're like, "Eh, that's not really correct."
But you know, what are you gonna do?
"Ah, stupid kids, they don't care."
[McFadden] Well, it certainly didn't stop them from buying them.
Mego Toys in the mid '70s becomes one of the best-selling toy lines.
They sold $12 million worth of toys the first year.
[McFadden] And while it sold a lot of toys,
can an obscure kids' cartoon that ran for just two seasons
legitimately be part of the Star Trek legacy?
Today, you often hear the refrain of "that's not Star Trek."
[McFadden] This debate goes all the way back to the beginning.
That started in 1973, when they announced the animated series.
You had that loud vocal minority saying, "Don't do this to my show that I love."
People took out newspaper ads asking that they not put
Star Trek: The Animated Series on the air because it's a cartoon.
It's not real Star Trek.
[McFadden] There was one true fan
who really was dedicated to proving that idea wrong.
Someone special.
Dorothy, of course, was fiercely protective of Star Trek.
[McFadden] But in the male-dominated world
of fast-turnaround cartoons, Dorothy Fontana was on her own.
No one is thinking they're upholding the legacy
of some already undervalued show,
and Dorothy, just trying to enforce Star Trek continuity
from the original series.
For the first several episodes, she didn't see final cuts of the shows
and was totally blocked out of the process,
and it was a real frustration point for her.
She knows there's a little controversy about people seeing these animated shows
as a consolation prize for revival,
so the last thing she wants is any fan to be upset.
And so Dorothy made sure it was Star Trek.
[McFadden] After all, that's what it says on the can,
but is it canon?
This whole debate about canon for the animated series is just amazing.
The animated series is canon.
[Nemecek] A lot of us took it as canon.
We just kind of, you know, held our nose a couple of times
and kind of tried to look the other way on a couple of areas.
[McFadden] Well, after all, it was for kids.
Dorothy says it's canon. She treated it as canon.
She felt that the animated series was the unofficial 4th season
of the original series.
[McFadden] Some might see a cartoon Trek as a crime against canon,
but there's no denying the animated series checked a load of boxes.
Like original cast.
It's the voices. It's those guys.
Nothing's changed.
-[bell dings] -[McFadden] Check, but not Chekov.
Mr. Chekov. Join us in the transporter room.
Walter Koenig didn't make the cut for this show.
[McFadden] And while Walter did get to add to the series by writing an episode...
"The Infinite Vulcan."
[McFadden] ...after that, Chekov checked out.
When I got done with the animated show, they offered me a second one.
I just turned that down.
[McFadden] For young Walter,
it was tough to hear the criticism about the episode.
When I did hear comments about the episode,
the complaint was a 50-foot Spock, you know. [scoffs]
[McFadden] It seemed like fans just preferred
their favorite Vulcan human-sized,
and Walter couldn't help but take it personally.
I said to myself, "Well, I guess it was a pretty lousy episode,"
and I just left it at that.
And then I read this book.
[McFadden] The same book that Aaron happens to be holding right here.
This very handsomely done book about animated Star Trek.
[McFadden] Written by a couple of great guys.
And Dorothy Fontana said it was the show she liked best.
Can you imagine that?
I've been going along all these years thinking that it was really a bad show,
and she said she really liked it.
[McFadden] Unfortunately, Walter's work also had
someone else's fingerprints all over it.
Explain it to me, sir. Explain it to me.
[McFadden] Because Gene Roddenberry wanted too many rewrites.
I got crazy with it.
Gene is the master rewriter.
[McFadden] Which is another check on the canon checklist.
If it has Gene Roddenberry's name on it, it's canon.
-[bell dings] -[McFadden] Check.
He put his name on it, and he collected his paycheck.
-[bell dings] -[McFadden] Another check.
It's canon.
[McFadden] Original writers?
It was written by the writers that wrote the original stories.
[bell dings]
[McFadden] And they weren't the only returnees.
[Harvey] You have a lot of returning characters.
[bell dings]
You have Sarek and Amanda. You have Harry Mudd.
Captain Kirk.
[Harvey] You have Cyrano Jones.
What can I do for you?
You even have fictional characters like Alice in Wonderland
from the "Shore Leave" planet.
I beg your pardon, but did you see a white rabbit?
There's just so many returning bits and pieces.
[McFadden] Not to mention sequels.
These tribbles don't reproduce, they just get fat.
[bell dings]
"More Tribbles, More Troubles," that's a sequel.
"Once Upon a Planet" is a sequel to "Shore Leave."
[McFadden] Some of them were even prequels.
[screams]
Without the animated series, a huge chunk of what Spock is would not have existed.
[bell dings]
The animated series is becoming more canon because they're using stuff from it.
[Schepis] They have taken the ideas from the animated series,
like the rec room holodeck.
[bell dings]
Just imagine what it was like, no engines, no computers.
[Cushman] There were a lot of things that came out of the animated series
that became part of the Star Trek universe.
Unbelievable.
[McFadden] Including another animated series
that would join the fleet 46 years later.
[Kline] Watching Lower Decks , I was very excited to see
a species relative of Lt. Arex appears.
This is no joke, sir.
[McFadden] And let's not forget this little gem.
This is Captain James Tiberius Kirk.
The animated series is where we got on-screen Tiberius.
James Tiberius.
Kirk.
Well, that convinces me.
So these stories still hold up.
Each story has an idea.
There's a reason why they're telling this story.
It's a Star Trek idea. It continues the story.
What was important about the animated series
is that it was a big and very important stepping stone
to getting Star Trek back.
-Captain. -I appreciate the welcome.
[Bronson] Anyone associated with Star Trek can hold their head up high
if they worked on the animated series.
It was a quality product that won an Emmy and won the hearts of Star Trek fans.
My dear friend Spock.
It's good to have a friend like you.
The animated series is Star Trek.
Exactly.
[Bronson] It was a smart show where they had ideas about all kinds of things:
life and death, women's issues, diversity.
They were all worked into the stories, and they were not talking down to kids.
And that's one of the reasons why 50 years later we're still interested,
talking and watching the animated series.
[McFadden] But you know what?
There's a lot more Star Trek to talk about.
[theme music playing]