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The Animated Adventures of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, Volume 1: More Tribbles, More Troubles; The Infinite Vulcan

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Okay, so I though it really was the Beatles doing their own voices for the talking as well as the singing during their Saturday morning animated series. I was wrong. But for the animated version of "Star Trek" that aired from 1973-75, seven of the main crewmembers showed up to do the voices (substitute Majel Barrett for Walter Koenig and you have the roster). Gene Roddenberry was the producer, of course, but D.C. Fontana was the associate producer and I think that shows in the quality of the stories. Since the series was animated they did take advantage of the increased freedom to replace Chekov with a really alien looking Starfleet officer, but there was a concerted effort to keep true to the original vision. That is pretty obvious when you check out the first two episode included in Volume 1 of "The Animated Adventures of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek." Notice that in this pair of first season episodes, the writers end up being the story:

Episode 5, "More Tribbles, More Troubles" (Written by David Gerrold, First aired October 6, 1973), is a sequel to the funniest original "Star Trek" episode, "The Trouble With Tribbles." Once again the "Enterprise" is back to Sherman's planet with a new and improved type of wheat, quintotriticale (the original was only quadrotriticale, remember?). There is another Klingon warship, commanded by Captain Koloth, who had taken trader Cyrano Jones into custody. He is still carrying tribbles, but this time they are a new breed that have been genetically altered to slow down their reproductive process. However, that does not stop them from wanting to each all that wheat. Without wasting time and energy on reproduction, these tribbles start growing. Meanwhile, the Klingons have created a special predator to take care of the tribbles, but this is one of those times when the cure might be worse than the disease (Warp 4.5).

Episode 7, "The Infinite Vulcan" (Written by Walter Koenig, First aired October 20, 1973), has the "Enterprise" exploring the plant of Phylos. Sulu is poisoned by a plant he picks up, but is saved by the locals, who are large intelligent plants (which is not a surprise given the name of the planet, right?). The Phylosians explain that the poison was brought to their planet by an earlier visitor, who died trying to find a cure. Now, you would never guess where this one is going, because the visitor was an Earth scientist, Dr. Starros Keniclius, who died, but has been replaced by a series of giant clones, now up to Keniclius Five, who wants to clone Spock to create an intergalactic peacemaker. Kirk's response is that this interesting idea is too late because the Federation has created a galaxy of peace, but no news has come to Phylos, so Keniclius Five does not believe the captain and goes ahead an clones Spock. A lot of this is rather silly, but you have to admire the way Koenig just piles things on with this plot. In case you were wondering, James Doohan does all of the voice besides the crew in this one (Warp 4). So while this episode is audacious, it is the tribbles sequel that is the reason for this to be the one volume of "Star Trek: The Animated Series" you check out if you only check out just one.