Star Trek: The Animated Series (TV Series) The Counter-Clock Incident (1974) User Reviews

Before Benjamin...

[Xstal · 7/10 · 28 February 2022]

Inverted, inverse, reversed and opposite, facing, opposing, back to front and conflicted - time runs anti-clockwise as the Enterprise parallels to another universe and puberty is rediscovered.

Bad science, good message

[Fluke_Skywalker · 6/10 · 18 March 2017]

Plot; While on a mission to take Commodore Robert April--the Enterprise's first commander--to his retirement ceremony, Kirk and his crew are pulled into an alternate universe where time goes in reverse.

Wonky science aside (I'm no Sir Isaac Einstein, but even I know none of this adds up), this is a semi-somewhat-kinda compelling episode that ultimately delivers a good message about ageism and our tendency to undervalue the hard earned wisdom won through experience.

• Once again James Doohan is MVP, voicing four different characters.

• In this alternate universe, people are born fully grown. Ouchie.

• This was the last episode of ST:TAS.

While this one does NOT fit in with the rest of the Trek canon, it is one of the better shows in the series.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 21 April 2015]

Much of what occurs in this final episode of the "Star Trek" violates what you'll later see in series such as "Star Trek: Enterprise" as well as the movie "Star Trek: First Contact". For example, the first captain of Enterprise is Captain April--and they also say this same ship, NCC-1701, is the first Federation ship with warp technology. My advice is to just ignore all this....get over it and just watch. What you'll see is a reasonably interesting but, once again, horribly animated show.

The Enterprise is transporting Mr. April and his wife. April had been the first commander of Enterprise and his wife had served as the ship's doctor. They're old and awaiting retirement. However, en route to their 'decommissioning' ceremony, the ship is sucked into an opposite universe--one where folks are born old and progress to infancy! And so, the entire crew is growing younger and younger and it's up to April to command the ship back to our reality. Quite the coincidence that he happened to be aboard, huh?!

This is not a brilliant episode by any SANE standard. But it is interesting and despite it's excremental animation, it's a decent place to end the "Star Trek" animated show.

An Interesting Conclusion

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 2 April 2017]

I don't know if there is any science that supports what happened here, but there are good intentions all around and a solid message. By trying to do good, the Enterprise cause some serious damage and has to find a way out of it. An alien vessel is heading into a nova and they try to stop it, not realizing that they were on a necessary trip. We have a preposterous solution, but every episode of this animated series was preposterous.

The End of the 5 Year Mission

[Samuel-Shovel · 5/10 · 1 February 2019]

In "The Counter-Clock Incident", on the way to a retirement ceremony for the original Captain of the Enterprise, the ship is pulled into an alternate universe where everything works backwards, even aging. As the crew begins to grow younger, this mist figure out how to return to their own univerybefore they're Benjamin Buttoned out of existence.

This episode is... confusing. The idea itself isn't too bad but nothing really lines up with Star Trek lore, nor does the explanation of the science occurring ever really hold any water. It's not the worst episode for the series to go out on though. This how we see the end of their original 5 year mission.

Dumb ending

[thewaiteriscoming · 1/10 · 24 June 2019]

The main reason I'm writing this review it's for the decision made at the end where it supposed to be Noble that the guy chose to go back to his original age of 75 because he had lived such a good and fulfilling life. But I thought if I was given a second chance to be young again I wouldn't want to redo the life that I did I would want to make a sequel to the life I already did and live so well. But instead of doing that he goes and and him and his wife get old again. Dumb. Also the science in this is ridiculous. I mean unless time in the reverse Universe went faster than time in our universe how would they have turned your children so quickly? Unless they were in the reverse Universe for years that would have never happened or in less than reversed Universe win at a faster time backwards then our universe does going forward. I mean I could see the whole thing being a matter of months before they got out but not years or decades that would have then required for them to revert to Children since most of them were several decades old.

No that's not how it works!!!

[Original_Acrobat · 3/10 · 13 September 2023]

If everything was exactly running in reverse HOW did they freaking age down so damn quick? It's not like they were there for 30 years. Time just flowed backwards. Also also... no one is giving birth right? So what? The people rise from the ground age backwards and crawl up inside someone? Do they destroy space if they go UNDER warp 10. This episode makes no sense and creates soooo many questions and now most consider the animated series as canon then what the hell does it say about future treks into the reverse universe. They can't make rules only to throw them out the window literally minutes later.

Use of unreasonable gimmicks

[cashbacher · 5/10 · 4 May 2020]

When an alien vessel passes them going at over warp 30, the Enterprise crew realizes that it is heading directly for a supernova. After communication gains nothing, the Enterprise locks a tractor beam onto the ship. While the connection slows the ship down, it does nothing but drag the Enterprise into the supernova at an unreasonable warp factor. Once they pass through the exploded star, the crew of the Enterprise realizes that they have entered an alternate universe where time flows backward. People are born old and then regress to infancy when they die. This has the same effect on the Enterprise crew, as they begin the de-age. Fortunately, the aged Commodore Robert April, the first commander of the Enterprise and his wife are aboard the Enterprise. April and his wife get younger, but they retain their abilities to pilot the ship when all others return to infancy and no longer have the knowledge to carry out their duties. They bring the Enterprise back to their home universe and are able to restore them to their normal age using the transporter. The idea of time traveling backwards in this manner has been used in other contexts, but it always seems to take the appearance of a gimmick. The complexity of someone growing younger and smaller, with the need to shed mass, makes it absurd. Finally, the crew is restored using the stored transporter patterns, in this case the transporter would have to add significant mass, which would also be an exceedingly difficult operation. The transporters are designed to precisely duplicate mass, not add or subtract to it.