Return of the Guardian of Forever

Story: Yesteryear
Written By: D.C. Fontana
Series: Star Trek: The Animated Series
Year: 1973

Even after Roddenberry cast the animated series out of the official canon, many writers never dropped this episode out. For many of them the Vulcan mythology penned in this episode was accepted as fact, and was never contradicted. Personally, I see no reason to say that the whole series can’t be canon. I kind of like it, and I don’t feel like it does anything that Final Frontier or the third season of TOS, hell all of Voyager, didn’t do just as bad or worse.
So this episode is pretty good. It sees the only other appearance of the Guardian of Forever, and we get a good look at Vulcan culture in Spock’s past and childhood. We get to see his pet mentioned in Journey to Babel, and Mark Lenard even returns as Sarek. Young Spock’s voice is kind of annoying, but the episode is smart enough that you can get beyond that. I did.

NEXT TIME: Planet Destroying Cloud