10 Essential Star Trek: The Animated Series Episodes You Must See

10. Beyond The Farthest Star

To quote Julie Andrews whenever she and the kids sit down to binge-watch Star Trek: "Let's start at the very beginning." Not only does it make sense to choose the first instalment of The Animated Series to commence your must-see viewing, it is also a very good episode.

First broadcast precisely seven years after The Man Trap (except in Los Angeles over concerns about screen time regulations for George Takei who was running for office there in 1973), Beyond the Farthest Star is pure sci-fi, and classic Trek, with all the familiar intrigue and action throughout. Adding to this is the scope afforded by the new medium, immediately evident in the spectacular design of the ancient alien craft encountered by the Enterprise. Although Beyond the Farthest Star arguably fails to explore in much depth the ethical and emotional dilemma at its core, leaving its conclusion a little glib, it is most definitely worth a watch.

The episode also notably introduced 'life support belts' to the franchise, an EV device that created a forcefield around the user, along with the first fully alien alien in the guise of multi-limbed Edosian, lieutenant Arex (later joined by Caitian, lieutenant M'Ress). Whilst the use of life support belts over EV suits doesn't seem to have caught on — one power failure in a vacuum and you'd know why — personal forcefields have received nods in live-action, and we've seen the use of individual subspace forcefields in episodes such as Star Trek: The Next Generation's Timescape.