It’s AG Monday!
This week: Star Trek: The Animated Series.
After the original series of Star Trek concluded, it looked as though one of our favorite bits of SF had come to an end…Until surprise! Star Trek transformed into a Saturday morning cartoon! The same cast (almost), the same writers, the same everything, but now with even more alien aliens, wild new starship designs, and wacky plots!
Spock travels back in time to help his younger self! There’s a giant clone of Spock! Satan lives at the center of the galaxy, and he’s our friend! Larry Niven’s Kzinti become part of the Star Trek continuity! The crew starts shrinking! More tribbles, more Harry Mudd!
So strap on your phaser and communicator and join us as we we travel back to when Star Trek The Animated Series – the most mature cartoon on television at the time – was sandwiched between a Partridge family knock-off and Sigmund And The Sea Monsters!
Ancient Geeks is a podcast about two geeks of a certain age re-visiting their youth. We were there when things like science fiction, fantasy, Tolkien, Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D, Marvel and DC comics, Doctor Who, and many, many other threads of modern geek culture were still on the fringes of culture. We were geeks before it was chic!
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Re Peter David, he wrote the Centauri Trilogy for B5 after the end of the show. It tells what happened on Centauri Prime between the end of Season 5, and after Sheridan’s earlier flash forward* in “War Without End.”
Very much worth reading, though his depiction of technomages clashes with that of Jeanne Cavelos Technomage Trilogy (There’s a third trilogy, about the Psi Corps and the ultimate fate of Bester; IMO, the weakest of the lot).
I’ve read some of his Trek novels too. The best of those, IMO, was Imzadi. There are time travel shenanigans (complete with a view of a non-canon future different from how TNG and sequels developed), but the meat is the back story of the relationship between Deanna and Will prior to TNG.
*Blame time travel for that awkward turn of phrase.
Congrats to the AG team, you got me curious enough to watch TAS. Namely “Yesteryear.”
Prior to this I’d seen The Soft Weapon. At the time I thought the crappy animation took away from the performance. The stories are ok, but feel somewhat simplified.
And some of the voices… The Guardian sounded nothing like that in TOS, or even in Discovery.
@Kathy: Good deal. I hope you enjoyed it.
And yes, the Guardian’s voice is a great example of what Tom was talking about in our conversation.
I still have several thoughts on your TOS and Batman 66 episodes and maybe someday I’ll get them down.. meanwhile at least this is more current (still a week late..).
You didn’t mention Alan Dean Fosters novelizations of the TAS episodes (the Log series)… greatly fleshed out and really well written. While James Blish’s TOS adaptations put a 45 minute episode into 15-20 pages, here we had a 25 minute episode in a 70-80 page adaptation (the last 2 or 3 adapted them into full length novels). Not necessarily canon material in 2025, but excellent reads.
Peter David.. Vendetta was a novel I read and reread, and it was surreal a few years back when he unexpectedly joined me and a couple of other people for a panel on ST novels at Convergence in Minneapolis (a fantastic convention you should check out if you get a chance).
Keep geekin’!