Star Trek: The Animated Series

[A l t e r E g o 9]

Star Trek: The Animated Series

Episode #3 One Of Our Planets Is Missing

Written by: Marc Daniels

Directed by: Hal Sutherland

Airdate: Sept. 22, 1973

Stardate: 5371.3

Synopsis

The Enterprise encounters a cloud creature that feeds on the energy of the planets that lie in its path. Spock mind melds with the entity and tells it that it is killing life and he persuades it to return to its place of origin.

Guest Characters:

Cosmic Cloud Majel Barrett

Wesley James Doohan

This episode's writer, Marc Daniels, was also a prolific television director. He directed fourteen episodes of the Original STAR TREK series. Marc Daniels died in 1989 after a long and successful career in films, television and theatre.

Commodore Robert Wesley was first seen in the original series episode "The Ultimate Computer."

In this episode we learned that Commodore Wesley retired from Starfleet to become the governor of Mantilles, a planet with a population of 82 million. We also learned that he had an eleven-year-old daughter.

This episode marked the first appearance of Lieutenant Arex.

In this episode, when the cloud creature threatened Mantilles, Kirk was prepared to use his ship's self destruct protocol to destroy the cloud's "brain."

In this episode's dialog, Kirk refers to having once said "Today I will not kill." Kirk uttered those words in the original series episode "A Taste of Armaggeddon."

Stock footage/cels from Lassie's Rescue Rangers, another 1973 Filmation TV show, was used in this episode. Views of Earth on a computer screen were shown to Spock as he was melding with the cloud intelligence. It was these scenes that featured children running with a dog that came from the Lassie show.

This episode's story was similar to several other Trek tales such as the original series episode "Immunity Syndrome" and the STAR TREK: Voyager episodes "The Cloud" and "Bliss."

Transporter Chief Kyle appeared in this episode but he had no dialogue