30
The TAS-era Kzinti, relentless, refuse to concede their 1970s hot pink and purple to any Earther
(startrek.website)
What can I say, all that pink and purple just seems to be meant to be together.
Credit again to Trek Core for their excellent TAS BlueRay screencap library.
Editing to add: love Barbie, pleased to see the movie out earning most of the comic heroes, always glad that TAS and Prodigy make themselves appealing across genders.
Having never seen TAS (shocking, I know) I was like "wtf how are there Kzinti in TAS?". Should have figured Niven wrote the script:
(from Wikipedia)
I do remember wondering whether the Kzin-like characters in LD were a nod to Niven's space kitties, and it turns out they were.
My spouse still grumbles that DC Fontana shouldn’t have let Niven get away with adapting his story ‘The Soft Weapon’ to become the TAS episode ‘The Slaver Weapon.’ (They think Niven should have come up with something new for TAS.)
I think it’s all a great deal of fun, and take delight in Lower Decks giving us Kzinti in Starfleet.
Whatever fans of either the Man-Kzin Wars books or Trek may feel about it, Niven himself chose to bring the Kzinti into Star Trek canon.
He continued to own that by writing a piece for the StarTrek.com official site outlining that the Caitian feliniods (M’Ress in TAS, Dr T’Ana in Lower Decks and a background character in Prodigy) are related to the Kzinti. According to Niven, the Caitians split off from the Kzinti and settled on the planet Cait, becoming more scientific in orientation, much like the Romulans and Vulcans separated and diverged.
I'm almost certain I read somewhere that Fontana and Roddenberry specifically asked him to adapt that story.
DC Fontana was asking science fiction writers with no prior animated series credits to write an episode of TAS to take advantage of an exceptional provision in the writers contract.
There was a writers strike at the time, and at that time the animated writers were in the same union as live-action. The provision existed to enable writers to move media, and Fontana took full advantage as many TOS writers and science fiction writers had never written for animation.
I haven’t seen specifically that Fontana asked Niven to adapt that specific story, but she and Roddenberry clearly were comfortable with his doing so.