Production Order Group Viewing 2018

[Henoch]

That Engineering Core hatch seems like a poor design. What was Scotty doing in there, anyway?

Adding this engineering area to the above engine room pics, the lighted floor squares on the left might be directly over the square lights in the tube cathedral, putting the engineering core running vertical next to the tube cathedral. Also, there's a right angle tube in the left foreground which might connect with the vertical glass tube in the TAS engine room. Just playing connect the dots. Hmm.

 

[Poltargyst]

The Survivor

McCoy has a daughter!

Nurse Chapel makes an appearance! Nice to see you, Christine.

Winston turns into an angry squid and takes out Kirk, then takes his identity! Why that shifty, identity-stealing alien!

The crew is supposed to believe entering the Romulan Neutral Zone is safe because a civilian didn't detect any hostile ships a week ago???? That's the best justification Winston-squid could come up with? And the crew buys it????

Who is this Lt. M'Ress Kirk addresses? And who's that orange guy at the helm who never gets a line?

Looking for an alien who can look like any crewman reminds of the salt vampire.

McCoy-squid: "Yes, but, my dear, if he doesn't want you and he has asked you to forget him, then I suggest you take that as an honest concern for you and do it. Forget Winston. " Whoa, dude, that advice is way harsh.

In the scene where Kirk and Spock go to talk to McCoy, McCoy has full Commander's stripes. Congratulations to McCoy on his promotion.

Lt. McGivers betrays the ship for Khan. Lt. Palamas all but betrays the ship for Apollo until Kirk snaps her out of it. I'll say this for Lt. Nored, she didn't betray the ship. But TWICE she could have stunned Winston-squid and failed to do so because she loved Winston. TOS/TAS female crew members are presented as pretty weak and incompetent at their jobs once they've fallen in love. But then, so is Scotty.

Romulans! Oh, I love TOS-era Romulans. Always good to see them. They are still rocking the Klingon designed ships, although now that we don't have to worry about using models, I'd like to have seen them in Birds of Prey.

I like the Romulan commander busting on Kirk for entering the Neutral Zone AGAIN.

ROMULAN [on viewscreen]: You appear to have a propensity for trespassing in the Neutral Zone, Captain Kirk.
KIRK: It was not deliberate, I assure you.
ROMULAN [on viewscreen]: It never is.

Haha. Kirk's in the Neutral Zone again, must be Tuesday.

Oh, hello, Lt. M'Ress. She is a catperson and she works at Communications. No Uhura this episode because Nichelle is being Lt. Nored.

This Venn-Diagramian...er...Vendorian has his own neck pinch.

Have we ever seen the Enterprise fire photon torpedoes and phasers at the same time before? I think not. The magic of animation, no extra special effects costs.

Aw, Nored and Winston-squid are going to hook up. Interspecies love.

Spock: "Perhaps. But then two Doctor McCoys just might bring the level of medical efficiency on this ship up to acceptable levels." Haha. Great burn, Spock! Fun to see Spock and McCoy bickering without animosity.

The Enterprise has certainly been adding alien crewmembers. M'Ress, the orange guy at the helm who never gets a line, the yellow winged bird guy. Members of various Federation planets are graduating Starflee Academy and joining starships in greater numbers now.

In Elaan of Troyius, one volley of photon torpedos renders a Klingon warship helpless. Here, one volley of phasers and photon torpedoes renders a Klingon-style ship helpless. Definitely gives the impression that the Enterprise is more powerful than this class of Klingon warship.

I liked this episode. Good mix of action, mystery, and character interactions. Good to hear from Ted Knight again. Thumbs up.

Alien Watch! Let me draw a Venn diagram.

Season One
The Glommer
Arex*
Retlaw Plant
Agmar and his Phylosian posse
Swoopers
Yellow winged bird guy (Aleek)
Spock's teddy bear with fangs (sehlat)
Green cat thing that sounds like Godzilla (le-matya)
300 million year old alien on viewscreen log
Green energy Redjac wannabe
The Vendorian
Lt. M'Ress

*by request

 

[johnnybear]

Ted Knight was a regular on their Fantastic Voyage show a few years earlier too!
JB

 

[Poltargyst]

Actually, now that I think of it, Nored's hesitation to kill the Vendorian because he looked like Winston is reminiscent of McCoy not wanting to shoot the salt vampire when it looked like Nancy.

 

[Mytran]

Actually, now that I think of it, Nored's hesitation to kill the Vendorian because he looked like Winston is reminiscent of McCoy not wanting to shoot the salt vampire when it looked like Nancy.

Very true - from what we've seen of TAS so far there's probably as much recycling of plot elements in these first few episodes as there were in Season 3, which I remember complaining about on more than one occasion!
Yesteryear is the exception so far and I seem to remember some later stories had some more original content, but we shall see...

 

[Henoch]

Winston's shuttle looks cool. Kirk should keep it.

Spoiler: Winston's Shuttle

Winston's shuttle is still in the Enterprise hangar two episodes later in Mudd's Passion.

 

[johnnybear]

It was indeed!
JB

 

[Mytran]

Taking advantage of a short break in the festive season to post this, but unless anyone else has a burning need to keep up the weekly schedule in this thread, can I suggest that this be it until January?

THE LORELEI SIGNAL

This week we're back to following up on old mysterious happenings I see. Good, honest starship work!

Then...Kirk makes a curious command decision and plays the unknown alien signal on EVERY speaker on the ship? That just seems unnecessary.
Apparently the signal kept blasting out through the speakers all the way to the planet! Once the effects of the signal are known to Uhura (and confirmed with Chapel) why doesn’t she just switch the speakers off? Kirk would probably object but could he really stop her? Then again, maybe she did; it is later established that the signal CAN’T be blocked from the ship, even with deflectors on full.
I suspect malware.

The main plot concerns what are effectively space-vampires - a fairly original plot in most respects!
The landing party act like reckless fools of course (drinking the drugged wine etc) but at least this time there’s a justified reason for doing so (unlike the decision made which got them hypnotised in the first place). And then yet again, Spock’s incredible Vulcan physique saves the day. I suppose Uhura might eventually have led a team down onto the planet, but by then it would have been far too late.
The story is exceptionally dense with content and 19 minutes in Theela gives a massive info dump (I guess all anyone had to do was ask her)
Also, it seemingly never occurred to Theela to ask the Opto-aud where the Enterprise men were before Uhura suggests it. Is Theela really the best leader they have? Then again she’s hardly revelling in her immortality either so her heart may simply not in it any more.
Uhura takes command!!! About time, but is this really what it takes before a woman gets such an opportunity? Regardless, she fulfils her duty well, up until the end where her final negotiated solution with Theela is to hand her a phaser and trust her to destroy the signal transmitter. Um…OK. Nice gesture, but just as reckless as Kirk's initial action which got them into this mess!
And what is the women’s punishment for entrapping and killing shiploads of men for decades if not centuries? Freedom to lives out their lives on a new planet, with chances of hope, new learning and perhaps love.
Does that seem right?
The whole situation (trapping men for breeding stock) reminds me of Wink Of An Eye except at the end of that story the Scalosians were abandoned to face well deserved extinction.
Or, is this “other planet” that Uhura spoke of actually a prison colony?


OTHER THOUGHTS:

• Yellow alert has a really loud siren!
• Theela has a song-activated viewscreen. Must be an Alexa upgrade
• Scotty’s song and the slowest flyby of the ship ever takes 36 SECONDS!!!
  Episode running a little short, was it?
• The ship sets off for Loreli at Warp 7 which is 20 light years away. How long did it take to get there?
• A redshirt called Carver joins the landing party…AND DOES NOT DIE. I applaud this subversion of our expectations and welcome back the return to larger landing parties.
• In order to avoid the pursuing women, the landing party climbs into an enormous urn. Is this really the BEST place to hide?
  And how did the rapidly deteriorating landing party climb into that thing?
• Spock has a wonderful singing voice which he uses to activate the Opto-aud.
• It is revealed that Spock has a telepathic link with Chapel. Maybe this is a result of them sharing consciousnesses in Return To Tomorrow? At least Chapel no longer seems romantically hung up on Spock, that would be pretty lazy writing!
• In the landing party, even Nurse Chapel is armed with a phaser...I guess if you can’t cure ‘em, kill ‘em!
• In Sickbay there are now FOUR beds crammed up against each other so that each member of the landing party can be in the same panning shot.

The rapid ageing thing is obviously reminiscent of a similar situation in The Deadly Years. However, instead of breaking out the adrenaline cure from that episode (which de-aged Kirk nicely) or exploring a new miracle cure from Chapel, Doctor M’Benga or Dr Sancez, an extremely risky Transporter manoeuvre is used to restore them. But just how many decades have they aged exactly? Can’t be more than one or two, the equivalent number of days they’ve been on the planet. And yet Kirk would rather face fatal odds of 99.7 to 1 than live on as an old man of what...50?
Even more interesting that McCoy and others go along with it too!
This opens up a whole can of worms about the power of the machine and effectively means that any dead crew can be beamed up and repatterned into an earlier, living version of themselves. Yes it’s risky but if you’re already dead, so what? And once they’ve worked the kinks out of the process this should be a standard procedure!
Finally, Kirk also seems to retain a memory of the whole affair which is odd if the Transporter “re-patterned” him back to an earlier version. If a person can be restored to their youthful self with all their former memories intact then they have casually discovered immortality.

This casually egregious use of existing Treknology is just the sort of simplified Trek that everyone was worried about when the series made the move to a Saturday morning cartoon.

 

[Henoch]

At least Chapel no longer seems romantically hung up on Spock, that would be pretty lazy writing!

Spoiler: Looking Ahead

Obviously, you haven't looked ahead two episodes.

The ship sets off for Loreli at Warp 7 which is 20 light years away. How long did it take to get there?

1. Captain's log, stardate 5483.7. The Enterprise is en route through an unfamiliar sector of space where a series of Earth Federation ships have disappeared mysteriously during the last a hundred and fifty years. Recent joint discussions with the Klingon and Romulan Empires have revealed that a starship has disappeared in this sector precisely every twenty seven point three four six star years.
2. SCOTT: Ship's log, stardate 5483.8. Engineering Officer Scott in command. We are in orbit around planet two in the Taurean system. Probes and sensors indicate there was once a vast civilization here. Lovely. Lovely. However, life readings are sparse and concentrated. Captain Kirk is beaming down with a scouting party to investigate.

Based on the Stardates, only 0.1 Stardate has passed which if one assumes 1000 Stardates is one solar year, then about 2.7 hours. To make 20 light years in that time, the ship's Warp 7 speed was 7.4 lys/hour or about 65,000c! Those guys really wanted to get to that planet of pretty women in a hurry. Men showing off in their hot rods.

 

[Commishsleer]

This opens up a whole can of worms about the power of the machine and effectively means that any dead crew can be beamed up and repatterned into an earlier, living version of themselves. Yes it’s risky but if you’re already dead, so what? And once they’ve worked the kinks out of the process this should be a standard procedure!
Finally, Kirk also seems to retain a memory of the whole affair which is odd if the Transporter “re-patterned” him back to an earlier version. If a person can be restored to their youthful self with all their former memories intact then they have casually discovered immortality.

This casually egregious use of existing Treknology is just the sort of simplified Trek that everyone was worried about when the series made the move to a Saturday morning cartoon.

Didn't they use this solution in a TNG episode too?

 

[Poltargyst]

The Lorelei Signal

Who's that orange guy at the helm who never gets a line?

Last week I noted how the women of the crew are often presented as weak in TOS and TAS. Here's the antidote for that: an episode where the women save the day! Nice to see Uhura and Chapel working together, actually getting to do technical things to solve the problem. A Star Trek first! About time the women did something useful around here.

Uhura takes command! Bad ass! Senior Lieutenant, huh? Is she the highest ranking woman on the ship? I guess so. Never really thought about it before.

Nichelle and Majel doing double voice duty this episode. They are the only female actors, so we only get to hear Uhura and Christine from the female crew members, and only two of the Taureans.

These guys should be used to premature aging now.

Seems dangerous to me for the men for Uhura to just blast the urn they were in.

The Naked Time...
KIRK: We can balance our engines into a controlled implosion.
SCOTT: If you wanted to chance odds of ten thousand to one, maybe, assuming we had a row of computers working weeks on the right formula.

Errand of Mercy...
KIRK: Mister Spock, can we get those two guards? What would you say the odds on our getting out of here?
SPOCK: Difficult to be precise, Captain. I should say approximately 7,824.7 to 1.

The Lorelei Signal...
KIRK: Spock. Can the transporter be programmed to re-pattern us as we were?
SPOCK: Possibly. But the odds against us are ninety nine point seven to one.

99.7 to 1 odds? Pffffft. Piece of cake. Those are way better odds than usual.

I don't know about this business of using the transporter to restore people. You have to be careful in writing not to make the good guys too powerful. It's a plot wrecker. From now on, any time anyone is disfigured, dismembered, sick, we're going to expect them to be run through the transporter and restored. Can it bring people back to life? Run a corpse through the transporter and restore them? People all over the Federation become effectively immortal? That's quite a breakthrough.

I always preferred the idea that the transporter does not actually disassemble anyone but instead is more of a stargate, transporting people whole. That would eliminate some of the transporter shenanigans they will get up to in later Star Treks.

Uhura: "You're more handsome than ever." Whoa! That's pretty forward. Has Uhura's and Kirk's relationship progressed since TOS?

Nice to see the ladies getting to shine for once. Good on Uhura and Chapel for saving the day.

I would have liked to have seen Uhura sitting in the command chair, though.

There were times in TOS where they teased Uhura might be in command, but we didn't get to see it. Now we've seen it.

Now this is a Star Trek story. They solve the problem and help the Taureans and end up friends. Unlike in the tribble episodes where we beam the tribbles over to the Klingons to be slaughtered or in Wink of an Eye where we leave the Scalosians to die. Gotta love a happy Star Trek ending.

Still...are the Taureans, like the Kelvins, going to get off easily? How many men did the Taureans kill over 150 years?

Good story, good to see Uhura and Chapel shine.

Alien Watch! Foxy ladies.

Season One
The Glommer
Arex*
Retlaw Plant
Agmar and his Phylosian posse
Swoopers
Yellow winged bird guy (Aleek)
Spock's teddy bear with fangs (sehlat)
Green cat thing that sounds like Godzilla (le-matya)
300 million year old alien on viewscreen log
Green energy Redjac wannabe
The Vendorian
Lt. M'Ress
Remarkably human-looking Taureans.

*by request
The magic of animation. Surprising how few "remarkably human-looking" aliens we've had so far.

 

[Poltargyst]

Taking advantage of a short break in the festive season to post this, but unless anyone else has a burning need to keep up the weekly schedule in this thread, can I suggest that this be it until January?

Okay. So we're not doing one next week (the week of December 29th), but resume the week of January 5th?

This opens up a whole can of worms about the power of the machine and effectively means that any dead crew can be beamed up and repatterned into an earlier, living version of themselves. Yes it’s risky but if you’re already dead, so what?

This does open up some interesting religious/philosophical questions. Assuming we have souls, if someone dies and you restore them with the transporter, do they have a soul? Does the soul come back from the afterlife to reinhabit the body? Do they become soulless zombies?

 

[Mytran]

Spoiler: Looking Ahead

Obviously, you haven't looked ahead two episodes.

Oh believe me, I know what's in store. I just like to review these episodes based on a "first watch" mindset...more or less

Didn't they use this solution in a TNG episode too?

Yep! Unnatural Selection from season 2. It was bad and silly there as well (and raised all the same questions)

Okay. So we're not doing one next week (the week of December 29th), but resume the week of January 5th?

I'm happy to go with the majority. How busy is everyone?

 

[Henoch]

How busy is everyone?

Two weeks off and bored. I love it.

 

[Mytran]

If anyone wants to post the next review I'll go ahead and join in when I can

 

[Poltargyst]

One Of Our Planets Is Missing

I like the acronym--OOOPIM

Mantilles is the most remote inhabited planet in the Federation. Fascinating.

The orange guy speaks! He has a name! Well, hello, Lt. Arex. Is that a third arm or are you just happy to see us?

It's another planet killer! And it's another big space cloud! This episode has so many callbacks and reusing of ideas from previous episodes. I'm reminded of a lot of different things watching this.

I always loved the big space monster episodes. The doomsday machine, the giant amoeba, the blood sucking space cloud. This episode gives me the same thrill. I used to like Godzilla movies too.

So this cloud travels at warp like the blood sucking cloud. There are natural phenomena that can attain warp speeds.

It's our old friend Bob Wesley, last seen being a dick to Kirk, needlessly insulting him and jumping to conclusions about the Enterprise's erratic behavior.

And so they enter the cloud. Reminds me of going into VGer, though that hasn't happened yet. Could this have been an inspiration?

The cloud is alive! (Um, Jim, it's not the first time you've met a living cloud as you very well know.) (And you've met a planet killer before too. Kirk found the one sufficient, but here's another.)

Poor Bob is going to die. How does it feel to be helpless, Governor Dunsel?

Wow, Arex is really chatty this episode. Guy doesn't speak for six episodes, now you can't shut him up.

So we enter the cloud's mouth, we're travelling through it's intestine, so we're going to leave by it's anus. Nice.

Hey (hey) you (you) get out of my cloud! (Apologies to the Rolling Stones.)

Huh, Kirk and Scotty went back into the cathedral section of engineering. Never saw anyone go back there before. Great plan by Scotty and well executed. Good on ya, Scotty!

The cloud is like Galactus, moving from planet to planet to assuage his never-ending hunger. I take it the cloud doesn't have a Silver Surfer?

Nice callback to Kirk's "I will not kill today" speech.

And a good old fashioned Star Trek moral dilemma. Do we kill what might be an intelligent being to save the people of Mantilles?

Huh, Wesley's kid is 11. He must have had her while he was commanding a starship.

Spock's mind melding with the cloud is reminiscent of his mind melding with the Horta. And Majel's way of speaking as the cloud reminds of the Companion.

I wonder if the cloud couldn't eat uninhabited planets. Or, like Galactus, does she need to eat inhabited planets? It would have been a better ending if they could have offered her an alternate food source.

Oh, a classic Star Trek ending, like Devil in the Dark. We learn that by communicating with what we thought was a monster, we can work things out without having to kill. Very inspiring. This message is one of the things that Star Trek is all about.

Cool episode. I liked it. Like I said, I like the "monsters in space" episodes, Spock's mind meld was cool, and the classic happy Star Trek ending was very inspiring. I'll give it two energy tendrils up.

Alien Watch! My head's in a cloud.

Season One
The Glommer
Arex*
Retlaw Plant
Agmar and his Phylosian posse
Swoopers
Yellow winged bird guy (Aleek)
Spock's teddy bear with fangs (sehlat)
Green cat thing that sounds like Godzilla (le-matya)
300 million year old alien on viewscreen log
Green energy Redjac wannabe
The Vendorian
Lt. M'Ress
Remarkably human-looking Taureans.
The planet-eating, Majel Roddenberry-voiced cloud from another galaxy.

*by request

 

[Henoch]

Huh, Kirk and Scotty went back into the cathedral section of engineering. Never saw anyone go back there before. Great plan by Scotty and well executed. Good on ya, Scotty!

KIRK: We need both the matter and the antimatter engines regenerated.
SCOTT: Matter's no problem. We could beam aboard some of the planet chunks out there. And we can cut a piece of the antimatter villi with the tractor beams and transport it aboard like that.
KIRK: Bring it aboard? If the antimatter touches the inside of the ship or any of us, we'll be blown to bits.
SCOTT: I can rig a force field box that'll hold the villi suspended in the centre. Then I can take it into the antimatter nacelle, put it into the regenerating chamber and release the forcefield by remote control.

I got the impression they were in the "antimatter nacelle" to regenerate the antimatter in the engine engine. This begs the concept that one nacelle is the antimatter nacelle housing the antimatter engine, so then, the other one is the "matter nacelle" housing the matter engine? So, antimatter fuel is produced in the regenerating chamber, then flows down the support pylon into the M/AM something (I guess we can call it the "non-reactor" since "reactor" or "reaction chamber" is never used in TAS but "matter-antimatter generators" were used once - are those the same as the regenerating chambers? hmm), while matter fuel does the same from the other nacelle. Option 1: There, the single M/AM non-reactor makes power (plasma) for the ship which flows back up the pylons to drive the warp engines in each nacelle. In addition (or maybe its the same equipment), the power runs another machine (or generator) that operates the regeneration chambers in each nacelle generating more antimatter and matter fuel. Option 2, there are three M/AM non-reactors (the other two in each nacelle, probably in the fore section with the glowing orange domes) and fuel is pumped all over the ship into all three non-reactors.

TAS keeps us just as confused on how the ship warp drive works as did TOS. I know I took a lot of liberties with the small amount of technobabble, but it feels a little hokey. I'm not a fan of this fuel/power design. But, it basically eliminates the need for large matter and antimatter fuel storage in the ship since the ship makes the fuel on the run. I guess it frees up a lot of space for the bowling alley and olympic pool.

The mid-portion of the nacelle has eight plasma tube sets apparently feeding power to the warp engines. If we assume they used "warp coils" during TOS, then are their eight sets of coils? I guess, who cares.

A key plot item was missed in the above summary, Kirk was going to blow up the ship to kill the cloud monster. He sent Scotty into the engineering core to set the self-destruct mechanism. I'm glad to see that TAS is consistent about setting the self-destruct mechanism in engineering core (as previously used in Beyond The Farthest Star).

 

[Mytran]

ONE OF OUR PLANETS IS MISSING

Happy new year everyone - and what a great story to start 2020 with!
OK, so this episode is a pastiche of a ridiculously high number of Trek tropes and plot elements – and yet, it works!
It is a tense, exciting adventure, touching on many ethical and human elements, ending up being an excellent example of the Star Trek core philosophy; understand your enemy rather than fight them.
I’m a little disappointed that they send the creature back where it came from…isn’t there some uninhabited area of own galaxy where it could have gone to live? Perhaps somewhere towards Klingon space?

This episode has so many callbacks and reusing of ideas from previous episodes. I'm reminded of a lot of different things watching this.

Here's what I noticed:

• A gigantic space creature from another galaxy that eats planets? Doomsday Machine
• A gigantic space creature that is a direct threat to populated planets, the interior of which saps life force energy once you enter it? Immunity Syndrome.
• McCoy’s space psychology skills from Court Martial are used to good effect.
• There’s an explicit callback to in A Taste Of Armageddon when Kirk ruminates on his famous line “I will not kill today”. However, it’s used well in a moment where Kirk contemplates the morality of killing one oblivious creature to save millions of others.
• Spock and Uhura jury rig a mind meld device to communicate with the cloud creature. Good to see her putting her technical skills to good use again, it’s been a long time since Who Mourns For Adonais
• The universal translator from Metamorphosis gets a mention by Uhura and is a key part in the gadget that she and Spock construct.
• The Vulcan “mind touch” from The Infinite Vulcan gets another mention. Did Filmation have some avertion to the term “mind meld” or was this some alternate term for the technique that became popular for a time in the late 2260s?
• Spock swaps bodies with an energy based lifeform to provide it with a fresh perspective on things? Is There In Truth No Beauty

And so they enter the cloud. Reminds me of going into VGer, though that hasn't happened yet. Could this have been an inspiration?

I think TMP mined many ideas from this episode!

• An invading cloud from outside the galaxy which consumes anything in its path
• It’s massive! Arex describes the cloud as being “Twice the diameters of Saturn, Jupiter and Neptune together”. Not quite the absurd “82 AUs" that TMP had for V’ger, but certainly large enough to conceiveably consume Earth sized planets for food.
• Also, given that he’s not human it was jolly nice of him to use Sol planets as a comparison point.
• The Enterprise is forcibly drawn inside, powerless to resist
• While Spock doesn’t state that there’s an object at the heart of the cloud, his revelation that the cloud is a life form is a similarly dramatic beat.
• Spock concocts a plan to kill the cloud creature by using the self destruct, just as Kirk orders Scott to do in TMP
• Unlike TMP, communications hold strong even when Enterprise is in the heart of the cloud.

NEW SETS?
I don’t normally comment on animation production issues, but this seems to be more of a changed premise: specifically, the new style Engine Room (with the big glass tube) that we saw in The Survivor is now significantly smaller! Scotty has to stoop to use the control panel in one scene, then later on he and Kirk tower over the wall consoles.
Either that or Keniclius has been up to his old tricks again.

A key plot item was missed in the above summary, Kirk was going to blow up the ship to kill the cloud monster. He sent Scotty into the engineering core to set the self-destruct mechanism. I'm glad to see that TAS is consistent about setting the self-destruct mechanism in engineering core (as previously used in Beyond The Farthest Star).

I must admit I missed this; a definite plus for Treknology in TAS

OTHER THOUGHTS:

• Another strong start to the episode - a cosmic cloud on the outer fringe of the galaxy and Enterprise taking preemptive action
• Hey, it’s Commodore Wesley! Kirk says that he “left” Starfleet for the governorship. Guess he took the failure of M5 hard. Kicked upstairs perhaps?
• I wonder what gravitational effects the loss of a planet in the Mantiles system will have?
• Strong human drama stuff with Commodore Wesley choosing who to save from his doomed planet
• Space science! The cloud contains new elements on the periodic table.
• Education! Human anatomy lesson about the small intenstine and villi.
• Ethical considerations about killing the cloud creature! Kirk assumes full responsibility, which is nice of him.
• So, is that tube thing in Engineering some sort of reactor core? Kirk and Scotty are stood starring at it.
• Are there really 2 kilos of antimatter villi in that little box? Scotty made it very clear that the engines would not be able to regenerate with less. Those villi must be made of fairly dense stuff!
• Phasers come out of the teardrop section, just below the Bridge. I think this is the first time we've see this.
• Yet again, Spock’s super powers save the day

This is the 7th episode produced – and also the final one we've seen of the first 7 episodes broadcast. Given how much disc swapping I had to do in our TOS rewatch to keep to production order when using broadcast order discs, this was a most pleasant surprise – I haven’t had to change discs once!

 

[Henoch]

Are there really 2 kilos of antimatter villi in that little box? Scotty made it very clear that the engines would not be able to regenerate with less. Those villi must be made of fairly dense stuff!

Apparently the engines aren't too picky about what kind of matter and antimatter to use; it certainly is not deuterium and anti-deuterium. Hell, the matter was planet space rocks. Shovel in the coal? The villi could be some of those new elements (I think anti-atoms of normal matter, and not very high atomic numbers and atomic weights).

I guess the regeneration chamber breaks everything down to an atomic particle stew of protons, electrons, and neutrons.

 

[Mytran]

THE ANTIMATTER NACELLE
OK, comfortably separate from the episode review itself, here is my take on the implication that one of the main nacelles is for “matter” and the other is for “antimatter”, something which would contradict all of Trek lore up to this point and after!
First, let’s go over the events of the episode itself:

The Enterprise is drawn into the cloud creature and almost immediately experiences a power drain on the shields (energy coming from a M/AM reaction, presumably), after which they waste more antimatter on an antimatter charge then a double one! Then Scott tells Kirk that they only have 21 minutes of energy left due to the excessive use of their antimatter reserves. Ever the impulsive adventurer, Kirk proceeds into the depths of the alien’s digestive system where energy drains are even more intense, until 6 minutes later he realises that Scotty actually had a point – antimatter reserves have dropped below 2KG (meaning they can no longer make more) and they are all screwed.

Although Kirk demands that both the matter and antimatter engines need regenerating, it is clear from Scott’s earlier remarks and his quip about beaming in a chunk of planet to serve as a the “matter” side of the M/AM reaction that lack of antimatter is the main concern.

I guess the regeneration chamber breaks everything down to an atomic particle stew of protons, electrons, and neutrons.

Pretty much this - AKA the “Mr Fusion” approach to nuclear physics

So, it seems that the Enterprise can generate her own antimatter – this is an extremely sensible function IMO! It’s curious that antimatter itself is required to fuel this process, but that’s presumably because energy is required to “flip” the electrons into positrons and energy on board a starship comes from a M/AM reaction.

Antimatter generation IRL is very inefficient but let's say that in Kirk's day the process has been perfected to the point where the energy output from reacting 1KG matter and 1KG antimatter can convert an additional 1.1KG of matter into 1.1KG of antimatter. This is enough to replenish the antimatter reserve and still contribute towards additional power drains from the main M/AM reactor (shields, weapons etc)

The “two anti-kilo” minimum seems odd as logically there should be no minimum amount needed to get this process started, but we have to remember that the ship in the middle of an extremely energy intense situation, so 2KG is presumably what is required to keep the process going under those specific circumstances.

Regardless, the implication is that the ship can usually generate enough antimatter antimatter to meet all its power needs, but is limited as to how much it can store (magnetic bottles are pretty bulky at this time). The problem in this episode was that too much of the antimatter reserves were expended on those AM flashes without sufficient time to replenish them.

I got the impression they were in the "antimatter nacelle" to regenerate the antimatter in the engine engine. This begs the concept that one nacelle is the antimatter nacelle housing the antimatter engine, so then, the other one is the "matter nacelle" housing the matter engine? So, antimatter fuel is produced in the regenerating chamber, then flows down the support pylon into the M/AM something (I guess we can call it the "non-reactor" since "reactor" or "reaction chamber" is never used in TAS but "matter-antimatter generators" were used once - are those the same as the regenerating chambers? hmm), while matter fuel does the same from the other nacelle.

Despite their very different functions though, the nacelle are visually identical which would be odd. In addition, while the "matter" nacelle can suck in interstellar gas to create its fuel, what is powering the antimatter generation engine?

Option 1: There, the single M/AM non-reactor makes power (plasma) for the ship which flows back up the pylons to drive the warp engines in each nacelle. In addition (or maybe its the same equipment), the power runs another machine (or generator) that operates the regeneration chambers in each nacelle generating more antimatter and matter fuel.

Both the energy to power the antimatter nacelle AND the additional matter needed to convert into antimatter would still have to come from somewhere! True; that extra energy could be transferred from the main M/AM reactor(s) to that one nacelle, but this would make for a very lopsided power grid as the "matter" nacelle would require substantially less.

Option 2, there are three M/AM non-reactors (the other two in each nacelle, probably in the fore section with the glowing orange domes) and fuel is pumped all over the ship into all three non-reactors.

The obvious objection here is that Scotty clearly refers to THE antimatter nacelle (singular).

TAS keeps us just as confused on how the ship warp drive works as did TOS. I know I took a lot of liberties with the small amount of technobabble, but it feels a little hokey. I'm not a fan of this fuel/power design. But, it basically eliminates the need for large matter and antimatter fuel storage in the ship since the ship makes the fuel on the run. I guess it frees up a lot of space for the bowling alley and olympic pool.

True - you would just need tanks for Impulse Power fuel (approximately 7 hours' worth at maximum usage) as well as the antimatter reserves which Kirk recklessly drained in his show of force . Replacing the matter supply tanks is so easy it's laughable (as per Scotty's remarks)

Aside from the above objections, the fact remains that you would end with one nacelle where antimatter is constantly being piped down, mixed with matter and then piped back up, with every conduit having to be magnetically sealed to prevent accidental reactions (i.e. explosions). That's a hugely inflated risk of potential containment breeches simply by virtue of spreading the components out so much. It is far safer and more efficient to keep the dangerous stuff in one location and to keep it heavily shielded instead of inside thin pylons.

For this reason I propose that the "antimatter nacelle" is an informal term used by Starfleet engineers to refer to the antimatter generation system carried on board starships. It is located in the centre of the secondary hull and the nickname comes from its tubular design. This shape is mirrored to an extent by the design of the secondary hull itself is no coincidence, for that part of the ship is literally built around the antimatter generator itself.
In fact, it would not be out of place to call the secondary hull the "third nacelle" or "antimatter nacelle" since that and engineering facilities are so much an essential part of its function.

The term "antimatter nacelle" fell out of favour as the antimatter generator on later ships (starting with the refit-E) became smaller and more compact and the shape no longer resembled nacelles in the same way. Also, 24th century engineers tended to prefer more technically complex terminology for some reason...

Does my theory hold water? Who knows!
But it certainly avoids the whole lop-sided starship scenario