Getting Animated: A Secret STAR TREK

For me one of the great pleasures of streaming services like Netflix Instant (or Amazon Prime) is the ability to quickly indulge a nostalgic twinge by calling up a favorite episode of a fondly remembered TV show�say, The Twilight Zone or Columbo or Star Trek. If you're a Star Trek fan you already know what a godsend these sites are to Trekkies: all five live-action series can be found there�in HD, no less�with every episode available to be queued and streamed quicker than Scotty can beam down a redshirt to his untimely demise. (True ST fans, of course, already own their series of choice in at least one DVD edition, and would rather mix matter with antimatter than give up their slick Starfleet packaging and requisite bonus features.)

The crew returns (minus Chekov, plus a couple of weird aliens)

But what a lot of fans of old-school Trek may not realize is that there was another Star Trek, one that holds its own with much of the existing canon but gets little recognition outside of hardcore ST:TOS fans (that's Star Trek: The Original Series, for you non-Trekkies). This was Star Trek: The Animated Series,�a.k.a. ST:TAS. Produced for Saturday morning TV in 1973 and 1974 to placate the growing base of increasingly rabid fans, it utilized the voices of nearly all the original cast. Kirk, Spock, Bones and the rest were back, ready to complete the Enterprise's aborted five-year mission. Only Walter Koenig as Chekov was M.I.A. (one actor too many for the show's tight budget), replaced by an odd, long-necked creature named Lt. Arex.
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