Star Trek: The Animated Series S1E03 – One Of Our Planets Is Missing
With One of Our Planets Is Missing, The Animated Series keeps leaning into the science fiction adventure angle that made Star Trek unique in the first place, this time with an “intelligent space cloud” that’s on course to chow down on an entire planet. If you’ve got echoes of The Doomsday Machine – with a side of Obsession and The Immunity Syndrome – you’re not wrong; but instead of a mechanised menace, we’re dealing with a curious yet destructive life form with an appetite big enough to snack on the entire Mantilles colony.
The episode kicks off with the Enterprise encountering this massive cloud, which has the appetite (and maybe the obliviousness) of a giant cosmic toddler. It’s a high-stakes scenario: they’ve got to save the planet before its millions of inhabitants—including, in a neat little callback, a young governor named Bob Wesley, whom we last saw in The Ultimate Computer—end up as an intergalactic appetiser. It’s a premise that’s simple but effective, capturing Star Trek’s knack for mixing high-stakes action with ethical quandaries.
Speaking of ethics, One of Our Planets Is Missing really leans into the series’ philosophical side. Faced with the dilemma of having to kill the cloud to save the planet, Kirk and crew are forced to explore every alternative before committing to violence. Spock’s decision to mind-meld with the cloud (yes, a giant space cloud) might sound a bit out there, but it’s a classic Trek move, balancing the show’s dedication to peaceful solutions with its adventurous spirit.
This episode also marks the first time we see some of the new Animated Series crew members doing more than just filling seats on the bridge. Lieutenant Arex, the three-armed navigator, and M’Ress, the feline communications officer, each get a few lines, helping establish them as part of the Enterprise’s regular crew. While they don’t get major character moments just yet, their inclusion adds a welcome layer of diversity to the Enterprise bridge, something the animated format was free to explore.
Once again, the voice cast brings the tension to life, making it feel like the Enterprise really is up against an unimaginable cosmic threat, thanks mostly to Leonard Nimoy who gets the lion’s share of the dialogue. The episode is a solid reminder that The Animated Series delivers the same moral stakes and character drama that made the original series great, even when the threats are as outlandish as a ravenous sentient cloud.
One of Our Planets Is Missing is classic Star Trek at its core. It’s got the grand “save-the-day” stakes, a focus on diplomacy over destruction, and even a mind-meld thrown in for good measure. And in true Trek form, it leaves us with a little hope that even the biggest, strangest alien threat out there might just need understanding, not annihilation.
