An incredibly ill-conceived Saturday morning cartoon show, Return to the Planet of the Apes is atrocious on every level. After the failure of the Planet of the Apes live-action television series the franchise attempted to re-imagine the property as a bizarre mishmash of Boulle’s original novel and select elements from the films. This time three astronauts crash-land on Earth of the future and attempt to protect a human colony from the ape military, which is led by the warmongering Gen. Urko; who’s dedicated to the extermination of mankind. The characters of Dr. Zaius, Zira, and Cornelius are kept, and there are appearances by Nova and Bent (but they’ve been completely rewritten). The Ape society is changed to a high-tech society with cars, buildings, electricity, etc., and the Underground Mutants have also been changed. And while there are some interesting things about this new version of Planet of the Apes, the writing is terrible. The animation is also unbelievably bad, as there’s barely any movement or depth to it, and the coloring is extremely poor. But what damns this show more than anything else, is the appalling voice work; which has no inflection or life to it. Dying a quick death, Return to the Planet of the Apes only lasted 13 episodes…which was 13 too many.