TAS: One of Our Planets Is Missing

            This is the first episode of TAS that could have just as easily been a TOS episode. Even with the limited effects budget I am pretty sure a giant space cloud was within the reach of TOS. I supposed the Enterprise going magic school bus through the digestive tract of the space cloud would have been harder, but whatever. Spock joining minds with the space cloud was another element that felt straight out of TOS.
            The episode begins with the Enterprise encountering a cloud of both energy and matter that is in the process of engulfing an unoccupied planet. As they watch the planet starts breaking down inside the cloud as if being consumed. This would be nothing more than an interesting note except for the fact that the cloud is headed towards a planet with 82 million people on it! Shooting it doesn't work so Uhura warns the governor of the next planet it its way and Kirk tries blasting the cloud with phasers. The phasers don't work so the next obvious course of action is the let the cloud consume the Enterprise. Wait, really? Yup, and inside things are even worse. It appears the clouds is made of mostly anti-matter and the strain of keeping the shields up is taking all their power.
            As they move deeper it becomes apparent that they are inside a solar system sized organism that is consuming planets as food. To solve their own fuel problem Scotty convinces Kirk to blast of a chunk of the enormous creature to use to regenerate the anti-matter engines. Strangely Scotty also talks about them having matter engines, but whatever. The plan works, but they only have a few minutes now before the cloud starts eating the populated planet. The only choices left are destroy the ship in an effort to stop the cloud and have Spock try an mindmeld. Kirk decides to try both and luckily for all of them the cloud turns out to be friendly and agrees to not eat anymore planets with people on them.

            Review: This one is definitely on the scifi side of things more than action and that may weight the episode down more than would be ideal. The shortness of the episode was great in this case, had it been an hour it may well have scored lower.

6 out of 10