“One of Our Planets is Missing”
Written by Marc Daniels
Directed by Hal Sutherland
Animated Season 1, Episode 3
Production episode 22007
Original air date: September 22, 1973
Stardate: 5371.3
Captain’s log. The Enterprise is investigating a cosmic cloud that is entering the galaxy and is proximate to Mantilles, the inhabited Federation planet that’s closest to the edge of the galaxy. The cloud is huge, more than 800,000 kilometers wide, made of both matter and energy. It engulfs one of the planets in the system and destroys it, then changes course in order to head for Mantilles.
On McCoy’s recommendation, Kirk has Uhura contact Bob Wesley, the governor of Mantilles, to warn him and have him start evacuating the population, even though they’ve only got four hours before the cloud hits Mantilles. Wesley can only evacuate the children on the planet in time.
The Enterprise intercepts the cloud, and it starts to engulf the ship. Phasers have no effect. Inside the cloud, antimatter nodules approach the ship, but they’re able to neutralize them with an antimatter charge from the shields.
Spock hypothesizes that the cloud is a living organism, and McCoy agrees. Sulu’s scans show that the cloud has a central core, and Kirk has the ship fly toward it, hoping to distract the cloud away from Mantilles. They go through the cloud’s “digestive” system, which includes antimatter projections that destroy matter in order for the cloud to consume it.
The deflectors will only last another twenty minutes or so, as the power requirements are draining both the matter and the antimatter in the engines. Scotty suggests carving off an antimatter projection and using it to recharge the antimatter in the engines. That will keep the ship going longer.
Spock detects a region of the cloud that has high electromagnetic energy, which he believes is the brain. They don’t know if the cloud is intelligent, but Kirk can’t take the chance—Mantilles will be destroyed, and that means they need to kill the creature.
According to Spock’s readings the cloud’s brain is too vast for photon torpedoes to have any effect. They will have to activate the Enterprise self-destruct at the cortex in order to kill the creature.
Kirk suggests Spock try to mind-meld with the cloud, which Spock and Uhura manage to accomplish through the communications systems. As Spock speaks to the cloud, it becomes clear that the cloud has no idea about other life forms—they’re all too small for the cloud to even notice. But Spock is able to convince the cloud that the people on the Enterprise and on Mantilles are truly alive like the cloud is.
The cloud is unwilling to commit murder on that scale and so goes back to where it came from, even though it is a long journey. Spock also determines the best course out of the cloud, and Sulu and Arex fly the ship out. Mantilles is saved.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? The cloud acts like a biological organism, with McCoy likening its functions to the digestive system of humans.
Meanwhile, being in the cloud somehow manages to drain the matter and the antimatter from the ship.
Fascinating. Spock is able to mind-meld with the cloud and convince it to leave the galaxy. Because he’s just that awesome.
I’m a doctor not an escalator. McCoy provides useful advice on the cloud’s biology, and also convinces Kirk to contact Mantilles and warn them, even though it might cause a panic and even though there is little hope for rescuing the bulk of the population.
Ahead warp one, aye. Sulu is the one who plots out the interior of the cloud, enabling them to find the brain as well as a possible way out.
Hailing frequencies open. Uhura is able to tie the universal translator and the sensors into Spock’s mind-touch. Because she’s just that awesome.
I cannot change the laws of physics! Scotty figures out a way to refuel the ship using the cloud itself. Because he’s just that awesome.
Forewarned is three-armed. Arex makes his second appearance, and this time gets dialogue! (And a name.)
Channel open. “Am I doing the right thing, Bones? Once I said that man rose above primitiveness by vowing, ‘I will not kill, today.'”
Kirk paraphrasing something he said in “A Taste of Armageddon.”
Welcome aboard. James Doohan provides the voices of both Arex and Wesley, as well as his usual role of Scotty, while Majel Barrett does the voice of the cloud. George Takei and Nichelle Nichols voice Sulu and Uhura, respectively.
Trivial matters: Wesley makes a return appearance, last seen as a commodore in charge of the Lexington in “The Ultimate Computer,” and played by Barry Russo.
This is the first Trek story written by Marc Daniels, who was one of the most prolific directors of the original series. It was only his third (and final) writing credit in his career, the others being episodes of Matt Lincoln and Nash Airflyte Theatre.
Images of Earth that Uhura shows to the cloud during the mind-meld are images taken from another 1973 Filmation animated series, Lassie’s Rescue Rangers.
To boldly go. “Listen to me!” A smart, taut, intense little thriller of an episode, particularly impressive coming from a director with comparatively little writing experience. Having said that, goodness knows Marc Daniels knows his Trek, having directed more episodes of the original series than anyone not named Joseph Pevney, and this is very much a Star Trek story in the finest sense: the default is to compassion, trying to save the lives of the people of Mantilles, but trying to find alternatives to killing the cloud if at all possible.
I particularly like that it’s Kirk who makes the initial decision to find a way to kill the cloud—because he has no choice but to at least have that be an option, as time is running out for the people of Mantilles—but also Kirk who suggests the mind-meld that ultimately keeps everyone alive. And also that both Spock and McCoy are aghast that Kirk goes for the option of killing the creature.
Like “Beyond the Farthest Star,” this episode feels derivative of other episodes. Daniels himself said he was partly inspired by “The Doomsday Machine” (which he directed), and the cloud shares elements with the planet killer, and there’s a whole lot of “The Immunity Syndrome” in here, too, but one advantage this one has over those two is the aforementioned compassion. At no point did anyone try to communicate with the planet-killer (which, to be fair, was pretty obviously a machine) or the giant space amoeba, and destroying it was the only option. I prefer my Trek stories to at least take a shot at compassion first, and I admire that this episode does that.
In addition, the alienness of the cloud is well played by Daniels’s script and Majel Barrett’s voice work. At first, you think the cloud is not very intelligent, but it quickly becomes apparent that it’s simply a difference in methods of communication (and of scale, as the cloud probably thinks it’s just been contacted by the equivalent of bacteria).
Another advantage this has over “Beyond…” is that the tension is more palpable, in part because of the danger to Mantilles. It’s a nice touch using Wesley—not really necessary, especially if you don’t remember who he is, but if you do recall “The Ultimate Computer,” it’s a nice callback that gives the danger more immediacy, especially since Wesley is one of the few other ship commanders we met in the original series who was actually steady and cool and smart and stuff.
Finally, what’s especially nice is that Uhura and Scotty have plenty to do. It’s Uhura who comes up with a way to make the mind-meld work, and Scotty who figures out how to fix the engines, not just Spock being brilliant and telling everyone what to do because he’s the smartest guy in the room, which was often the default on the live-action series.
Warp factor rating: 7
Next week: “The Lorelei Signal”
Keith R.A. DeCandido reminds everyone that his first Super City Cops novella, Avenging Amethyst, is on sale today! You can order it for your Kindle or your Nook, or get the eBook from Kobo. Cover and promo copy on Keith’s blog…
What a sweet little story! True, it’s like The Doomsday Machine but with a much nicer ending.
It also reminds me of TMP. A huge cloud creature endangers an inhabited planet and engulfs the Enterprise, and Spock communicates with it via mind meld. I had no idea that this had been done before.
I suppose I should have mentioned how utterly ridiculous Spock looked during the mind-meld with his hands thrust out like that…… *laughs*
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Slicing off a piece of the cloud’s antimatter “body” to power the ship is a good idea and shows that Daniels understood how the ship was supposed to work, unlike some of the earlier episodes that were obviously unclear on whether dilithium was the power source or just a key reactor component.
I’m not sure it would look like a giant pustule though.
I keep wondering about the “touch” element of touch telepathy whenever Spock melds with something he can’t physically get his hands on. Through a wall that someone might be leaning on doesn’t sound that ridiculous compared to melding over the enterprise’s speakers…
Then again, the UT supposedly interperets using brainwaves (as evidenced in Metamorphosis) so I guess it makes a certain amount of internal sense. (Especially when one considers that Spock mind-melds with sufficiently advanced computers with artificial intelligence both in the episode changeling and in the motion picture.) Kudos to Uhura for knowing how to hook the universal translator and the communications array up to a telepath.
“Meanwhile, being in the cloud somehow manages to drain the matter and the antimatter from the ship.”
Scotty explained that it was the power drain from keeping the shields at full strength to avoid getting annihilated/digested. The Warp-8 push to get to the cloud in time probably left the reserves low to begin with.
I like this one for the reasons Keith said. Given that it’s a “bottle show,” more fully ship-based than you’d expect of TAS given its potential to open up the universe visually, it is quite tense and engaging. We don’t really get to see any of the reaction of Mantilles’s population to their oncoming doom, but the hints we get in dialogue are effective. Like “Beyond the Farthest Star,” it has a fairly somber subject matter that belies the perception of TAS as a kids’ show. Imminent mass death is looming, Kirk has to consider destroying an intelligent alien, and for the second time in three weeks, he and Scotty make plans to blow up the ship.
I hadn’t realized it before, but this story has the same Kirk-Spock dynamic seen in “Arena” and “The Devil in the Dark,” and to an extent in Star Trek Into Darkness: Kirk’s first impulse is to be a soldier and try to destroy the threat, Spock questions whether there’s a more peaceful way, Kirk initially rejects the suggestion, but then Kirk chooses on his own to try to communicate instead of killing. That’s a nice bit of character continuity.
And while the three lead actors are giving typically bland performances for their TAS work, I have to give considerable praise to Doohan and Barrett for their nuanced performances as Wesley and the cloud, respectively. They really sell the emotion in a way that Shatner and Kelley pretty much failed to do, given their inexperience with voice work. (Kelley’s performance in particular was cringingly bad at the moment when he was talking about the antimatter villi growing out of the walls; it sounded very much like he was just reciting from a page he was reading for the first time.)
While it is a bottle show, we do get some looks at engineering that we haven’t had before. We see how the main engine room was refitted for TAS — the main control console was moved from the front alcove by the door to the rear by the big grille, and there’s a transparent vertical tube thingy that seems to be an indicator of power levels (given how the camera focuses on it when Kirk and Scotty are discussing the energy drain) and that vaguely presages the cylindrical intermix chamber from TMP and the vertical warp core designs that followed. We also get to see the inner workings of the engine for the first time. The script says it’s the interior of the “antimatter nacelle,” but that doesn’t fit with later models of how the warp engines work. In my novel Forgotten History, I merged the engine seen here with the Constitution-class cutaway diagram seen in ENT: “In a Mirror, Darkly” and described it as the horizontal warp reactor running under the floor of the engine room set (the thing labeled “warp core” on the cutaway link above, although that term is anachronistic for TOS/TAS).
@1/Jana: I’ve felt for ages that this episode was even more similar to TMP than the episode TMP is usually compared to, “The Changeling.” In both cases, there’s a giant cloud entity heading for a populated planet; the Enterprise enters the cloud and travels to its core in hopes of stopping it; Kirk has Scott arm the ship’s self-destruct to take out its brain; the entity is willing to destroy the planet’s population because it doesn’t recognize them as life forms; Spock joining minds with the entity is instrumental in communicating with it; and eventually it leaves our galaxy voluntarily. Given that Alan Dean Foster adapted this episode and wrote the original story premise for what became TMP, I used to assume he was inspired by this episode. But I’ve since read his original outline for “In Thy Image,” and it actually bore a lot less resemblance to this episode than the final movie did. The similarities were added in revisions by others such as Harold Livingston and Gene Roddenberry. So I guess it’s a coincidence.
So it’s basically Horton Hears a Who?
Loved this one. I was highly impressed by the tightly written story and the good science.
The callbacks to the Doomsday Machine and the Immunity Syndrome are indeed obvious, and at first I thought this is going to be nothing more than a rehash… but it came to its own with the scientific details and – of course – the very Trekkian ending.
a 7 is about right.
Speaking of bland voices. I remember reading once that the three main actors didn’t actually go into a recording studio, but were sent tape recorders to record there parts. Sounds silly typing that last statement. But who knows. Except you Star Trek experts.
Joseph
@9/Joseph McGuire: What I understand is that they went to whatever studio was convenient to wherever they were at the time they were sent their scripts. I don’t think portable tape recorders at the time would’ve had anywhere near broadcast quality.
@5/Christopher: “I hadn’t realized it before, but this story has the same Kirk-Spock dynamic seen in “Arena” and “The Devil in the Dark,” and to an extent in Star Trek Into Darkness: Kirk’s first impulse is to be a soldier and try to destroy the threat, Spock questions whether there’s a more peaceful way, Kirk initially rejects the suggestion, but then Kirk chooses on his own to try to communicate instead of killing. That’s a nice bit of character continuity.”
Good observation! It also shows that their previous experiences have changed their outlook to some degree. They both take into account that the creature might be intelligent, something they didn’t do in The Devil in the Dark. And Kirk, even while he plans to destroy it, is less aggressive here than he was in those earlier episodes (“If I have to be a judge, I decide in favour of saving Mantilles” versus “The reason is crystal clear. […] Invasion” or “The creature must die”).
One of the things I like about seeing Wesley again is that it shows us a different career path than staying a starship captain all your life, or becoming an admiral. Like the science team in last week’s episode, it makes the galaxy feel larger.
This episode, and the TOS episode “Devil in the Dark”, have always been my favorite “Spock mind melds with an alien” stories because the conversations are so… Alien.
The struggling for nouns, verbs and context in the translated conversation I always found charming and realistic. Spock can’t get the concept of individuality across in the short amount of time that he has, so the best he can do is “there are many of me” and “small somethings.”
I also have strong memories from being a teen when I first saw this episode of the cloud struggling with the same conversion “why…. Why…. You think… To me?” in that sing-song speech pattern struck a chord that stuck with me all these years.
It was just 2 minutes of dialog, but I thought it was brilliant in its simplicity.
Also, extra creepy points for the cloud consciousness inhabiting spock completely wordlessly. Just stand up, look around, sit down and… Done.
I agree that this is a great episode for a lot of the reasons previously outlined. The calls to Bob Wesley are great at ratcheting up the sense of tension – and despair. Even if I do think the decision to save the children may have been a concession to Saturday morning Standards and Practices (“See, Tommy, its going to be OK – no KIDS will die.”), it’s also pretty wrenching on an adult level to imagine what that scene must look like.
Also, Daniels is one of the few writers for the Animated Series who actually seemed to write a story suitable for the half-hour he had to tell it in. I find that a lot of the Animated Series can feel like it was written to be an hour and then cut apart to fit the allotted time. Even last week’s more beloved “Yesteryear” suffers from that issue, I think.
It’s interesting how much of a plot we’ve seen before can feel refreshing and watchable when the writers involved are motivated enough. This is what sets apart TAS episodes like this from much of the third season. Both Fontana and Marc Daniels deserve credit for putting in real effort into a mere 20+ minutes of animation.
If anything, Daniels was probably eager to wipe the slate clean given that his last Trek effort was Spock’s Brain (now I’m beginning to wonder whether Brannon Braga and his staff decided to pay homage to the director when he named Crewman Daniels on Enterprise).
TAS felt a lot more Trekkian at times than TOS. The characters seemed to be more willing to explore more humane and productive solutions. The original show often veered away from the message into more predictable action beats (and the 50 minute running time often made it so many of episodes dragged before driving the moral point home in less than subtle ways).
And it also veered away from the ever constant need to focus on Kirk/Spock. Giving Scotty and Uhura more to do should have been done long ago. This brought back the feeling of community the early TOS episodes had. I guess we owe that contribution to Fontana. I adore the fact that she put Uhura in command for an episode, and that we got to see a Kirk-less episode thanks to Larry Niven. TAS feels refreshingly different thanks to these decisions.
My only complaint with this episode is that while it’s necessary, given how science-oriented this plot was (particularly when it comes to ship functions and how the Enterprise reacts to the situation), we’re starting to see some early signs of technobabble before it really becomes a real problem on TNG. I feel TAS deals more with technical dialogue than TOS ever did. Fortunately, there’s still a good balance of tech and drama in this case.
@13/Todd W. – Even if I do think the decision to save the children may have been a concession to Saturday morning Standards and Practices (“See, Tommy, its going to be OK – no KIDS will die.”),
Well, maybe. On the other hand, “children first” as the 23rd century equivalent of “women and children first” seems reasonable to me – protecting the future, and all that. Maybe?
@13/Todd W.: “Even if I do think the decision to save the children may have been a concession to Saturday morning Standards and Practices (“See, Tommy, its going to be OK – no KIDS will die.”), it’s also pretty wrenching on an adult level to imagine what that scene must look like.”
But they also made a point of establishing that Wesley’s 11-year-old daughter Katie was not evacuated, that she had stayed on Mantilles with him. They couldn’t save every child on the planet — just a few thousand out of millions. They just saved whoever they could, and obviously they wouldn’t sacrifice children to save adults. That’s not broadcast standards, that’s fundamental human decency.
By the way, it’s worth mentioning the in-joke in the episode title. “One of Our Planets is Missing” is a riff on the title of a 1942 British WWII film, One of Our Aircraft is Missing. There were actually a lot of ’60s and ’70s TV episodes titled “One of Our ____ is Missing” in homage to the film, though it’s become rather obscure today. It’s a bit incongruous to see such a somber episode given such a jokey title. (There’s sort of a pun in there, aircraft/planes/planets.)
@16/Christopher: It also feels like a title straight out of an animated show. I would never imagine such a title in the Berman-era shows. Even DS9 at its wackiest didn’t employ titles with such a pulpy tone. Their most extreme title ended up being a latin phrase.
@17/Eduardo really? I have always loved that title. Doesn’t feel cheesy to me at all, it also doesn’t feel Saturday morning cartoonish…
I find it’s a rather normal TOS-style title. Not wackier than “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” or “Mirror, Mirror”.
And if I were Bob Wesley, I would save the children too.
@17/Eduardo: The Wikipedia link I provided lists multiple shows that used that title allusion, most of which were live action. However, most of them were also sitcoms, or humor-oriented shows like Maverick and Lost in Space.
@17/Eduardo – Even DS9 at its wackiest didn’t employ titles with such a pulpy tone. Their most extreme title ended up being a latin phrase.
Respectfully, DS9 had plenty of eyeroll-worthy titles. “Take Me Out to the Holosuite.” “Looking for Par’MaQ [sp?] in All the Wrong Places.” “Our Man Bashir.”
@14
At least the “technobabble” here (mostly) makes scientific sense, unlike the usual case in TNG and especially Voyager where technobabble was often nothing more than a meaningless array of technical sounding words.
@21: I’d forgotten about Holosuite (and the inherent innuendo). As for Par’Mach, I thought about it, but it didn’t really feel too cheesy for me. Too wordy, maybe.
Still, none of the other titles come across as cheesy for me either. For me, One of our Planets is Missing almost reads like something that came out of Hanna-Barbera, whether it’s Johnny Quest or Scooby-Doo.
@22: Agreed. Plu, at that point, technobabble had yet to become a crutch for writers who needed to find their way out of complicated story problems.
@23/Eduardo: Where is the “innuendo” in “Take Me Out to the Holosuite?” It’s a play on the song “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” for an episode about a ballgame played on the holosuite. That’s too literal to be called innuendo.
Of course, “Looking for Par’Mach…” is a song-title pun too, based on the country-Western song “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places.” I was never crazy about that title; I think titles that refer to recent pop culture (at the time) are more likely to become dated than allusions to things that have stood the test of time, like Shakespeare. As evidenced by the fact that people have forgotten the once-famous WWII movie that this episode’s title is a nod to. There’s also “In the Pale Moonlight,” a reference to the 1989 Batman movie of all things.
DS9 had some other, err, playful titles, like “Doctor Bashir, I Presume?,” “The Magnificent Ferengi,” “His Way,” and “Badda Bing, Badda Bang.” It was also unique in having multiple episode titles that were allusions to other Star Trek productions — “Who Mourns for Morn?”, “Profit and Lace” (a reference to their own earlier “Profit and Loss”), and “What We Leave Behind” (a quote of Picard from the closing scene of Generations). Plus the various mirror-themed titles to the Mirror Universe episodes, if you wanted to count those.
Actually references to being in the pale moonlight predate the 1989 Batman — the 1970s song “Evangeline,” for example.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
But some recent popular thing has a greater chance to stand the test of time if Star Trek references it. Because it’s really not dead, as long as we remember it. ;-)
@24/Christopher: Well, I’d never heard of “Take me out to the Ballgame” before today. Truth be told, I’ve seen, maybe, two baseball games in 30 years.
I meant the word innuendo because of what the holosuite usually represents on DS9.
Regarding titles more likely to become dated, there are a lot of TV shows that tend to use variations on known movie titles (Ex: NYPD Blue having an episode titled “Raging Bulls”). It’s easier if the movies grow to become cultural classics.
@25/krad: But Ron Moore has confirmed that the title is based on the Batman line. The full line is “You ever dance with the Devil in the pale moonlight?”, and ITPM is very much an episode about dancing with the Devil. It sure isn’t about waiting for a riverboat gambler on the banks of the Mississippi.
@27/Eduardo: I thought maybe you were thinking of the sexual applications of the holosuite, but as I said, that’s very much not the case here. It’s purely a baseball reference.
And yes, lots of shows use title references to recent things, but they’re usually shows set in the present day. It feels more incongruous when a show set in the future does it.
Funny, I never would have connected the “pale moonlight” reference specifically to the Batman flick, but that’s probably because I’ve yet to see a movie based on a superhero that I’ve wanted to remember anything about. I know I’ve heard that phrase all my life, and I’m a lot older than the first Batman movie. LOL. There’s an Irish poem that predates the movie that I remember from college:
Some Guinness was spilt on the barroom floor
When the pub was shut for the night.
Out of his hole crept a small brown mouse
And stood in the pale moonlight.
He lapped up the frothy brew from the floor,
Then back on his haunches sat,
And all night long you could hear him roar,
“Bring out the goddamn’d cat!”
Then a black cat jumped through a hole in the door
and gobbled up the little brown mouse
The moral of the story is
Never have a drink on the house!
And I just googled out of curiosity and Dickens used the phrase in The Old Curiosity Shop, which I remember reading in English Literature class… . Either way, it’s interesting the direction these comment threads take sometimes… :)
Okay, so “In the Pale Moonlight” is an old phrase and DS9 took the ball and moved it down the field. Cool.
As for “One of Our Planets is Missing,” it’s a decent title. Cheesy for sure. Almost as if it were used for a ’70s Saturday morning kids show made by Filmation. Hehe.
Filmation! My mind just took me back to the couch at my parent’s house, eating cereal out of the box and watching the old console tv…. ;)
@29/30: Yes, of course the phrase “in the pale moonlight” has existed for a long time, but the point is that there’s nothing about that phrase in isolation that has any actual relevance to the episode. By itself, it would be a totally random and meaningless title for a story about Garak manipulating Sisko into committing moral compromises to draw Romulus into the war. The reason Ron Moore chose that title is because he was thinking of the Joker’s line from Batman about dancing with the Devil, which is what Sisko was metaphorically doing. The title only fits the episode if you recognize the Batman allusion. Otherwise it’s a complete non sequitur. (Although it was pretty much a non sequitur in Batman already. I always hated that line in the movie, because it’s totally meaningless and is just a clumsy plot device for revealing the Joker’s secret to Batman.)
#31
Console TVs were the best. Like a television carved from a mighty oak by master television elves. Back when there was still a bit of shame associated with watching the “idiot box,” so they tried to class it up a bit and make it look like furniture. Seemed legit.
#32
I’m fine with titles being non sequiturs. Even mismatched titles, like in Police Squad. It’s all good.
@34/Cheerio: I’m simply talking about fact, not opinion or preference. It is a fact, confirmed by Ronald D. Moore himself in the discussion I linked to in comment #28, that he based the episode’s title on the Batman quote.
When Helo and Sharon landed on Caprica, the first people aboard the raptor were children, then the remaining seats were decided by lottery. Do you think Ron Moore decided this storyline by seeing Marc Daniels episode years before?
@36/Bob Ahrens: Of course not. It’s a universal human practice to save the children first — it always has been. Or “women and children first,” traditionally, as in the case of the Titanic (where women and children were the overwhelming majority of the survivors except among the third-class passengers). It’s basic morality that the strong protect the weak. So naturally both works of fiction were drawing on real-life precedent.
A nice return to the “Seek out new life” after the “monster of the week, let’s kill it” we got in the second season. Even though the threat is a huge, interstellar roaming cloud, the idea that life is to be protected comes through. Not just the people on Mantillies but also the cloud itself.
The vocal performances really don’t bother me. The TOS cast were mostly stage and screen actors, with the exception of Doohan who got his start on radio. Voice acting is a craft like any other and it takes time to learn it and make it effective. It’s similar to how some silent film stars couldn’t make the transition to talkies. It’s a whole different sort of acting and not everyone is effective at it. I’m just glad to hear them together again, even if they recorded their parts separately.
Bice little bit of continuity with the inclusion of Bob Wesley. I’ve always imagined he was encouraged to retire after the M-5 fiasco. When your pet project leads to the deaths of hundreds of your own people, it’s time to think about a different line of work. His action in The Ultimate Computer weren’t criminal but they could be seen as negligent.
I do wonder why there was on;y room for 5,000 evacuees though. Mantillies is said to have a population of 82 million. You’d think there’d be more ships available with a fairly large population, even if it were just freighters. You don’t have to actually take them anywhere, jut get them off the planet.
Another neat part is seeing more of the ship that we never got to see in TOS. Animation lets you do that much easier than building a set. However, it’s also notable that this feels like an episode that TOS could have easily done live action and that’s a good thing. Just because animation is on;y limited by your imagination doesn’t mean that every episode has to push the boundaries. Much like Yesteryear, it’s an episode that would work on TOS but would be expensive to do so.
All around, well done. 8/10
@38/kkozoriz: “Monster of the week, let’s kill it” – wasn’t that the second season?
@38/kkozoriz: “The TOS cast were mostly stage and screen actors, with the exception of Doohan who got his start on radio.”
Several other cast members had experience working with their voices. Takei had dubbed a number of Japanese movies, including Godzilla Raids Again (in the dub called Gigantis, the Fire Monster) and Rodan. Barrett, of course, had done the Enterprise computer voice throughout TOS. And Nichols, of course, was a trained singer. All four of the supporting players were better vocal performers than the three leads.
And it’s true that Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelley lacked experience, but that’s why they would’ve benefitted from a strong voice director guiding their performances — and from having more time to record multiple takes and refine their performances. These days, we get a lot of animated movies with celebrity cast members who don’t have previous voice experience, but they have veteran voice directors working with them to teach them the ropes and draw out the best possible performance. That’s what the TAS leads didn’t have, because they were recording from wherever they happened to be at the time.
@2/Keith – My wife and I totally imitated him while watching that scene. I’ll let you imagine for yourself what that looked like.
40. ChristopherLBennett – I’ll give you Takei, although he had the advantage of seeing the finished product as he recorded his lines. Certainly closer than nothing but still not the same as having to make up the reactions from whole cloth.
Barrett as the computer didn’t have to do a whole lot of reacting with the characters. It was a strict monotone reading. And I don’t see how being a singer would help Nicholls with reacting to people that aren’t there. Nicholls and Barrett also have the advantage of playing multiple characters. It lets them stretch their voice acting muscles and get more comfortable with it.
I do agree that the supporting cast does come across better than the leads. However, Doohan is a standout among the supporting cast.
39. JanaJansen – Quite correct. Fixed.
@42/kkozoriz: It’s not about reacting, it’s about knowing how to convey a performance exclusively through your voice instead of using your face and body. Emoting with your voice is an intrinsic part of singing. Heck, lots of songs are written as though they’re being addressed to another person, and they’re often performed/recorded without that person present.
And part of it is just being comfortable with performing in front of a microphone instead of a camera or a live audience. Barrett may not have had as much experience in that respect as Doohan did, but she had more than the three leads, which is the point.
However, you can tell the episodes of TAS where the cast recorded together and the ones where they ween’t. For people that aren’t used to voice acting, the ability to respond to the other actors makes it easier. Kirk, Spock amd McCoy are noticeably less stiff when the cast were together. It’s not just about emoting. If it were, then any actor would be able to do voice work with minimal effort. It’s a different sort of acting and having someone to bounce your dialog off would be closer to what they are used to.
Not everyone is cut out for voice acting any more than everyone is comfortable on the stage. It’s all acting but it’s different sorts of acting. After all, Shatner had lots of experience on the stage and in TV and film but he came up flat here.
@40/ChristopherLBennett: All four of the supporting players were better vocal performers than the three leads.
One wonders of that isn’t why it seems like the supporting cast has more to do – and not just in terms of “guest performances” as the alien of the week or whatever – than they did in the last year or so of the Original Series. Uhura and Sulu, in particular, seem to be a lot more integral to the stories than they were over Season 3. It could be that the writers were beginning to react to different, newly discovered strengths among the cast.
I do have to say, though, that this was the episode that – even as a kid – I started realizing that James Doohan was the voice of nearly everyone outside of the main cast – and as talented as Jimmy was, he was no Frank Welker.
@45/Todd W: I think giving Sulu and Uhura more to do probably had to do with Fontana as story editor wanting to spread the love more, and particularly to feature female characters more. Maybe just the fact that it was the ’70s now was part of it. Or maybe part of it was that Shatner and Nimoy weren’t actually there on the set to push for bigger roles for their characters.
To a large extent, TAS returns to the ensemble flavor of the early first season of TOS. That ensemble quality was lost over time as Spock became the breakout character and the network pushed for him to have a bigger role, and as Roddenberry and Shatner pushed to keep Kirk equal in prominence to Spock. But those pressures wouldn’t have been as much of a factor on TAS. NBC gave the show’s makers full creative control, Roddenberry left the show in Fontana’s hands, and Shatner just mailed in his performances.
As for Doohan playing “nearly everyone,” as I’ve said before, that’s been exaggerated in modern sources. A number of the voices now attributed to Doohan were played by uncredited Filmation repertory players instead.
Shatner was the one doing the pushing for bigger roles for Kirk. Nimoy was just ensuring that there was rough parity between the characters. If Nimoy were so concerned about his role, he wouldn’t have insisted that Takei and Nicholls be included for racial diversity. Shatner was the one with the “I’m the leading man and everyone is there to support me” attitude with his habit of counting lines and 86ing Sulu’s promotion in the movies.
Shatner’s self-centeredness even cost him his friendship with Nimoy when he used footage of Leonard in his video,
“
It was all over on 27 February 2015 with his loved ones gathered around him but for Shatner.
Leonard had stopped speaking to Shatner several years earlier.
Shatner was making a film about the captains of the Enterprise and Leonard didn’t want any part of it. A cameraman shot him at a convention and it was included in the film. Leonard never spoke to Shatner again and he doesn’t know if this was the reason.
‘It is something I will wonder about and regret forever.’
So Shatner wrote him a love note before he died but got no answer. ‘I have had a deep love for you Leonard – for your character, our morality, your sense of justice, your artistic bent –
‘You’re the friend that I have known the longest and the deepest.’
The silence in their friendship is his greatest regret and he still carries ‘feelings of devastation of Leonard’s death before we could resolve the fraying ropes of our friendship’.”
Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock came from two different planets but William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy bonded over Star Trek slights, anti-Semitic slurs, bad marriages – until their final falling out
He’s got a funny way of showing friendship. He knew how much Leonard’s image meant to him and how he hated people who took advantage of him. But Bill figured that he could get away with it because he was Bill Shatner.
@47/kkozoriz: Isn’t that a little one-sided?
“Shatner was the one doing the pushing for bigger roles for Kirk. Nimoy was just ensuring that there was rough parity between the characters.”
One could also argue that Shatner had originally been hired as the leading character. From his point of view, Nimoy being elevated to equal importance must have been a change for the worse. Most people would fight to preserve their position under the circumstances. As, of course, most people would take advantage of the changed situation if they were in Nimoy’s place. I don’t see a villain here, just a complicated situation. And I think it says something for both actors that they became friends later despite all this.
“He’s got a funny way of showing friendship. He knew how much Leonard’s image meant to him and how he hated people who took advantage of him.”
That’s true. But is it bad enough to justify never speaking to him again for years – as it is, for the rest of his life? That’s pretty extreme. I can think of nothing a friend could do to me that would make me stop speaking to them. They were both difficult persons.
@47 @48: Definitely one-sided. It’s well known Nimoy had his issues as well as Shatner. And they did cooperate when it came to negotiating pay raises. During the movies in the 1980’s, Shatner’s agent complained that Nimoy was getting paid more and demanded an equal raise. In the following film, Nimoy’s agent did the same thing. According to Shatner, it was an unofficial agreement between them so they could both obtain all the possible spoils from Paramount.
Also, you learn something new every day. I like that, because I actually had to look up the meaning of the term 86ing.
They used a piece of a living creature to power the ship; predating VOY’s Equinox by decades.
@1 – Jana: So TMP not only is a rip-off of The Changeling, but also this.
@47 – kkozoriz: That Shatner and Nimoy not speaking is bullcrap, since Shatner interviewed Nimoy for his show “Raw Nerve” in 2010 or 2011. Nimoy was Shatner’s best man in his fourth wedding, in the late 90s. And so on.
@50/MaGnUs: As I said, the similarities to this episode were not present in Alan Dean Foster’s original story outline for what became TMP. So it was probably a coincidence.
50. MaGnUs – Shatner’s The Captains, which led to the estrangement, came out in late 2011. Nimoy’s Raw Nerve episode was aired on January 2009. And, as you said, Shatner’s wedding was in 1997 to be exact. So, no, it’s not bull rats as you so eloquently put it.
@52: You’re right, but that still has nothing to do with TAS or anything else, just something that hapepned decades after the fact.
@51: Yeah. I wasn’t accusing Foster himself.
@53/MaGnUs: It’s not about accusation, just about assessing probabilities. I’m just saying, given that Foster is the only person involved in the writing of TMP who had any direct connection to TAS, that suggests that if anyone involved had been deliberately imitating this episode, he’s the most likely candidate. And since we know he didn’t, that means probably nobody did, and the similarities are accidental.
My favorite episode of The Animated Series so far, and even with the similarities to “The Doomsday Machine” and “The Immunity Syndrome,” I think it could have made a fine episode of The Original Series since it doesn’t seem like it would have needed special effects not much more ambitious than the show normally had. As it is, it’s a perfectly fine episode of The Animated Series.
This is the first episode of the animated series that I unequivocally enjoy. It’s the first one I’ve felt was up to scratch with the live-action show. Its voice work is much improved over the first episode (with the obvious exception of Kelley), and the voices are edited together better as well. It’s also better written than the second episode (I know Yesteryear is beloved for its character work with Spock, but much of the dialogue is clunky, and the story makes less sense the more I think about it). I will say that before reading the comments I never picked up on how similar it is to The Motion Picture, but perhaps that’s just another reason why I like it so much (though it might lend ammunition to those who insist TMP is bloated).