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TAS · SEASON 11×01

Beyond the Farthest Star

NOMADIC PICK · HISTORIC PICKStar Trek returns, now animated.
FIRST SHOWN (US)
8 September 1973
ON
NBC
STARDATE
5221.3
DIRECTED BY
Hal Sutherland
PRODUCTION NO.
22004

WRITTEN BYWritten by Samuel A. Peeples

IN BRIEF

SPOILER-FREE

Drawn to a dead star, the Enterprise finds an alien ship some 300 million years old, and something aboard it has been waiting a very long time for company.

SYNOPSIS

SPOILERS
Red alert: the full plot, ending included. Haven't watched yet?REVEAL SYNOPSISHIDE SYNOPSIS

Strange emissions draw the Enterprise to a dead star with an enormous gravitational pull, where the crew find a huge, ancient vessel in orbit. Built from linked pods, it is around 300 million years old. Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scotty board it wearing life-support belts and learn that its insect-like builders had been struggling to contain a malevolent, bodiless entity. Released by the visitors, the being follows them back and takes over the Enterprise, seizing its systems and threatening the crew unless Kirk steers the ship away from the dead star and out into the galaxy. Kirk turns the creature's own fear against it. He sets a slingshot course straight towards the star, and the entity, convinced that the ship is about to be destroyed, abandons it. The Enterprise breaks free of the star's pull, leaving the creature stranded behind it, pleading with the crew not to leave it alone.

DID YOU KNOW?

  1. 01The first episode of The Animated Series, broadcast on NBC on 8 September 1973, exactly seven years after the original series premiered.
  2. 02Writer Samuel A. Peeples had also written “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, the original series' second pilot.
  3. 03Marks the first appearance of navigator Lt Arex, and the debut of the life-support belts, which surround the wearer with a protective force field.
SOURCES WE CHECKED