Sunday, April 10, 2011

Animated Star Trek Logs

I've been reading my way through the first five adaptations of the animated Star Trek - Logs One to Five. I'm not so much rating the adaptations here, as giving my impressions of the episodes as perceived through the adaptations. Or to put it another way, I'm answering the question 'Did the books make you think this episode was any good?'


Beyond the Farthest Star
- enjoyably suspenseful, and a measure of pity for the antagonist's dreadful loneliness

Yesteryear - superb, up there with the best original episodes. The two versions of Spock come across extremely convincingly.

One of Our Planets Is Missing - fairly standard stuff about making a creature realise the damage it's causing

The Survivor - the Vendorian turns out to be quite an interesting character, but that's it

The Lorelei Signal - comic froth. Nice to see the Enterprise women getting to do something for a change.

The Infinite Vulcan - some interesting creatures but a dull story, enlivened only by the idea of a 25ft high Spock

Once Upon A Planet - agreeable enough. A flavour of the Riverworld novels here, in the way the crew have to get behind the scenes of the artificial environment.

Mudd's Passion - Mudd is a lot less annoying on the page. And any episode that offers us Scotty and M'ress getting to know each other can't be all bad.

The Magicks of Megas-Tu - the old 'Devil is an alien' trope but really well done. Lucien is a memorable character.

The Terratin Incident - really good, both the crew's ingenious (but doomed) methods of coping with being shrunk, and the reveal. I was genuinely surprised to find out who was causing the shrinking, and why they were doing it.

Time Trap - fairly dull, the only one of these stories that really bored me.

More Tribbles, More Troubles - don't they know that less is more? This is one souffle that didn't need reheating.

The Ambergris Element - interesting concepts, fairly linear story but not a bad one.

Pirates of Orion - just an anecdote really. I like the lateral thinking deployed by Scotty to outwit the pirate commander, but I was expecting a twist after that which didn't come.

Jihad - bit like a D&D module with a group of mismatched characters making a wilderness journey by cart and then entering a dungeon for a fight. Again, interesting concepts, but this time a pretty poor story.

These have certainly made me take the animated episodes seriously, I'll be seeking out the remaining books, and the screen versions too.

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