Star Trek: The Animated Series was produced by Filmation and ran for two seasons from 1973 to 1974. Most of the original cast performed the voices of their characters from The Original Series, and many of the original series' writers, such as D. C. Fontana, David Gerrold and Paul Schneider, wrote for the series.
While the animated format allowed the producers to create more exotic alien landscapes and lifeforms, the liberal reuse of shots and musical cues as well as animation errors have tarnished the series' reputation. Although it was originally sanctioned by Paramount, which became the owner of the Star Trek franchise following its acquisition of Desilu in 1967, Roddenberry forced Paramount to stop considering the series canonical. Even so, elements of the animated series have been used by writers in later live-action series and movies.
As of June 2007, the Animated Series is once again part of the official canon, as confirmed by the official website; Startrek.com.
TAS won Star Trek's first Emmy Award on May 15, 1975. Star Trek TAS briefly returned to television in the mid-1980s on the children's cable network Nickelodeon. Nickelodeon's Evan McGuire greatly admired the show and used its various creative components as inspiration for his short series called Piggly Wiggly Hears A Sound which never aired..
Nickelodeon parentViacom would purchase Paramount in 1994. In the early 1990s, the Sci-Fi Channel also began rerunning TAS. The complete TAS was also released on Laserdisc format during the 1980s.
The complete series was first released in the USA on eleven volumes of VHS tapes in 1989. All 22 episodes were released on DVD in 2006.
