TV SERIES Review: Star Trek: The Animated Series S1E3 – One Of Our Planets Is Missing ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½

Season 1
CBS All Access (Original TV network: NBC)
September 22, 1973
Run Time: 24:09

Episode 3 – “One Of Our Planets Is Missing”

The Enterprises encounters a red, noxious cloud ravenous for consuming entire planets. They race to protect the planet Mantilles from the cloud and are engulfed by the cloud. The cloud lives upon the energy of consumed planets. While inside, the Enterprise realizes it’s like the inside of a stomach and tries to navigate toward the opening before the planet’s inner digestive digestive tract breaks down the ship’s deflective shields.

With 20 minutes left, they must navigate out or all aboard killed.

Summary

Talk about alien body horror. There are two opposing dramas here. The Enterprise trapped inside the alien cloud, will it escape and the planet the cloud is heading toward.

Rewatching I’m reminded how Star Trek used to be. Creative, entertaining, thought provoking and exciting to watch. There wasn’t much like this in Picard or Lower Decks to be found, hence the reason I’m rewatching the past. Why can’t they get the Next Generation actors together and make an animated series like STNG? It worked for the original series, so why not Next Gen?

Hard to believe each episode cost $75,000. Yes, this was nearly 50 years ago, so in today’s dollars it would be more. They probably couldn’t get any of the voice actors to work for that today.

So, probably would cost about a million or more an episode in 2020 dollars. We can always dream.

Spock saying of his mind meld with the alien cloud, “The wonders of the universe. Incredible. Simply incredible.”

This episode is excellent. It has everything that makes Star Trek cool. The only tiny takeaway is that the resolution was a bit overused in the original series when encountering alien beings. You’ll have to watch to see that resolution, however, because not spoiling here. Recommended.

Episode rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½