I know the animated series was limited animation, but I have a real soft spot in my heart for it. I was a young teen when it premiered, and had been a ST fan for several years already. Having new ST episodes of any kind was exciting, and I never missed it on Saturday mornings.

I would love to have the entire series on DVD, and I can only hope that someday soon they release it. A double set DVD would hold all 13 episodes.

I have fond memories of the series, and despite the poor animation, many of the stories were actually very good, written as they were by ST veterans.

Also, I eagerly awaited each of the Alan Dean Foster adaptations. (I still have them all!) Whereas James Blish compresses as many as 8 to 10 episodes in a single book, reducing them to story synopses really, Foster added to the short scripts and fleshed them out tremendously, with only 2 or 3 episodes per book. He even expanded one into a whole book-length novel! (In The Eye Of The Beholder.) He is a good writer and the ST:A books are some of the best of the novelizations.

So, let's let Paramount know that ST is not dead, and we want more! Release the animated episodes on DVD, please!
-Gamera

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It's nice to see more cards devoted to the animated series. This is not the first time that we've seen trading cards featuring the animated series. In Skybox's Star Trek 30th Anniversary 3-part series, a number of cards were devoted to some of the characters and situations that appeared in the animated series, but this marks the first full series based on that Star Trek off-shoot.

Remember all that cheesy Filmation animation? It was the same in every series they did - the same storyboards, the same figure movements, the same music, everything! - lol! You name it, Filmation most likely did it - Star Trek, the Superfriends, Fat Albert, Scooby Doo, those are the ones that come to mind right off the bat.

Good to see Rittenhouse doing a good job with the Star Trek license since Skybox and Paramount ended their association. Hopefully they'll get to do some good widescreen series cards on all 10 films done like the Topps Star Wars Widevision series and not like the Skybox Cinema Card sets. Some of the images were not the best, often cropped off from the image frames, and poorly recolored at times. Rittenhouse should be able to do a better job and do it digitally, like Topps has done with the Star Wars sets.

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I cant help but feel that following the financial and artistic debacles of Nemesis and Insurrection, and the embodiment of the law of diminishing returns with Deep Space 9, Voyager and now Enterprise, that Leonard Nimoy would have been a better choice to inherit this once inspired franchise from the Paramount "suit" Rick Berman.

Within Star Trek, Nimoy had proved himself an adept writer, director and executive producer who would have been far more capable of continuing Gene Roddenberrys optimistic vision of the future. Something that now seems to have been lost.

Rick Berman is a man who sacrificed long term viability and creative excellence for short term financial gain. By seeking to exploit and capitilise on the success of the The Next Generation tv series, he has only succeeded in heavily saturating the Star Trek market by making it all too over familiar, repetitive and unoriginal thereby causing it to lose its special appeal.

Its not the Next Generation crew that the fans are tired of, its the fact that theyve have been watered and dragged down by all the periphial spin off shows and their bland content. If anyone has watched the 7th Season DVD of The Next Generation they should pay attention to the part where Berman smugly talks of his achievements. He points out that the "high point" of Trek was in 1994, when The Next Generations seventh season was underway, their first movie was following immediately after, Deep Space 9 was in its second season and Voyager was in pre-production. But what were the results? Mediocare and forgettable fare.

His defence is that he has kept the back room staff of TNG working together for 15+ years, do we really care when the results to the viewer have been unsatisfactory? Whilst Deep Space 9 was half watchable as a spin off show (due to its elements taken from TNG) was it really the proper Star Trek that Gene Roddenbery created? He may have approved of the ideas behind Voyager and Enterprise, but I doubt he, like the fans would have approved how they have been executed. Even The Next Generation began to sag from the 5th season onwards after Berman took over. Equally, he displays an unhealthy disregard for the original series and aspects (i.e. Wesley Crusher) that were deep in Gene's heart.

You cant help but feel that he has purposefully attepted to stamp his own heavy mark and moved the franchise in a completely different direction in a concerted effort (for personal or financial reasons) to create his own vision in place of Roddenberrys instead of continuing it.

I can't say how Nimoy might have done things differently, but I can speculate that he would have been sensible enough to have concentrated his attention on creating worthwhile movies, whilst leaving a gap between the end of TNG and a new television series. I would have enjoyed an Excelsior show with Sulu, but thats just my opinion!

Rick Berman reaction to the most recent failures is an indication of a man who has no idea what he is doing or what he has done wrong. Instead he seems intent on merely carrying on as before, and is even dispossessed of the sense of honour to resign from his position.

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