Star Trek: The Animated Series — 1x01 — Beyond the Farthest Star

Aired 1973-09-08

SpaceOpera.com rating:4

Average reader rating:4.82

Synopsis

The Enterprise is dragged off course by Questar M-17, an imploded negative star mass, and meets a strange shapeless being.

Remarkable scenes

The sight of that massive organic starship.
The deployment of the automatic bridge defense system. Cool device!
Kirk and Spock getting their asses kicked by the automatic bridge defense system when the alien took over the Enterprise. Haha!

Review

TAS begins its short run nicely, exploiting its cartoon production style by showing us grandiose sets they could have never used in live action. Indeed, this is TAS' single greatest advantage. Remarkable character: Lieutenant Arex. (The orange alien.) Just like the sets, Arex was a crewmember they couldn't have done in live action due to technology and budget constraints.

3 reader comments

Not bad for an old cartoon. Has a fun sense of exploration as they say "Gee whiz!" at everything on the alien ship. But once the alien took over the Enterprise, I was more or less confused the whole time.
I like how the life support belts give the animated show more freedom to actually let the crew explore places which do not have a breathable atmosphere.
by Christopher Alexander | 04/05/2011 at 6:19 pm

Poor Chekhov. I can just imagine the phone call. "So I hear that we are doing another Star Trek, this time animated! GREAT! I'm so excited! When do we start?" "Sorry, Mr. Koenig, they are proceeding without Pavel Chekov." "What? Why? I don't understand!?" "You've been replaced, Mr. Koenig. By an orange alien."
Hehe I'm not sure what the details are as to why he didn't do the series but perhaps, in animation, they didn't need a Davey Jones type for the teenage girls. ????
by James T Quark | 08/25/2014 at 1:35 am

The biggest, grossest error for me is when they realise the age of the derelict ship, and Kirk wonders about "a civilization that advanced 300 million years ago… before life even emerged on Earth".
This is SO wrong. 300 mil years ago plant life already firmly established itself on land, and amphibians and arthropods already thrived (including ancient cockroaches).
By 1973 it was definitely already known that life is older than some 300 mil years. Currently it is theorised that life may have existed as early as 4.3-4.5 billions of years ago.
Otherwise it was very pleasing to see those detailed drawn sets that would unfortunately be very very hard to do in live action production. And the episode overall was decent.
by Alex | 12/23/2019 at 7:58 am