reviewed by Fred Dixon

Here we have the 23^rd animated Star Trek episode--literally. Through repurposed original footage and new animation as with "The Element of Surprise," Producer Curt Danhauser has managed to duplicate the look and feel of Star Trek: The Animated Series. The original soundtrack is used as well. All to good effect.

As to the story, the U.S.S. Enterprise comes across a planet with a pre-industrial civilization that is sending radio transmissions. They find a crippled alien courier ship in orbit and begin to perceive that the two situations are related. As things become clearer, the Enterprise crew feels driven to remedy the situation, but is constrained by the Prime Directive. Unless Kirk and company can find away around this pesky rule, the planet's society is in danger of being permanently manipulated by an alien with a god complex.

I did have a couple of problems with this effort: First, Danhauser does all the voices save for Uhuru (his daughter did this one). Some of the voice work is spot on. I liked those of Scotty and Sulu. However, the other voicing sounded almost the same. The voice work for Kirk and Spock had little differentiation. McCoy’s voice was a clichéd growl. The production would receive a big boost if other actors could do the voiceovers. Maybe James Cawley, Jeffrey Quinn and John Kelley from Star Trek: Phase II would be interested. Secondly, part of the original animated series soundtrack is used over and over again. It had a somewhat soporific effect on this viewer. Lastly, the planet’s natives don’t seemed to phased at all by McCoy’s landing party consisting of himself, Sulu and M'ress. These reservations aside, who can complain about getting another animated episode after thirty-five year draught?

I give "And the Heavens Fall" an A for technical animation artistry and an A for the concept. The story is a solid B. Overall, the voiceovers are still a drawback and merit only a C. However, this is another nice effort and definitely worth watching. I continue to look forward to more episodes.

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