One of Our Planets Is Missing. Great title!
Classic Star Trek. A giant, previously unidentified, living organism devours worlds. First, the crew must realize it's a living being. Subsequently the crew must find a way to communicate with the being. In a classic Star Trek manner, they find a way of peaceful coexistence. It all was some sort of cultural misunderstanding. Countless episodes in all shows of the franchise had similar plots. Last example is Discovery's season 5 but The Immunity Syndrome from TOS is also kind of similar. Especially given the role Spock plays in both The Immunity Syndrome and One of Our Planets Is Missing. It also features a lot of techno babble, questionable theories and pure speculation. The execution is rather boring. Given the total freedom of an animated series, it's rather strange that most scenes play on the bridge. And that's a dull place to be honest. Only the scenes showing the Enterprise within the cloud thing are memorable.
For a story about an intelligent planet-eating space cloud, this is pretty boring. There's a lot of crazy outer space science that Spock and Scotty come up with, complete shots-in-the-dark theories, that all happen to be spot on. The cloud ends up changing it's mind about eating a populated planet because Uhuru shows it some photo albums.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2017-07-14T15:04:33Z
[5.9/10] Wasn’t a big fan of this one. It’s basically a mashup of various stories Star Trek has done before. The sentient cloud threatening to travel from planet to planet is right out of “Obsession.” The giant organism in space that may or may not be alive and only responds to antimatter is the same as “The Immunity Syndrome.” And Spock mind melding with creatures they can’t otherwise communicate with works for everything from the horta to NOMAD to the Medusan. It makes the whole episode feel pretty rote.
What’s good about it, then? Well, for one thing, I like Kirk’s sensitivity but decisiveness here. There’s moral questions raised about killing an intelligent lifeform, but when pressed about destroying the cloud before it destroys a planet, he talks about what one life is worth vs. eighty million lives down there. He doesn’t relish it, but his considerations of the governor of Antilles and his daughter helps humanize the conflict.
There’s also some nice design work. Again, the animation is pretty stiff all around, but the swirling reds once the Enterprise is inside the cloud creature is pretty cool. It has a real Fantastic Voyage quality to it.
Otherwise, the episode spends a lot of time dragging out Spock’s meld with the cloud and it learning that there are other lives. It’s a cool enough concept, but there’s so much stalling and the ticking clock so cliché that it doesn’t have much force. Overall, it’s a big bout of repetition with only the design work and some interesting moral questions for Kirk to recommend it.