WARNING: This thread WILL contain unhidden spoilers for this entry. Because this re-watch is in a slightly-subjective chronological order and not in production order, please refrain from talking about the content of other episodes or movies in this thread. If you do, please put that content inside spoiler tags. Some people here may be watching Star Trek for the first time.
#62: Star Trek: The Animated Series, season 1, episode 1 “Beyond the Farthest Star”
Written by Samuel A. Peeples, directed by Hal Sutherland.
Stardates 5221.3 through 5221.9 (late 2268 to early 2269)
“You are protected only for this moment in this room.” - unnamed alien
The Enterprise is on a starcharting mission when it gets caught in the gravity well of a dead star. Lieutenant Sulu manages to pull the ship into an orbit around the negative mass of energy. There, a fantastically large and damaged alien ship comes into view. It registers as completely dead, so Captain Kirk and a team beam aboard to survey it. They find that all of the damage to the ship seems to be self-inflicted and make their way to a control room with an automated message waiting to be played back As they are presented with a warning that some malevolent force is hiding on the ship and that the crew intentionally disabled and abandoned their ship here to precent it from escaping, an unknown forces starts to break down the door.
Originally released: 8 September 1973
“Beyond the Farthest Star” on Memory Alpha (mirror)
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What did you think?
What, the main series is over already? oO
Anyway, this ep made a big impression on me as a kid. I probably only watched a handful of TAS eps in total, but I liked this one so much that I later ordered it as a videotape when I was a starving artist-type. The tape also came with the ep in which Spock goes back in time to save himself, another goodie.
Across all the total ST eps I’ve seen, this one more than any other awed me upon the spectacle of long-dead alien ship & technology. Something about the overall ambience, not so much the specific details.
Something else characteristic of this series is that it included some pretty weird or even hilarious animation & production gaffes at times. In this ep, I recall a moment where two crew members are in frame, but somehow the one who’s supposed to appear in back appears in front instead, making the other one look giant-sized.
Or take Kyle, as mentioned… he now looks and sounds like a completely different person, which actually gets back to a chronic problem with this series based on its budget-- that of Doohan and Nichols having to cover something like 90% of the extra voices.
What, the main series is over already? oO
Going by official Stardates (mostly), the third season of TOS is interleaved with TAS and (optionally) capped off by Continues.
Oh wow, really?
I’d always thought TOS covered yrs 1-3, and TAS yrs 4-5 (mostly) of the original 5yr mission.
@JohnnyEnzyme @aeronmelon I don’t think the cartoon was ever official.
There’s been debate about that and shifting opinions over the years, but TAS is, in fact, considered canon today.
@JohnnyEnzyme Where was that made official? It’s been a minute since I watched a TAS episode, but I recall them being a bit too far outside the box to be canon. Am I misremembering?
It’s official across the modern series and continuations as I understand it.
Which… doesn’t remotely mean the same thing to me as it might in other circumstances. I mean, there’s a million ST series out there at this point, a million+1 books, and whole movie franchises that are alternate realities. To me it’s kinda like DC & Marvel inventing their side universes so that they can tell the same story hundreds of different ways, with no character ever truly being killed off.
It’s not real history, just sci-fi imagining an absurdly improbable future, filled with races that are little more than humans wearing makeup to suggest actual aliens. Much of it is simply mental masturbation and cashing in on a premise, to be brutally honest. That said, there were so many brilliant aspects that went in to TOS that it will always be a very special production for me.
@JohnnyEnzyme You could argue that any franchise is “cashing in on a premise.” Although, I do not believe the Paramount + wing of the franchise has done as well financially. It has all but collapsed, and they are already working on scrapping that leg of a the franchise and creating something that I presume better draws in the fan base. I agree that TOS was a classic television series with substance.
you know a local station runs startrek from 7pm to midnight every night going through the shows sun-fri every night in order. I wish they would run the animated seris in order in the tos slot before starting over again with the tos pilot.
I love that this is when Chief Kyle decides to grow a dapper mustache.
It’s just so regal and commanding.
The expressive eyebrows really tie his face together.
One of my favorite sci-fi concepts is finding a big deserted alien ship floating in space. Almost as good as the sci-fi-isekai of getting beamed into a prism to live the average life of an alien before being returned back to your own life without any time passing.
