Have you ever seen Star Trek: The Animated Series? It's fucking sweet! It's an old Filmation cartoon from the mid-Seventies that continued the adventures of Kirk, Spock and the rest of the crew of the Strarship Enterprise. It's typical bad Filmation Seventies animation, lots of stock shots and close ups on character's eyes and such to limit the actual amount of animation that had to be done. Super old school! As if that's not enough already, the original cast supplies the voices for they're cartoon counterpoints! Hell yeah!
Alright, so this show is like all the other Filmation shows from the 60's/70's. It's kind of shoddily animated and the pacing is kind of slow, but whatever, that's what kids used to get on Saturday mornings, and they liked it dagnabit! But what truly elevates this cartoon above the cluttered Saturday morning landscape is a little episode "The Magicks of Mega-Tsu". In this episode the Enterprise is investigating something in space like they always do. I don't exactly remember what it was, maybe a wormhole or maybe Kirk was just cruising for some alien tail, but whatever. So anyway the Enterprise is orbiting this planet when all of sudden who should appear on the deck? Why Old Split-Foot himself; Lucifer! Well, apparently he goes by Lucien on his home planet, but we all know who they're talking about. Just look at the picture above! Anyway, Lucien takes the crew down to his planet where they discover that magic is for real as far is this planet is concerned. But the crew is only able to chill for a minute, because Lucien starts to freak out that they're going to get caught. Why is this a big deal? Well the crew is about to find out.
You see, as it turns out, the Megans visited earth long ago. In fact the entire Christian myth about Satan turns out to be kind of true, except that Satan wasn't really all that bad of a guy. Also the Salem Witch Trials where actually brought against the Megans, which is why they left earth. So they decide to take their revenge by putting the crew of the Enterprise on trial, Salem style! Heads in stocks and everything! But who comes to their defense? Why Lucien of course! (Man, it seems like I'm using a lot of exclamation points in this. Why? Because it's that awesome!) So a bunch of stuff happens, and it looks like it's going to be end for Kirk and his crew, but than Kirk saves the day by reasoning with them blah blah blah. Lessons are learned and hearts are warmed. Lucien was on the side of the humans the entire time, and in the end Kirk saves him from the Megans themselves, which in turn proves to the Megans that might be able to trust the humans after all. Yea! How does Lucien celebrate? Beers all around! And all of this on Saturday morning? Extra Fuck Yeah.
My fellow lovers of the Dark Lord, we should hold this episode up as a truly first rate piece of art. How often is Satan portrayed as being the bad guy? Like, every goddamn time! But here we have a positive portrayal of the dude, just a guy who wants to chill and kick back a few brews, someone who's been misunderstood and mistreated by the mainstream. An underdog, an outsider who's really a good guy at heart. Fucking awesome.
Hail Satan!
-Jon J
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