Beyond the Farthest Star
A star-charting mission leads to a dead alien ship. Its insect-like inhabitants destroyed themselves, and now the Enterprise crew faces the same choice, boarded by an evil entity.
First off, a few words about The Animated Series in general. We really like the voice cast. With Shatner, Nimoy, and McCoy doing their characters, it feels like we're immediately back on the bridge. Unfortunately, most of their spontaneity, chemistry, and kinetic energy do not make the transition to animated format - this might also have to do with the voiceovers being recorded in different parts of the country. Heck, the pictures doesn't even move very much. Compared to awful old cartoons like Spider-Man the style is all right, but it does not stand up well today, with TV animation having advanced leaps and bounds. Moving on to this episode, it's a solid start. The pod ship is intriguingly designed, and the pace rather exciting. The evil alien is generic, and not given a "novelty" like being a historical point or feeding off emotions, but still threatening. Lt. Kyle reappears but is voiced by James Doohan, whose array of dialects we'll be hearing a lot in the installments ahead.
Spock Saves the Day: Spock rigs a force field around the navigation console so that the alien cannot fly the ship, and computes the "slingshot effect" in his mind before executing it manually.
Oops: He gets zapped by the entity.
Developments: Spock's mainly a supporting player, acting as usual.