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I decided I wanted to watch a few more of my TAS tapes today, and wow, some of it was absurd.

"The Magicks of Megas-tu" was the first episode I watched today, and it had its share of nonsense, but really wasn't too terrible. It started off with the Enterprise going to the center of the galaxy, and added some nonsense. "If the galaxy was created by a giant explosion in the center, then there must be something in the center creating matter, and we can see this matter being created!" Which Spock calls logical and "scientifically fascinating".
They are pulled into the center of the galaxy, and are met by a magical guy named "Lucien", who uses his magic to rescue the ship. Lucien calls Spock his "elven friend".

But he wants to hide them from the others of his people. Spock and Kirk find ways to use magic of their own, and the others of Lucien's people find them, and teleport them to a recreation of Salem, Mass., where they will be put of trail for the crimes of humanity, namely, humans burning these magical people in witch trials.

Spock talks them out of killing the Enterprise crew, but then they decide they must punish Lucien for being friendly to the crew. Kirk says he will not let that happen. The alien says Lucien is actually Lucifer, and Kirk should not be defending him. Kirk says he is not interested in these legends, and will not let an intelligent being be treated like this. and then gets into a magical fight with one of these aliens.

After the fight, the alien says the punishment was just a test to see if terrans have indeed grown beyond fear and hate, and will be welcome back if they should ever return to their home.

It ends with Kirk and Spock making a few comments on Satan being expelled twice, but now saved for the first time, by Jim Kirk.

The episodes original air date was Oct 27, 1973. Aside from the nonsense at the beginning, it really wasn't that bad.

More to come as I watch and write about more episodes.

Interesting. I never saw the series myself, so I'm definitely curious. Keep it up.

With respect to Adam's contribution, you're not really missing much Petro.

Though I can see why TAS holds a place in some people's hearts, I was never really impressed by it. The animation was the same sort of cheap, crappy American style of that period, and the stories did weird shit.

Like for example, the personal force field device. Rather than show the crew in Vacc suits which would be sensible, we see instead they use a force field to go out into vaccum. Out of universe, this is because it was cheaper to do a glow-effect around the characters than it would be to depict them wearing a Vacc suit. (which would require concept art as well as putting it onto the cells)

That's just one example of egregious bullshit. They also did one of those "honey I shrunk the crew" episodes.

Aye. There is also a holodeck episode, one with a giant Mr Spock, and a few more that I don't remember right now.

The show has a mere 22 half hour episodes, and they got a lot of weird stuff in there, but some of it isn't bad.

The animations don't really look much like the actors at all: most the animated characters look the same. It was very cheaply done, but still, some of the episodes have interesting things to add to the TOS backstory.

Hmmm... TAS vs. 3rd Season TOS.

Is this 'Whoever wins, we lose'?

Petrosjko wrote:Hmmm... TAS vs. 3rd Season TOS.

Is this 'Whoever wins, we lose'?

Season Three was awesome.

Well, maybe not awesome... but pretty good. Not bad. Look, it's better than any of that TNG shit.

Saying that it's better than TNG isn't saying much. Season 3 was still pretty crappy. I mean, Spock's Brain? C'mon.

Petrosjko wrote:Saying that it's better than TNG isn't saying much. Season 3 was still pretty crappy. I mean, Spock's Brain? C'mon.

Yes there was Spock's Brain to roll the eys. Then there was The Enterprise Incident, Spectre of the Gun, Day of the Dove, The Tholian Web, among others. I wouldn't say Season Three was TOS' strongest year, I would say it was the weakest of the three - but that doesn't mean it's terrible.