“Yesteryear”
Star Trek: The Animated Series
Season 1, Episode 2
Directed by: Hal Sutherland
Written by: D.C. Fontana
Original air date: 15th September 1973
Yesteryear is the first episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series that I’ve seen in full. The canonicity of this series has always been disputed. Initially it was canon, then it wasn’t (because Gene Roddenberry said it wasn’t), then it kinda was again because the writers of future Trek series kept referencing its events. Now—who knows? Nowadays I think it’s accepted that The Animated Series is canon. Writers D.C. Fontana and David Gerrold characterised its 22 episodes as The Original Series’ fourth season.
What’s great about The Animated Series is that Gene Roddenberry, many Original Series writers and most of the Original Series cast were all part of it. What’s less good is that by spending most of the budget on hiring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy etc. to voice their characters, there wasn’t much left for the animation. Which is why it’s utter pants. Seriously, it’s awful. Distractingly so. The characters barely move, and when they do, their movements are awkward and unnatural. Detail is non-existent.
I read that Filmation, who made it, cut costs by using stock footage and other shortcuts, like having a character put a hand over their mouth while speaking so they don’t have to animate the lips! I can’t say I noticed this in Yesteryear. What I did notice was that most of the time, their lips and eyebrows were the only thing in the entire shot that was moving. Another shortcut was silhouetting the characters in action. I did notice this; there were several odd instances of characters running and they were suddenly all black or grey, which just looked bizarre.
Yesteryear is an interesting time travel story. In brief, Spock and Kirk return from a time travel mission to discover that Spock has been erased from the timeline. To fix things, Spock has to travel back in time to his own childhood on Vulcan and stop his younger self from being killed.
This episode brings back the Guardian of Forever, the time portal first seen in The City on the Edge of Forever. Strangely, it’s not mentioned in dialogue until later, and only referred to as the ‘Guardian’, which means you kinda need to have seen City to know what the hell this thing is. In Kirk’s opening log, he also says, confusingly, that they are orbiting “the planet of the time vortex, the focus of all the timelines of our galaxy”. It’s the Guardian that gives them access to the time vortex, so it’s strange for it not to be mentioned here.
Anyway, I liked the way this episode handled the revelation of Spock’s erasure. Spock and Kirk come back through the Guardian of Forever after venturing to observe the dawn of Orion. The Enterprise crew are there awaiting their arrival, but no one recognises Spock. When they beam aboard, the Andorian Commander Thelin has taken Spock’s place as first officer.
After learning that, in this timeline, Spock died when he was a child, the crew return to the planet to confer with the Federation historians they were assisting. The historians, who were scanning Vulcan history through the Guardian, tell Spock that his younger self died during a maturity test on Vulcan. Spock remembers that this was the Kahs-wan ordeal. He also remembers that this was the day his cousin, Selek, saved him from being killed by a wild animal in the desert. So, they now know what’s changed. Selek no longer saves Spock.
However, immediately after finding this out, Kirk and Spock say the following:
Kirk: “Spock, did Selek look like you do now?”
Spock: “I believe so, Captain. And I know what you’re thinking. It was I who saved myself that other time.”
What? How did they just leap to that conclusion? There’s absolutely no reason for Kirk to suddenly believe Selek is Spock and, by extension, that a complex predestination paradox is at work. We should have seen the characters working this out and debating the logic of it.
Also, Kirk’s explanation doesn’t entirely hang together…
Kirk: “But this time, you were in Orion’s past with us when the historians had the time vortex replay your Vulcan history. You couldn’t be in two places at once. So you died, as a boy.”
I think what Kirk is saying is that when the historians were investigating Vulcan history, Spock was supposed to have physically gone back… although Kirk doesn’t suggest why he would have. He wouldn’t have gone back with the intention of saving himself because he wouldn’t have known that he needed to. He only knows that now—because history’s been changed. This is how he knows he’s predestined to go back and fix it.
Writer D.C. Fontana has rushed through these important explanations either because of the episode’s short running time (only 24 minutes) or because she wanted to keep things simple for children (The Animated Series was airing on Saturday mornings and therefore needed to be much more child-friendly than the live-action show).
Another important point that Fontana totally glosses over is the potential deletion of Commander Thelin after Spock goes back to repair things. We get the briefest of conversations between the two men. Thelin protests and Spock responds with a really ill-conceived comment that makes him sound like an arsehole: “Andorians are not known for their charity.” Firstly, that’s racist. Secondly—charity? Spock, you’re asking the man to give up his life and career for you. Bit more than ‘charity’.
That being said, because we’ve only got 24 minutes to tell this story, the underdeveloped Thelin rolls over, says something about the importance of family and casually wishes Spock on his way.
Spock goes back in time thirty years to Vulcan and the rest of the episode is him interacting with his father, Sarek, and his younger self. An additional bit of suspense comes when Spock thinks the timeline has changed again, as his younger self is not due to take part in the Kahs-wan ordeal for another month, yet Spock remembers it as being tomorrow. This is resolved by the fact that, actually, his younger self went on his Kahs-wan a monthly early, without his parents’ knowledge.
Spock follows him into the desert and saves him from a ferocious beast, incapacitating it with a Vulcan nerve pinch. However, Young Spock’s pet sehlat, I-Chaya, is injured in the altercation and dies. Apparently, the death of Young Spock’s pet was not previously a part of a timeline, according to Older Spock.
I guess this detail was thrown in because Spock was supposed to have gone back and saved his younger self before, instead of going to Orion. I still think this is sketchy. He just wouldn’t have gone back and saved himself unless he knew he needed to. And he wouldn’t have known he needed to unless history changed! And history only changed when… you get the idea. Time travel headache coming on! 😀
Spock, in the end, comes back through the Guardian and makes some joke about the poor Andorian who, for all Spock knows, now no longer exists. Cold, Spock. Cold.
Overall, I liked this episode. It’s rushed, overly simplified and has some logical problems, but just about hangs together. The biggest problem, which is symptomatic of the series as a whole, is that it’s unpleasant to look at. They should’ve scrimped on the voice cast and pumped the money into the animation. Visuals are important. I mean, they brought back original Sarek voice actor, Mark Lenard, for Yesteryear and I didn’t even recognise him.
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Hi, C.R.
The animated series kind of grows on you, even if there was almost no money for animation. Back in the 1970s, around 1975, I think, though possibly as late as ’77, I wrote a letter to the director Hal Sutherland, who lived in the San Juan Islands at the time. He invited me and a friend to come up for the day, and we quickly hopped on an early ferry in Anacortes and spent a wonderful day enjoying his hospitality. I have nothing but admiration for the work he and the Filmation crew did. I’ll try to dig up the notes I wrote about the day and post them here on the Nexus.
I recently rewatched “The Time Trap” from Season 2, and I don’t think it has any actual time travel, but perhaps it still falls under the umbrella of time manipulation.
Keep up the great, detailed reviews, C.R.!
Hi Michael! That’s fascinating that you spent a few days with Hal Sutherland! Would love to read your notes.
I’ve no doubt the Filmation animators did the best they could with the money they had, so I guess the blame has to lie with the higher-ups at Filmation for choosing to hire so many of the original cast at the animation’s expense. It’s just a shame because I do find it distracting. However, I’m going to try and overlook it and focus on the stories.
“The Time Trap” is next on my list! As long as it’s to do with time and the flow or manipulation of it, I’ll be covering it (like TOS’s “Wink of an Eye” and VOY’s very similar “Blink of an Eye”).