Okay folks. The second season of The Animated Series. They’ve worked out the kinks. The actors have gotten more comfortable with voice acting. We’re ready for some great episodes! So why the hell did they give us “The Pirates of Orion” and “Bem”? Did they think we wouldn’t notice?

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We vacillate over whether it was daring to name an episode of a 1974 children’s cartoon “The Jihad”, but we both agree that it’s not a great episode. “The Time Trap” is a bit better, with some interesting shades of “The Side of Paradise”, but ultimately it doesn’t add up to much. Also! Richard really wants a Star Trek role-playing game.

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Wildly inconsistent, is The Animated Series. “The Slaver Weapon” is one of the finest episodes of the show yet, with an interesting if admittedly cliche premise and a strong statement about the rights of cat women. “The Eye of the Beholder” is so bad that Eric rants about the episode until Richard adopts a kitten to try and placate him. It doesn’t work. Plus! A bonus discussion about historicity. What a podcast, folks.

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Star Trek has always had a relatively loose relationship with scientific rigor, and this week we have some of the shoddiest understandings of evolution this side of The Creation Museum. In “The Terratin Incident” everyone on board the Enterprise starts shrinking, for unknown reasons, and in “The Ambergris Element” Kirk and Spock get turned into mermen. Animated Series, folks.

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The Animated Series is sequel-heavy this week. In “Once Upon a Planet”, we revisit the shore leave planet from, uh, “Shore Leave”, and discover that they probably should have left well enough alone. In “Mudd’s Passion”, an animated Harry Mudd talks Nurse Chapel into slipping Spock some ecstasy. Plus! Richard is very interested in exploring the tender relationship between Scotty and M’Ress.

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Seeing as how they couldn’t afford to include Walter Koenig in the cast of The Animated Series, it was super nice to buy the script to “The Infinite Vulcan” from him, even thought the episode is kind of pants. Later, in “The Magicks of Megas-Tu”, the crew of the Enterprise are menaced by a guy who isn’t wearing any pants. Also! Richard still thinks Sulu is gay.

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This week, on Trekabout: Episode 23, Eric and Richard discuss “The Trouble… wait, what? That can’t be right. Everything is animated! Oh, this episode is called “More Tribbles, More Troubles”, and it’s… adequate? Then, on “The Survivor”, we’re faced with a member of the 1% who is actually a monster. Not that different from the 21st Century, eh?

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The Animated Series is hungry this week. In “One of Our Planets Is Missing”, a giant intelligent space cloud is eating planets–and the people too! In “The Lorelei Signal”, Amazon vampire ladies are luring men to their deaths because the women are infertile, or something. Look, Uhura and Nurse Chapel shoot people in this episode, so it’s not all bad. Also! Richard hates children and wants them to suffer.

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You can’t tell, since this is an audio podcast, but in honor of our move into The Animated Series, we’ve replaced ourselves with cartoon facsimiles. And just in time, too, as “Beyond the Farthest Star” and “Yesteryear” assuage Richard’s fears about an animated Trek. The former provides a possible template for the show–trippy visuals with Star Trek action surrounding it, while “Yesteryear” is perhaps one of the finest episodes of Star Trek ever produced. Yep, it’s that good. Also! Young Spock dresses like He-Man.

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Our 9-month mission is over, as we reach the end of The Original Series with “All Our Yesterdays” and “Turnabout Intruder”. If only we could go back in time to the first or second seasons–but no women, please, they’re nuts! Plus! Eric lays out a roadmap for the future of Trekabout.

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