Taking off an idea Jeff posted in another thread...

You know what would be really cool? A YouTube based Star Trek animated series, but done right.

A few people have attempted to replicate that old Filmation look. Other people still have attempted new live-action Trek with varying success.

The idea here would be to do a Flash-animated cartoon based on the original series, but without intentionally limiting ourselves with an outdated look and feel.

Jeff's idea would be to remaster the Filmation series with new voices, script revisions and redone animation and SFX. That's certainly one approach. You could even extract and use all of the main cast's dialogue and supplement it with the same actor's dialogue in other films, if necessary. (Either that, or just recast everyone.)

If I were to devote myself to a fan project, it'd be something like this.

that's a good idea ,Steve.

you can even trace any faces and figures you'd need from all the stock footage of the old show, to put together whole new scenes.

Yeah, but this would still be using the Filmation look and feel, which I find ugly and limiting. Hmmmm.

I think a cool, more modern style a la Clone Wars would be a good fit.

I'd prefer the Tartakovsky Clone Wars over the newer one.

But I'd want to do something pretty simple and low budget, but not as ugly looking as Filmation. Flat 2D animation rather than Clone Wars' million dollar budgets.

I soooooooooooo agree with you, Steve.

now you're talking design....which takes more time and money. that's very cool if that's how much you were looking to invest in this.

i thought you were looking to put together a better version of the old filmation series....which given the editing and SFX tech available today to the average consumer, i thought would be a pretty easy way to bring to fruition whatever vision you had.

once you start talking about implementing a whole new design language....that's an whole new level of work. especially if you go more stylized.

Someone's already done the whole "replicate the Filmation look and feel" thing:

http://farragut-animated.com/index.html

I watched their little trailer. That was pretty cool.

Voice acting, especially the captain, is god-awful. And "Farragut" sounds too much like a slur word.

This is exactly what I envisioned. Keep the same voices for the regular cast, expand some of the "cosmic" scenes out from their little 3-5 second screen time, improve the appearance and voices of the guest stars and supporting cast. Without even adding any additional dialog to the main characters, you could push a 22 minute cartoon up to about 35 minutes. It also needs to have the original series music added back in to replace the cheesy knockoffs they had to use. You wouldn't even have to come up with any new material for stories; the existing ones were, by and large, pretty decent.

Farragut is an actual TOS ship name from the series.

That would be easily fixed with a quick re-dub.



That's a problem for people who see slur words everywhere. I knew about the Farragut before I knew about that slur word.

The animated Starship Farragut stuff is actually based on a live-action fan-made "show" that makes use of the Star Trek New Voyages/Phase II sets and costumes. The "voice actors" for the cartoon make use of the "actors" for the live-action show.

I liked the Star Trek: The New Voyages shows. But I'm easy.

I was not aware that the name was changed to "Phase II"

Oooooo.... and there's a new episode!

The newest "Phase II" episode was written and directed by David Gerrold and is great. But it is also very, very gay. So it might make some a bit uncomfortable. I liked it fine.

And I know that the "Farragut" was in TOS. Doesn't mean I want to name a series after it.

So chuck the original animation altogether and re-animate it with a new score, new, expanded SFX but the same audio and script?

I could go along with this. When we ran out of TAS scripts, we could do new ones. I like Arex and M'Ress.

Finding someone who can do Flash animation for free would be the hardest part. As would finding quality guest voice actors to replace Jimmy Doohan.