10 Essential Star Trek: The Animated Series Episodes You Must See

Seán, I hope you're sitting down. It's the Kzinti episode! (Editor's note: YAY!)

Before we even meet our furry friends, The Slaver Weapon presents us with a dizzying array of previously unknown facts about the Trek universe, handily lifted from episode writer Larry Niven's Known Space short story The Soft Weapon. Did you know, for example, that a billion years ago all intelligent life in the galaxy was wiped out in a war against the powerful 'Slaver Empire' that ruled over it?

The only traces of the lost civilisations and the Slaver Empire are now contained within timeless 'stasis boxes,' dotted about the cosmos. Extremely rare, these boxes have already provided as many scientific discoveries as they have disasters. I mean, that's gotta be on ol' J.P.'s archaeology to-do list (after he gets to Chaltok IV)!

We must also address the pink elephant in the room. The colour is everywhere in The Animated Series: Kzinti spacesuits and their ships are pink; Klingons wear pinky-purple gilets; tribbles are… obviously pink!

The most recurrent explanation for the vibrant hues, often given by Dorothy Fontana, is that season one director Hal Sutherland was colourblind and so saw everything as shades of grey (not that one!). The more logical, and no doubt the real, reason is that pink was simply the preference of series colour director Ervin Kaplan, who couldn't be persuaded otherwise, even when it did clash with a character, if not the bridge furniture.

You can read all about the Kzinti in this marvellous article by Frank Chavez.