I am beginning to sense the trend that I think will follow through the rest of The Animated Series. This episode is actually pretty cool — but at twenty-four minutes (or thereabouts) it just feels rushed. Plot is jammed in your face; conflicts arise, they are resolved, in comes a new conflict. There is little time to ruminate on implications and no time to allow a realistic response from the characters that we know so well from the three seasons of TOS. (Many of these animated shows are adapted scripts originally intended for the live action show.) So, in all, a somewhat disappointing enterprise. C’est la vie.
This episode is quite fun, though, in that it is about a humongous cloud that eats planets. The Enterprise enters through the mouth and, I kid you not, is searching for a way out the other end. (They get trapped in the intestines, though.) One Vulcan mind-meld (or intestines-meld) later and the problems are solved. But there is a surprising scene concerning the decisions of an inhabited planet and its attempts to select who will be ark-ed away to safety. Another example of a bit of “heavy”-ness on a Saturday Morning cartoon show. Ah, the early 70s were a strange time indeed.
