"Beyond the Farthest Star" is the pilot episode and series premiere of the animated American science fiction television series Star Trek. This series premiere episode first aired in the NBC Saturday morning lineup at 10:30 a.m. on September 8, 1973, seven years to the day after the series premiere of the live action series which started the franchise. It was written by American author and script writer Samuel A. Peeples who had also written the Original Series second pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before". In this episode, the Enterprise crew must contend with a malevolent non-corporeal alien entity that has taken control of the ship and tries to force them to help it escape the massive gravity well of a dead star. Plot While exploring on the outermost rim of the galaxy, the Federation starship Enterprise is pulled into the orbit of a dead star. Trapped there, the crew discovers that there is a massive derelict 300,000,000-year-old pod ship trapped with them as well. Captain Kirk beams aboard the huge starship with a boarding party that includes First Officer Spock, Chief Medical Officer Dr. McCoy and Chief Engineer Scott, where they learn it was once home to an insectoid race. They also learn from a prerecorded message that the ship had become almost completely controlled by a malevolent entity seeking to escape the dead sun and travel to other worlds. The ship's crew created an isolated chamber that the entity did not control, and from there recorded the message and then had their ship self-destruct rather than let it be used by the entity. The entity begins to pierce into the isolated chamber where the Enterprise party is and beams back with them. Infiltrating the workings of the ship, it disables the self-destruct mechanism, but Spock has placed the navigation console inside a static shield, so it cannot steer the ship. Instead, it uses the ship's systems to threaten the crew's lives and thereby coerce Kirk to navigate the ship according to its orders. Kirk flies the Enterprise toward the dead star in what appears to be a suicide run, but in actuality is a slingshot maneuver for escaping its massive gravity. The entity believes the ship will crash and be destroyed and so flees, with the Enterprise successfully escaping both it and the dead star. Broadcast and streaming This episode was first broadcast on September 8, 1973 on