In the midst of Barbie-pink dominance, TAS would like a word.
Star Trek’s own home of pink, purple and lime green has something to say.
From Memory Alpha:
According to Fontana, the pink coloration of the Kzinti uniforms and ship in the episode was a result of Director Hal Sutherland being color blind, and thus unable to discern them as anything but shades of gray. [3] However, storyboard artist/character designer Bob Kline laid the blame on color director Irvin Kaplan. “Pink equals Irv Kaplan,” shared Kline… “Irv was in charge of ink and paint, coloring the various characters and props (and he would do it himself in his office, he would sit down with a cel and paint it). He was also referred to by many people there as the purple and green guy. You’ll see it in a lot of scenes, purple and green used together – that was one of his preferences. He made dragons red, the Kzintis’ costumes pink. It was all Irv Kaplan’s call. He wasn’t listening to anyone else when he picked colors or anything.”
As a young person watching TAS in first run the colours never bothered me, they were actually very on trend at the time.
It was the early 70s (The Slaver Weapon first ran in December 1973) and the mod colours had progressed to the bright Panetone red, blue, gold and orange of mid 60s colour television to a broader mix that included ‘hot’ and fluorescent colours, especially ‘hot pink’.
What is TAS, as someone who reads Niven and only knows of Kizinti from the books I’m really surprised to hear of media and tv shows based on the source material. I want to learn more
TAS = The Animated Series. It ran for a season and a bit, 22 episodes, on Saturday mornings on NBC. It’s the only Star Trek franchise show to win a series Emmy.
At the time it was in development, there was also a writers strike. DC Fontana was the supervising producer, and she took advantage of the provision in the contract that allowed writers who have never previously written an animated television script to write one, and only one episode, without violating the strike.
Larry Niven was one of the science fiction authors whom she reached out to, and he was game to do it. He’s written on the StarTrek.com official site since then, even going so far as to confirm that the Caitians in Star Trek are a related species, much as the Vulcans are related to the Romulans.
M’Ress was a Caitain officer in TAS. The currently running animated show Lower Decks has a Caitian Chief Medical Officer T’Ana and a Kzinti crew member occasionally appears.
Thank you! This is very thorough, and I feel like I’ve learned a lot. Thank you so much I’ll put it on the list to catch up with more N space lore
You’re most welcome.
I suggest starting with the Memory Alpha entries on the Kzinti and the TAS episode The Slaver Weapon.
I also strongly encourage everyone to watch TAS at least once. I had largely forgotten it until I introduced our kids to the DVD set when they were at the age, but it holds up remarkably well.
The episode with the Kzinti in it was called “The Soft Weapon”, and was based on a short story by Larry Niven. If the ST producers had any guts, they wouldn’t have replaced Nessus (a Pierson’s Puppeteer) with Spock.
While I would have been curious to see a Puppeteer, given the role of the Kzinti aggression in motivating Dr. Keniclius 5 to create the giant Spock (TAS ‘The Infinite Vulcan’), it was important for TAS to show us a direct interaction between Spock and the Kzinti in ‘The Slaver Weapon.’
Not to mention that Niven may have needed to make some changes for his adaptation of his story “The Soft Weapon” to get the original story credit.
I’m just glad that the Kzinti are acknowledged as canon in the franchise again.
Edited: just recalled that the reproductive imperatives of Pierson’s Puppeteer’s are enough to make the biological imperatives of the SNW Gorn seem less monstrous. What was Niven thinking?
