For the first time in my journey through Trek I watched two episodes today, and I am glad I did. My mental justification was that I missed an episode last Saturday due to work commitments and I wanted to keep going at the same one episode a day pace as long as I could. But it was a really cool comparison to watch the final episode of TOS and then go straight into TAS. I am really impressed with the attention to detail on the drawings of the ship and especially the bridge. They seem to have taken much greater liberties with such things as main engineering, but those sets weren't really all that impressive in the live action run.
The episode begins with the Enterprise not dealing with a crisis like so many TOS episodes, but instead on a routine star charting patrol beyond the edge of the galaxy. And for the first time there doesn't appear to be any of the silliness of a, "galactic barrier," or any of that garbage. While flying through seemingly empty space Uhura detects a radio transmission coming from the remains of a dead star. As they approach the gravity is much more intense than expected and they only barely manage to make orbit rather than hit the dead star. Once in orbit they encounter a huge organic looking alien vessel that appears to be the source of the radio transmissions. It has been there hundreds of millions of years so of course they have to check it out.
Putting on their magic life support belts Kirk beams over with Spock, McCoy and Scotty leaving Sulu in command. Kirk has the transporters locked onto them as they explore the insides of the colossal vessel. Some of the systems seem to be working, even after so long. They enter a room full of equipment and suddenly the door seals behind them. Their communicators and phasers aren't working, but evidently the door was sealed to protect them as something starts trying to break through. They find a recording of someone from the ship warning them of the dangerous lifeform on the other side of the door and it tells them that the ship was left here to keep it trapped for all eternity. The room explodes and they are rescued just in time. However the alien has also been beamed over and starts wrecking havoc all over the ship.
The alien is apparently of electromagnetic nature and it starts reading the computer memory banks and shutting off life support to most decks. Kirk has the ships controls locked out before it can take them over, but it does manage to use the phasers to destroy the other ship. Kirk figures out a plan to have Spock calculate a slingshot maneuver in is head to get them away from the dead star by diving apparently straight at it. The alien is fooled and thinks they are destroying the ship and fleas to the dead star. It works and as they fly away the alien pleads to not be left by itself forever.
Review: I honestly wasn't sure what to expect from this part of my voyage, but so far I am impressed. The shorter format works well with adventure stories like this and the animation seems quite good. The music cues are pretty disparate from what I am used to from TOS, but I think I can get used to it. Not the greatest of trek, but an above average episode.
7 out of 10
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