Star Trek: The Animated Series

Original Air Date: 1973-1974

Network: NBC

Lots of live-action TV series have gotten cartoons over the years -- Gilligan's Island,Happy Days, even The Dukes of Hazzard! -- but rarely have such hand-drawn variations been so successful in conveying the spirit of their forbearers. Running for two seasons (from 1973 to 1974) on NBC, these Star Trek half-hour adventures are seen by many fans as the lost fourth year of Captain Kirk and crew's legendary five-year mission. Featuring animation by Filmation, the show didn't typically excel visually -- cartoons proved to most definitely not be the final frontier for the Enterprise. But the world of animation did offer the Star Trek writers the chance to portray things they could never do on a live-action budget at the time -- from three-armed crew members to new and exciting alien worlds. Most importantly, many of the writers of the original show returned here, from D. C. Fontana to Samuel A. Peeples to Gene Roddenberry himself. That fidelity to the 1960s show, plus the inclusion of William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and most of the other actors (or their voices anyway), led to Star Trek: The Animated Series becoming one of the most interesting, if under-viewed, shows in all of the Trek franchise.