Friday, May 13, 2011

New animated Star Trek?


How many of you will admit to remembering the animated Star Trek series? Many people thought it was so bad (some even in the actual production team were less than enthusiastic about the output). Though some enjoyed the fact that many of the original crew were involved, generally it was ignored and died an ignoble death.

Now IO9 reports that there may be another effort to bring an animated series to the "small" screen. Their blog say that Roberto Orci has said that a new animated Trek could be materializing. (har I get it!) According to an article in Television Blend - Orci has been talking about putting together an animated Trek. They do note that it is not clear if it is just an idea of if Orci is truly in negotiation with Star Trek rights holders....... so at present we can treat this as a good rumor and cross our fingers....


17 comments:

Dave Tackett said...

That would be cool. Loved the old TAS when I was a kid. [Trek trivia - TAS gave us Kirk's middle name "Tiberius." In the original series it was never mentioned except on the tombstone in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" where it was "R."]

Good to see that you are able to post!

Beam Me Up said...

Wonderful trivia Dave. Now if I had been asked where the middle name came from "the city on the Edge of Forever" for some reason I thought it was mentioned there to Joan Collins' character. mmmmmmmmmm "Time has resumed its shape. All is as it was before," "Many such journeys are possible. Let me be your gateway." goose bumps! Dat boye Ellison can write!

Dave Tackett said...

Couldn't agree more about Ellison. "Jeffty is Five" and "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" are two of my favorite short stories.

[fyi until blogger lets me back in, I'll be posting links at http://quasardragon.wordpress.com though all posts there will be much smaller (my links are built into blogger in a strange way)]

Beam Me Up said...

Yeah, how many times have we seen Jeffty is Five ripped off. Repent is easily one of my favs by him. There is just something about City that was so far above the average Star Trek episode that for me it is the 500 lb gorilla of episodes and stories alike.

Whats up with blogger?

Dave Tackett said...

I don't know what happened, but in addition to temporarily deleting some posts, they also accidentally eliminated some blogs (mostly very new ones). At least some of those people whose blogs were deleted are now unable to log into blogger. Unfortunately, I had just started a new blog as an experiment (a collection of categorized blogrolls) an it was deleted so I may by S.O.L.

I could probably get used to Wordpress but I can't update the blogger site to say I moved. So for now I'm posting at much lesser rate and the fate of QD is in limbo.

Dave Tackett said...

Oops I just posted that last comment as Lt. Bob - It really is Friday the 13th

Beam Me Up said...

well you know you are always welcome to post here, but if you are going to stick with WP put together a release then post it on this blog and I will sure that you get some audio coverage as well.

Homer said...

Don't dis the old animated series! When I was growing up in the Trek void of the 70's we took what we could get. Even with Filmation doing the animation like most of the 70's series, we lived with it. They did have some good storylines and it did win a daytime Emmy. Something that TOS never, unfortunatly, accomplished.

JoshM said...

I'd love to see what might be done with a new Star Trek animated series. The movies are fun and several of them are very good. But Star Trek's real strengths have always been its characters, and the vast "where no man has gone before" that they're exploring. That's something the big-event-blockbuster movies have trouble getting right, and it really needs the smaller canvas of episodic television to get right.

Beam Me Up said...

HOMER!
You have to admit though that there wasn't as many people that were in our camp. I sucked up every episode like a dry sponge. Yep, in between, we took what we could get, but I can remember thinking, why does everyone sound so sad? lol well now I recognize it as flat delivery from many of the actors. I really think it is a shame though that many of the people involved didn't even want sttas in the official history of Star Trek. I watched it, but I think like a majority of the viewing audience, I was a teenager who was starving for Star Trek and nothing else could quite fill the bill.

Beam Me Up said...

JoshM
Hell yes I would go for that, but in a different way...I would let the Anime people have it. They are totally geared for high quality animation on a weekly basis. The style might be too much of a departure for fans of the original ST-TAS, but with the proper writing I am willing to bet that it would be well worth watching.

Homer said...

K - gonna leave a rambling comment about the franchise as a whole - agree or disagree as you like - these are my feelings.

TOS - First and second seasons were the best, no doubt. Third season had some great stories (let's forget about 'Spock's Brain', 'And The Children Will Lead' and such drivel. They knew they were on death's door and did the best the could.

TNG - At first I hated it! Only after the introduction of the Borg storyline and the character development had a chance to blossom did it hit it's stride. Still my favorite!!

DS9 - Ah, the best sci-fi show that no one watched. As with all of the spin-offs the first couple of seasons sucked. Only when they fleshed out the characters and brought in the Cardasians and the Dominion War storyline did it start to evolve. All in all I thought that this was the most 'thinking mans' series.

VOY - This is the one series that I have never seen every episode of. The UPN/syndication war kept over two seasons from originally airing until I could catch some on reruns. Once again, I think that the later episodes were much better that the first ones.

ENT - Here we go. Like I said about the animated series; don't dis Enterprise. People complained about it not following the canon to letter. Too bad!! Once again I thought the series was slow and lumbering until the Xindi arc began in the third season. The thing I loved about the fourth season was the way they pulled in all sorts of storylines from TOS and tried to tie up some 'loose ends'. Vulcan-Human mating, changes in Klingon Psysiology, the Human Isolationism, etc. I thought that the fourth season had meaning for the world we are living in now!!

Thanks for letting me vent!!! Love the blog!!

Beam Me Up said...

First thing Homer, I wonder if we should run this as an article on the blog...can you flesh it out just a bit. Second, did Mark in his column take a stab at Enterprise? I don't recall. I do know that second from ST-TAS Enterprise took a lot of hits like you said. I like Bakula and Blalock wasn't so hard to look at. I liked the whole cast. I thought the whole premise of everything is new and experimental had a unique charm. Your correct about the Xindi, that was lush with ideas.

Deep Space 9 (often derisively called Bravely going No Where) was an odd collection. I often thought it was some sort of answer to the Babylon series. I must have been one of the only ones watching. I suspect that it might have been too busy for a lot of viewers. There were plots on top of plots. There were some patently ridiculous races (I mean, add some ridges here and a piercing there and tada!) but as a general rule, the characters worked for me. Like many of the other series, I was stunned when Voyager spiraled in. I had my own nit pickings with the show, but certainly not enough to keep me from watching. The dual crews sometimes at each others throats other times working brilliantly together. There was certainly enough eye candy and Voyager went places that Gene had originally intended TO-ST to go, but you know for some reason I really identified with Robert Picardo's virtual doctor character. One of the most endearing episodes was when the simulation had to run the ship as they crossed a void in space while the crew was in SA to prevent psychological damage to the "living" crew. (I know I am butchering the plot, but you know the one I mean)

The series I didnt really get into and have had to catch up on in rerun is st-tng. Syndication changed hands and our cable company didn't want to follow to a local channel and so went with the network feed, and of course the network didn't carry st-tng....grrrrrrrrrr. The one thing I can say about ST-TNG is that is seemed to be trying to do everything TOS did but bigger, flashier and better. But that was before the Borg....then it got dark (Picard and the Borg queen...something kinky and dark there) and soooooooo much better. Ok, I have run on here too. Thanks for the note, Homer, Interest and great comments makes the blog more interesting. Ultimately it makes the BMU podcast a better program.

Paul

Homer said...

Hey Paul

Another 'quick' entry. I agree the Babylon 5 and DS9 had some similarities, but DS9 never came close to B5. The BSG reboot was another amazing series even though I was not able to follow it as closely as I should. I am a huge fan of any Sci-Fi that relates to the 'human condition' regardless of location or time. I was also a big fan of the OLD Friday night Sci-Fi (SyFy) lineup of Lexx, Farscape and, of course, SG-1. Since NBC bought SyFy it seems to be going straight into the toilet like the rest of their properties. What the HELL does the WWE have to do with Science Fiction??? A surprising find I made several months ago was the original unaired pilot for Lost In Space "No Place To Hide". Given that this was the 60's with cheap-o special effects and such (tin foil meteors) it was a well conceived idea. There was no robot, no Dr. Smith, nothing that led to the campy piece of crap that the series became (talking carrots, give me a freaking break). I think it's still available on Amazon for download.

K, outta here!! Thanks again!!

Beam Me Up said...

Homer
Yeah, how many times have you heard me rave on about wraslin on SyFy?!!! anyone that has any common sense and isn't blinded by the color green knows that this tripe does not belong on a network purported to champion speculative fiction. Ahhhhhhh but that old Friday night lineup. The strangeness that was Lexx, The tension and often funny Farscape and the wide open vistas of SG-1, can we all say halcyon days class?

Now Lost in Space...I seem to remember that the robot and Dr. Smith were late additions and they came when Irwin Allen picked up the project. Was the show camp? Oh my yes. Was I glued to the screen? You bet! That was until I really started to compare it to Star Trek and just how badly it held up. But that is another story. Allen's pilot was miles above how the show eventually ran. Smith was deeply almost psychotically evil and his tool was the service robot. He was meant to be a one and done but I remember reading that the Smith character played well with test audiences so Allen wrote him back in. That's when the per episode budget caps were put in place and Allen's famous penny pinching came into play. Many of LIS' aliens literally just came from or were going to one of Allen's other projects ongoing at the time ( Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants etc.) hence the carrots, quite likely were doing children shows in the next studio...lol. But I didn't realize that there was what a pre Irwin Allen pilot? That is stunning news. I will surely look for it.

Thanks for the note as always.

Paul

Homer said...

The original pilot is available for viewing on HULU and purchase on Amazon (hell, it's worth the $.99)

http://www.hulu.com/watch/148/lost-in-space-no-place-to-hide

http://www.amazon.com/No-Place-to-Hide/dp/B000H4MCJQ

LIS was always an Irwin Allen project but you are absolutely right about bringing the robot and Dr. Smith in later on, probably due to the 'masterminds' at CBS, sorta like the way NBC got pissed off at Rodenberry for 'The Cage'. Or maybe they had to drag the Cold War thing into the plot line. The original pilot was definitly a space age version of 'Swiss Family Robinson' as it was always compared to. It does get cheesy and sappy at times, but what can you say!! I also heard that one of the reasons that LIS got so campy in the 2nd and 3rd seasons was that CBS wanted it to complete the Batman on ABC. Talk about another whole can of worms to open up....hahaha!!

Beam Me Up said...

Homer
Thanks for the links! I will go for that one! BTW I had heard the same thing when they were doing a retrospect on LIS. CBS execs saw how Batman was drawing big numbers and they wanted the same thing however they didn't want to spend the bucks to bring in a new show so the word came down that whatever Batman was doing LIS would do as well. For me it didn't work though and I suspect that the average LIS fan missed all together. I was in my early teens when LIS hit its second season. I really wasn't looking for simple entertainment not complex plot-lines so I never made a comparison in the early days to Batman. I do remember though that I was very frustrated as the season advanced, because I really WAS looking for that Swiss Family Robinson in space and never got it. That bothered me a lot.