"It is like a huge bull grazing here and there in the pasture of the universe."
This has a lot of conflict the Enterprise crew will encounter in quite a busy plot for a cartoon of Star Trek. In fact, this episode is so well written and realized, it could have been acceptable for the live action series it emulates! The plot: the Enterprise crew encounters what appears to be a red cloud that seemingly "eats planets"! In fact, the ship itself is consumed, but their shields keep them from being digested. Get this: the cloud is an actual intelligent life form and a planet lies ahead in its path for consumption that holds millions of people! So Kirk and company must determine a course of action to keep it from reaching the planet and killing all those people while consuming and digesting the planet as a nutritious food.
There are a series of decisions and events that emerge giving this episode, "One of Our Planets is Missing", a serious consideration for the best of the Star Trek cartoon. Not just that, but I think serious Star Trek fans should seek this episode out and disregard the notion that perhaps a cartoon in the 70s was intentionally written for six year olds. In actuality, I think this episode was written for all manner of ages and intellectually "One of Our " has meat on its bones. I love that care was given to the stories during the cartoon's run, as serious dilemmas develop where Kirk and his crew must solve within a small window of time. Here in this episode he has like three hours before the cloud reaches the planet, must contend with antimatter that could explode the ship upon even slight impact, contemplate killing an intelligent life form in order to save millions more, come up with a solution to the energy drained from the Enterprise the longer they remain in the cloud, and consider Spock mind-melding with the cloud in the hopes of talking it out of eating planets containing living beings (and convincing it to return to where it came from). There's an actual mind meld where the cloud enters Spock's body, with Kirk and crew allowing it to see what dies due to its consuming of planetary bodies, with Spock and the cloud actually conversing with each other. Scotty comes up with an ingenious plan to use the antimatter and pieces of the consumed planet (that was uninhabited, which allowed the Enterprise crew to detect the cloud in the first place) as matter to help power the Enterprise.
This episode kept coming up with surprises and has so much active plot development; I was always captivated by the construction and conclusion. What an intelligently written show. How the cloud's anatomy is compared to a human's (the use of Dr McCoy is exceptional), and the grueling obstacle of the Prime Directive in terms of killing an intelligent life form further enhance this excellent animated episode which deserves to stand proud alongside its live action big brother.
This has a lot of conflict the Enterprise crew will encounter in quite a busy plot for a cartoon of Star Trek. In fact, this episode is so well written and realized, it could have been acceptable for the live action series it emulates! The plot: the Enterprise crew encounters what appears to be a red cloud that seemingly "eats planets"! In fact, the ship itself is consumed, but their shields keep them from being digested. Get this: the cloud is an actual intelligent life form and a planet lies ahead in its path for consumption that holds millions of people! So Kirk and company must determine a course of action to keep it from reaching the planet and killing all those people while consuming and digesting the planet as a nutritious food.
There are a series of decisions and events that emerge giving this episode, "One of Our Planets is Missing", a serious consideration for the best of the Star Trek cartoon. Not just that, but I think serious Star Trek fans should seek this episode out and disregard the notion that perhaps a cartoon in the 70s was intentionally written for six year olds. In actuality, I think this episode was written for all manner of ages and intellectually "One of Our " has meat on its bones. I love that care was given to the stories during the cartoon's run, as serious dilemmas develop where Kirk and his crew must solve within a small window of time. Here in this episode he has like three hours before the cloud reaches the planet, must contend with antimatter that could explode the ship upon even slight impact, contemplate killing an intelligent life form in order to save millions more, come up with a solution to the energy drained from the Enterprise the longer they remain in the cloud, and consider Spock mind-melding with the cloud in the hopes of talking it out of eating planets containing living beings (and convincing it to return to where it came from). There's an actual mind meld where the cloud enters Spock's body, with Kirk and crew allowing it to see what dies due to its consuming of planetary bodies, with Spock and the cloud actually conversing with each other. Scotty comes up with an ingenious plan to use the antimatter and pieces of the consumed planet (that was uninhabited, which allowed the Enterprise crew to detect the cloud in the first place) as matter to help power the Enterprise.
This episode kept coming up with surprises and has so much active plot development; I was always captivated by the construction and conclusion. What an intelligently written show. How the cloud's anatomy is compared to a human's (the use of Dr McCoy is exceptional), and the grueling obstacle of the Prime Directive in terms of killing an intelligent life form further enhance this excellent animated episode which deserves to stand proud alongside its live action big brother.
