By 
Title: One Of Our Planets Is Missing
Airdate: 9/22/1973
Plot Summary
An enormous cloud is eating planets. The Enterprise must find a way to stop before it starts eating populated planets. They must destroy it but should they?
Risk Is Our Business
Kirk basically says we need to spot the cloud and then just asks either Bones or Spock for advice and then takes it. He does however take the anti-matter down with Scotty to save the ship.
Logical
Spock is the first one to realize this cloud is alive. He uses his touch telepathy to communicate with the cloud and get it to understand it’s hurting beings. Of course he does this without actually touching the cloud. To the show’s credit, they say he needs touch but given the size and using some technobabble bullshit, he is able to do the mind meld. I appreciate the attempt to address the limitation.
He’s Dead Jim
McCoy is able to use his medical knowledge to help them navigate this being. He also recommends not telling the planet to avoid mass panic.
Helm Sluggish Captain
Sulu pilots the ship and comments here and there on things they see on the screen.
Yes. That’s the butthole at the top.
Hailing Frequencies Open, Sugar
Uhura is able to keep communications open to Mantilles. She also reports the situation on the rest of the ship when they get rocked around. She also puts the images of Earth on the screen when Spock/Cloud is seeing what’s going on. At one point she shows a scene from the animated version of Lassie, another show Scheimer was producing.
My Wee Bairns
Scotty has to nurse power and is able to put an anti-matter charge into the shields. This is not possible but ehhhh… whatever. He does however come up with the idea of using the planet chunks and getting some anti-matter villi to recharge the engines.
Three Arms Are Better Than Two, ya Fuzzy Face
Arex does a lot of navigating and commenting on the size of the cloud.
Getting Animated
Bob Wesley makes a return. He’s left Starfleet and is now the governor of Mantilles.
Technobabble
We do get a little nod to the idea of matter and anti-matter will annihilate each other if they come in contact with each other. We also get a nice look at the engine room that we could never see on the show. I actually liked their take on the look of it.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
This is a pretty good, if typical, episode of Trek. It has element of the Doomsday machine as well as the Horta in Devil In The Dark. It turns out the thing doesn’t mean to kill planets or at least beings on the planets but everything is so small to it, it has no idea. This is great classic Trek themes, try to communicate and come to an understanding instead of just “kill the monster.”
It’s also unintentionally hilarious. At one point they realize they are in the stomach. They are able to see path and Kirk comments that they only have one way out. At this point I swear they meant they were going to get shit out of the cloud.
But thankfully it never gets that far and instead does a nice job of creating a moral dilemma. Kirk will kill the cloud if it means saving Mantilles to Spock’s objection. But he’s pretty conflicted about. Spock for his part does carry out Kirk’s orders but is able to save the day by communicating with the cloud and convincing it to leave.
It was great to see Bob Wesley again. We last saw him on The Ultimate Computer. Little touches like that are pretty good.
They were able to use the tech solution to not only reach the cloud but helpfully also put his mind-call on speaker phone.
Eventually the cloud became Spock, so to speak, so it could truly understand what’s going on. It makes the decision to leave the galaxy and not chow down on any other planets.
Overall, this is a pretty good episode. It has all the classic Trek tropes and even though Kirk is prepared to kill it, they end up finding a better way. I can’t say it stands out over other episodes that have gone down this road but I appreciate the effort. Especially these days with NuTrek. It’s really superior to any of that crap.
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