A Trekkie's Unofficial Book Summaries Volume 5 by Geoff Canham - HTML preview

Operation Con Game (George Kashdan)

Spock identifies a planetoid with a breathable atmosphere, indication of intelligent lifeforms, and also a good supply of dilithium. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down and discover that Klingons have made a deal with the native inhabitants and their Grand Qaal of Eulus for the dilithium, and the Klingons beam back to their ship with samples of the dilithium and are expected to return soon with heavy mining equipment. Then Spock notices that his tricorder is saying the dilithium is manufactured and that there are four people with human ancestry in the vicinity. Since the

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other natives are small humanoids, Kirk pulls the mask off of the Qaal’s head and reveals Harry Mudd. Harry points out that conning Klingons out of gold by the use of fake dilithium was no crime under Federation law. Then it is discovered that the fake dilithium explodes violently on impact, and Kirk feels a need to warn the Klingons before an explosion on their ship starts a Federation-Klingon war. Since the Klingons will not respond to his calls, Kirk and Spock beam aboard the Klingon vessel, leaving McCoy to guard Mudd. But Mudd uses the native inhabitants to overcome McCoy, and he then flies off with his gold, intending to “lose” McCoy on an uncharted asteroid. Thanks to a warning from Mudd, the Klingons apprehend Kirk and Spock, but after Spock demonstrates the explosive capability of the fake dilithium, the Klingons are grateful for the warning. The Enterprise captures Mudd’s ship by means of the tractor beam, and now Mudd is faced with kidnapping charges. [Timeline: Stardate 3304.7]

Gold Key also had a series called The Enterprise Logs that included collections of the monthly stories plus a few short “filler” stories summarized below.

Kirk’s Confidential Psychofile! (author unknown) Kirk was the youngest person in his class when he entered Starfleet Academy, although a number of his fellow cadets thought he’d got a “free pass” because of his late father, Col. Benjamin Kirk. However, Kirk handled the situation well and went on to be given captaincy of the Enterprise. En route to the transporter rendezvous point for the Enterprise, Scott is impressed by Kirk’s knowledge of the transport vehicle’s mechanics. Kirk went on to be among the most decorated Star Fleet commanders.

A Page From Scotty’s Diary (author unknown)

Scotty has a date with the singer, Blanda Lane, and he is really impressed with the Hyper Drive Sports Track she has. He goes into raptures over the vehicle’s engine, and the date ends soon after with Blanda declaring that she has a headache. But Scotty has had the time of his life with the engine’s super-compressor, so he’s not put out.

Spock’s Confidential Psychofile! (author unknown) As a mixed-race youth, Spock suffered a lot of prejudice from the Vulcan children, and his father, Sarek, tried to help him overcome it by developing a mindmeld between the two of them, but Spock found that painful. It did, however, enable Spock to realize when his father had been injured in an accident and Spock was able to come to Sarek’s rescue. Spock completed the Kahs-Wan ritual, and was betrothed to T’Pring, and it was that link and the oncoming of Pon Farr that clouded his judgement one time that the Enterprise was in danger, but that led to the rescue of Kirk.

From Sputnik to Warp Drive (author unknown)

Sputnik was launched in 1957 which led on to the first Moon landing and then the Space Shuttle which led to the design of the DY-100 sleeper ship. Moon bases were functional by year 2000 and the solar system was opened up to manned exploration by the invention of the ion impulse-drive. Ephraim Cochrane demonstrated the warp drive in 2050 which then helped fight off the attack by the Kzinti. Exploration of the local area of the galaxy, spearheaded by the S.S. Bonaventure (lost on its third voyage) showed that there were many extraterrestrial races and led

 

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to the formation of the United Federation of Planets. That in turn led to the development of more advanced starships under the auspices of Starfleet, and a new era of exploration.

 

Malibu Comics

 

Hostage Situation (DS9 – Mike W. Barr)

The Klingon bird-of-prey, Khitomer’s Revenge, docks at the station because of a medical emergency with a prisoner, Mard. But once aboard the station, Mard breaks his bonds and takes Dr. Bashir hostage and erects a medical forcefield to protect against attack until his demands are met. Sisko has Kira hack into the Klingon ship’s computer and finds that Captain K’Leht’s sister and her husband were two of Mard’s victims, and Sisko says he believes K’Leht wanted Mard dead before they got to Qo’noS. When Mard hears that, he tries to charge at K’Leht but knocks himself out on the forcefield. Sisko tells K’Leht that he’ll report his findings to authorities on Qo’noS if Mard doesn’t arrive there alive and, when Bashir starts embellishing his role in the events, Miles O’Brien says they should have left Bashir as a hostage for a while longer. [Timeline: Stardate 43256.9]

 

DC Comics

 

These three stories follow on from "The Next Generation #4, 29 December 1990 (UK Edition); #3, April 1988 (US)" which is on page 40 Volume 4 in this ‘summaries’ series.

Q's Day (TNG - Mike Carlin)

On the battle bridge section, Q finds his power fading and is overpowered by Picard. On the saucer section, the crew have no idea where they are, and then the multiple Qs turn up. Tasha Yar discovers there is a stowaway onboard, namely Reglech, who used to be one of her tormenters at the colony she grew up in, and seemingly is there to continue his old habits, but Tasha overpowers him and arrests him instead of killing him. The Qs are impressed by that and apologize for the actions of the aberrant Q and return the saucer section from the Q realm to regular space, where it joins up with the battle bridge section. Meanwhile, Q had got hold of Geordi's phaser, and as Picard tries to recover it, Q fires the phaser and accidentally kills Geordi. [Timeline: Stardate 42128.3]

Q Affects (TNG - Mike Carlin)

Data has to be forcibly restrained from killing Q, although death is what Q wants at this point, rather than be a "puny human". Dr. Crusher examines Geordi and finds that there is some life still in him (Troi senses it too). While Reglech and the other colonists are taken to the brig, Geordi and Q are taken to sickbay. Reglech uses the other colonists to overcome the guards and escape from the brig in order to go after Q. Reglech is initially disarmed by Tasha in sickbay, but he has a second phaser and threatens to end Geordi's tenuous hold on life with it. But Data walks in at that moment and goes to stop Reglech. Reglech turns his phaser on Data but Q, having seen

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how selfless and forgiving the humans had been in protecting him (even from himself), throws himself between Data and Regleth, absorbing the phaser blast. Instead of dying, he is restored to his powers because the Q realm now sees him as bringing the best attributes of humanity to them. As another "thank you", Geordi is restored fully to life. [Timeline: Stardate 41753.3]

Here Today (TNG - Mike Carlin)

Data had found that he had information on how to access the legendary world called Faltos, and he leads the Enterprise there. They are welcomed to the planet but then informed that there is no way to leave the planet and so the plan is to incorporate the crew into the mixed-race inhabitants and dismantle the Enterprise. That doesn't go down well with the Enterprise crew, and Data senses a similarity between Bensley (who had first welcomed them to Faltos) and the Crystalline Entity. Data suspects that Dr. Soong had made contact with the Crystalline Entity who had escaped from Faltos, and Soong had taken the knowledge, so Data had hidden within him the knowledge of how to escape. Dr. Crusher and Lieutent Argyle enable Data to gain access to the information, and Picard tells the planet's 3-man world Tribunal that they can have the information to allow them to leave too. However, the tribunal's members do not want to leave, and they don't want to disrupt the rest of the population by allowing them to leave either. Consequently, Data is tasked with getting the Enterprise back to normal space. But, as he's doing that, Bensley mentally accesses Data's files and removes the information about how to access and leave the planet, because Bensley doesn't want other ships to have open access to the place. [Timeline: Stardate 41753.8]

 

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Wildstorm Comics

All of Me (ST-TOS – Tony Isabella & Bob Ingersoll) After taking some Orion pirates captive, Enterprise gets an urgent call from Starfleet Command to assist Armand St. John on Pollux II. Spock knew St. John from his Academy days, and his opinion of him as a mercurial and potentially violent man is borne out on arrival at Pollux II when they find that everyone there, whether male or female, of whatever race, all looked like St. John. He claimed to have invented a “Gatherer” that brought examples of himself from other universes, and together they were going to take command of the galaxy. However, Spock had his doubts about what St. John had done and ultimately proves that the Gatherer was only producing the others from St. John’s imagination (which didn’t make them any less dangerous). Some of them had already invaded and taken command of the Enterprise, except that Scotty had hastily rewritten all the computer code with a computer language he invented on the spot, and locked everyone out of all systems, and only life support is functioning. Spock speculates that the power behind St. John’s invention came from elsewhere, which seems to be proven when a mindmeld of Spock on St. John convinces him that it’s all fake and everyone, except the Enterprise crew and the original St. John, vanishes. A deflated St. John is taken into custody, and the Enterprise heads off, but then they get visited by Djinn, looking like a giant malicious genie. He says he hates humans and is working to destroy them. He claims that diverting the Enterprise by getting them to go to Pollux II had stopped them discovering something important. That may have been true, but Spock speculates that Djinn is probably from a race that is fading, and he is just putting on a brave face before humanity overtakes them. [Timeline: Stardate 6678.4]

Bloodline (ST-TOS - Ian Edgington)

The science vessel Feynman had been forced to land on an asteroid-like body which has the space equivalent of an ocean ‘black smoker’ that they’d been investigating, and the Enterprise was responding to a distress call. Due to the radiation affecting transporters, a team including Kirk, McCoy, and Chekov take a specially adapted shuttle down. Unfortunately, they weren’t prepared for the “Crawlers”, a native pack animal that attacks the team and the shuttle. While the team escape to the Feynman, the shuttle is rendered inoperable. The leader of the research team on the Feynman is David, Kirk’s nephew, and he is far from happy to see Kirk there, as he felt Kirk’s fame overwhelmed the memory of his late parents. The chip on his shoulder gets dislodged when McCoy informs him of how Kirk had been forced to watch his own son killed by Klingons. They all ride back up to the Enterprise on a large slab of rock propelled by EVA suit thrusters, but part of the rock with David on it starts breaking loose, and David is too scared to release his grip on the harness and grab Kirk’s hand. Fortunately, the Enterprise is able to beam them all aboard. One month later, Kirk visits his brother Sam’s grave, and David, now reconciled with Kirk, finds him there and tells him that Starfleet had organized a better-equipped mission back to the anomaly, and he would be leaving in an hour. [Timeline: Stardate 9498.3. This was one of six stories in a Wildstorm Star Trek Special comic; the other stories are A Rolling Stone Gathers No Nanoprobes, When the Stars Come A-Calling, Exercise in Futility, The Legacy of Elenor Dain, and The Wake]

The Wake (ST-TOS – Jeffrey Lang)

 

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Scotty comes to visit the bedridden McCoy to toast the memory of Kirk, who had recently died after being recovered from the Nexus, although McCoy was only able to smell the drink because actually drinking it would have adverse effects on him. Scotty had stopped his wanderings and was now working on the new Enterprise E. He said he thought Kirk’s ending had turned out to be far more appropriate than that of being lost in the incident on the Enterprise B. He gives McCoy a holographic image of the bridge crew from the Enterprise A, which McCoy treasures. After Scotty left, McCoy fell asleep and consequently thought that only minutes had passed before Spock arrived. Spock had returned from Romulus to report on his progress to Starfleet Command, although McCoy thought he was getting sentimental over what had happened to Kirk. McCoy gives Spock his drink, but it’s only after Spock had got McCoy to sleep that he actually drinks it in memory of absent friends. [Timeline: year 2371. This was one of six stories in a Wildstorm Star Trek Special comic; the other stories are Bloodline, A Rolling Stone Gathers No Nanoprobes, When the Stars Come A-Calling, Exercise in Futility, and The Legacy of Elenor Dain]

Embrace the Worf (TNG – Christopher Golden & Tom Sniegoski) The planet Enoch-7 had been known for its peaceful citizens, but recently violence has been breaking out. The Enterprise is sent to assist but arrives as bombs go off around the planet. A team of Riker, Data, Worf, Deanna Troi and Dr. Crusher beam down to meet President Simone. He tells of the inexplicable violence that had developed on the planet, even affecting his military leader, Commander Krane, which resulted in the bomb explosions that the Enterprise had seen from space. Krane seemed to be back to his normal self now, and he talked of being taken over by another entity called Redjac (which Data identifies as the being that had been responsible for Jack the Ripper). By that time, Dr. Crusher, infected by Redjac, had beamed up, and Redjac started to take over the Enterprise, although it could only handle a couple of systems at once. It then moves into the holodeck, recreating an ancient London scenario, similar to what it had known while being Jack the Ripper. Data confronts him as Sherlock Holmes. Meanwhile, Simone has learned that Redjac is on the Enterprise and decides that it must be destroyed, and that the loss of the Enterprise is worth it if it protects the rest of the universe from the creature. Consequently, he has his space force attack Enterprise. Redjac had abducted other crewmembers for its holodeck scenario, including Worf. That proves to be a mistake because after making Worf angry and then Picard getting Worf to regain control, Redjac is facing a formidable enemy that starts to drain him. That gives Geordi time to devise a containment unit and to capture the weakened Redjac. The Enochians request and are granted custody of the contained creature, and they place it on their third moon, where they believe it will be safe forever. Picard hopes they are right but has some doubts. [Timeline: Stardate 47319.2]

Enter The Wolves (TNG – A.C. Crispin & Howard Weinstein) There is to be a peace conference on the station, Vulcan Space Central, in orbit of Vulcan and representatives of the aquatic Legarans (who Sarek had been working with for 54 years) will be attending as observers. Two representatives of the secretive Cardassians, Teljan and Warad, also attend under the pretense of setting up a trade treaty between Cardassia and the Federation. In actuality they are there to drive a wedge between the Legarans and the Federation so that Cardassia can annex Legara for its resources (and they are working on something similar with Bajor). There is also a third Cardassian with them, Lorjek, who is disguised as a Vulcan. Admiral McCoy is there as a representative of Starfleet, and he gets to meet Sarek’s new wife, Perrin.

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Sarek tells the delegates that they should first send a team to Cardassia Prime to learn more about the Cardassians before entering any treaty with them, but then Ambassador Spock arrive and contradicts his father. Perrin considers that very rude of him and tells him so. A coded message is intercepted from someone on the station and some vessel in space. Perrin, who is a linguist, works on interpreting the message and discovers it is a message from Teljan to Lorjek (who nobody in the Federation was aware of yet). As Sarek was involved with talks with the Legarans, Perrin confronts Teljan, only to get herself kidnapped. Warad secretly boards the empty Legaran ship and poisons the water in their travel tanks. At the formal reception with the Legarans aboard the station, Lorjek, who is in disguise, offends the Legarans by wearing an orange outfit, that they consider to be sacrilege. He is captured and exposed as a Cardassian, Teljan escapes to his ship along with Perrin. Spock was prepared for that and destroyed the ship’s engines and towed the ship back. Teljan and Warad both swallow suicide pills, Lorjek had died by being pushed into the Legans’ tank by Teljan. The Legarans tell Sarek that they don’t hold him responsible but there will have to be a 10-year atonement period. However, they couldn’t leave the station immediately because the poisoned water on their ship had to be cleaned out. [Timeline: Stardate 14093.4 – this story was dedicated to the late DeForest Kelley and Leonard Nimoy]

A Rolling Stone Gathers No Nanoprobes (TNG – Andy Mangels & Mike Martin) The planet Lythos Prime, otherwise known as Rockpile, is a Federation mining colony including Horta. Their centennial celebration is going on while they complete mining a load of pergium and other high-grade ores for the Tzenkethi, but then Pr’h’ska (the chief of the Horta team) reports that a large alien vessel was approaching unannounced. It turned out to be a Borg cube, and they had been confused by interference from the kelbonite and other minerals in the planet’s outer layers into thinking that there was some form of carbon-silicon hybrid living underground. The Horta refuse to preemptively attack the Borg who are making their way down through the planet to where the mining was happening. But the human leader of the miners, Nellis, tricks the Borg with a fake carbon-silicon signal to gather where the Horta can offer to lead them to a location where they can beam out. The Borg initially try attacking the Horta, but they soon learn that some things are even futile for the Borg. When it becomes apparent to them that the confrontation will only lead to a rout of the Borg, they accept the Horta’s offer. The centennial celebrations can then resume. [Timeline: Stardate 46918.6, 2 years after the battle at Wolf 359. This was one of six stories in a Wildstorm Star Trek Special comic; the other stories are Bloodline, When the Stars Come A-Calling, Exercise in Futility, The Legacy of Elenor Dain, and The Wake]

The Legacy of Elenor Dain (TNG – Christopher Hinz) Back around Stardate 7521.5, Kirk’s Enterprise had evacuated the colonists from Peeniks-Denn IV, where an approaching subspace radiation storm would render all technology inoperable, and thus the colony was not viable. At the last moment, Elenor Dain and her 6-year-old son, Esmondo, go back to rescue some of her paintings. By the time Scotty is able to get a fix on them again, the radiation was affecting the transporter and Scotty announces that he’ll need all the power to save one of them. Kirk says to save the boy, and it’s believed that Elenor was lost along with the second beam, but she’d actually been deposited back on the planet, far away from where the colony had been. 90 years later, Picard’s Enterprise is investigating the planet to see if it would be suitable again, and a team led by Riker found a log cabin she had built, along with her skeleton (she’s been dead about 15 years). Worf discovered a cave filled with her artwork, which

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ends up being exhibited in the orbital museum of Himalias V, where Picard gets to meet the aging Esmondo. He reckons that the solitude had enabled her to realize her full potential as an artist. His favorite of her artwork was a painting representing Elenor and Esmondo seated on a rock looking up at the night sky. [Timeline: Stardate 42315.5. This was one of six stories in a Wildstorm Star Trek Special comic; the other stories are Bloodline, A Rolling Stone Gathers No Nanoprobes, When the Stars Come A-Calling, Exercise in Futility, and The Wake]

The Killing Shadows part 1 (TNG – Scott Ciencin) A number of Starfleet research facilities had been mysteriously broken into and the researchers killed, but a Betazoid who was among the security at one station is able to identify the attackers as the Bodai Shin, or the Killing Shadows, who act similarly to the ancient Ninja. The next target is expected to be Dr. Noguri who is based on the planet Nydaris, and the Enterprise is sent to protect him, and Picard is told that there’s an unnamed ally there. Worf beams down, supposedly to do some hunting, and Picard and Data beam down to talk Noguri into coming aboard the Enterprise, but he feels he’d be safer staying out in the open on the planet. That seems to be true when the Enterprise comes under attack from multiple craft, and every time they destroy one, two ships take its place. Riker is able to determine that only some of the craft are real and the rest are projections, and targeting the real ones soon has the number of attackers down to one. But that one crashes into the shuttle bay, destroying all the shuttles. However, Noguri is proven wrong when he, Picard, and Data (soon joined by Worf) come under attack from the Bodai Shin. Data had found out that Noguri had been working on improving transporter technology so that it could transport cities or whole worlds to new locations, but the Bodai Shin succeed in killing him and gaining his knowledge. Picard pursues them, but falls into a trap, as it was him that the Bodai Shin were really after. But Picard is assisted by the arrival of the Romulan known as Sela (Tashe Yar’s daughter) who had been the ally that Picard had been told about.

The Killing Shadows part 2 (TNG – Scott Ciencin) The Bodai Shin tell Picard that he was the real target and will die along with all aboard the Enterprise and on the planet, because they have seen the Bodai Shin. Picard assumes that they plan to use Noguri’s transporter technology as a weapon to kill everyone, so, with Sela’s assistance, they fight their way to Noguri’s lab. Meanwhile, the Bodai Shin have also invaded the Enterprise, and their main target appears to be Dianna Troy, but she and the rest of the crew fight back. Picard sees it as a losing game and believes the only way to stop the Bodai Shin is to activate Noguri’s technology and sacrifice everyone, including the Bodai Shin. However, when he tries that, it does disable the Bodai Shin attacking then, but everyone is untouched. Picard realizes that the Bodai Shin had been lying to him all along, so now he vows to take the fight to them.

The Killing Shadows part 3 (TNG – Scott Ciencin) But not all the Bodai Shin on the planet, nor those on the Enterprise are disabled. On the Enterprise, Geordi succeeds in overcoming the software that had taken control away from the crew, but they are still in some kind of void where the Bodai Shin have taken them. On the planet, Picard determines that the Bodai Shin are hiding in plain sight and starts finding ways to expose them. In doing so, a teenage Bodai Shin girl is exposed and throws herself at Picard’s group and Sela fires at her and vaporizes her. Then Picard’s group is taken captive by the local

 

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authorities. The Enterprise comes under attack from another fleet of Bodai Shin craft, and all of these are real.

The Killing Shadows part 4 (TNG – Scott Ciencin) In space, the Enterprise is fighting against the Bodia Shin fleet, and both sides are taking a toll. On the planet, Picard’s group is locked in a cell but, when the Bodai Shin turn up, it becomes apparent that Sela has been working with their captors and they are released, and captors and captives fight together against the Bodai Shin who serve something called the Void. Picard had prepared for Sela’s actions, and girl she had ‘killed’ had actually been beamed up by the Enterprise. Picard tells the Bodai Shin that the retrieval matrix of the girl is maintained in a small container he holds up for them to see. This causes a bit of division among the Bodai Shin with one of them wanting to recover the girl safely and the others not bothered, and one slices his sword through the container. Then a giant ethereal being, announcing itself as being the Void, appears and tells Picard that they had been judged and were no longer considered to be a threat because they would not imperil a girl’s life to save their own. The Void recalls the Bodai Shin and they vanish back to wherever they came from. Back on the Enterprise, Picard has the teenage Bodai Shin restored via the transporter (the talk of the retrieval matrix was a hoax). She says that she no longer feels the Void, and Picard tells her she’s going to discover a universe of possibilities.

Perchance to Dream, part 1 (TNG – Keith R.A. DeCandido) The Enterprise command crew are invited to attend the inauguration of Ra’ch as governor of the planet Damiano that is joining the Federation. Worf and his security team are assigned to assist the chief of police, Du’re, in providing security because an element of the population, known as the Moralists, is unhappy with the discovery that Ra’ch is only living with one partner, while normally there are three involved in a sexual union on that planet. Du’re is not thrilled by having Worf imposed on him, but his attitude changes when Worf discovers a bomb (that didn’t register on Damiani sensors) under the stage where Ra’ch would be standing during the inauguration. Je’tran, the leader of the Moralists, is very unhappy when the signal from the bomb disappears, so he tries to get some of his supporters into the stadium with weapons, but they get taken into custody. His last chance is a sniper, As’si, positioned in a location overlooking the open-air stadium.

Perchance to Dream, part 2 (TNG – Keith R.A. DeCandido) The inauguration proceedings begin, but then Worf realizes he hadn’t secured the area outside of the stadium. Seeing a glint of something in a tree overlooking the stadium, Worf shouts a warning and the Starfleet team successfully stun the sniper. Despite intense questioning, As’si consistently maintains that he was there of his own accord, and the six apprehended trying to bring weapons into the stadium maintain that they only had the weapons because they had come directly from a shooting range. Je’tran has another idea for getting to Ra’ch. He had succeeded in duplicating an ancient method of telepathically attacking people, which involved injecting the telepathic weapon (known as the Chova) into a telepath who can then affect others. The only person that fits that bill is T’Mor, a Vulcan in Worf’s security team, and she is rendered unconscious by Go’en, a Moralist supporter and member of Du’re’s police force who was assigned to work with T’Mor and is then injected with the Chova by Je’tran himself. As a touch telepath, she was able (unwittingly) to affect Worf, and he starts having troubling dreams from

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the past and seeing hallucinations. When Worf and Go’en escort Ra’ch to a ceremonial dinner, Worf finds he is knocked down by a container falling from somewhere in the hallway they are traversing, and Go’en takes the opportunity to attack Ra’ch.

Perchance to Dream, part 3 (TNG – Keith R.A. DeCandido) Worf realizes that this is a hallucination based on a previous event, and although he feels the same pain as he did then, he is able to keep his wits about him enough to stun Go’en before he can kill Ra’ch. Worf then takes himself off duty and assigns his deputy, McDowell, to protect Ra’ch. Horowitz and Murphy are able to thwart another attempt on Ra’ch’s life. When one of Du’re’s security officers hears about the dreams and hallucinations that Worf and T’Mor (and a growing number of Enterprise crew) are having, he recognizes that as symptoms of the Chova. Crusher gets information about the Chova from records found on Damiano and discovers that people with multiple personality syndrome were immune to the Chova and could destroy it. The only person on the Enterprise or the planet that fits the bill is Picard, after his mindmeld with Sarek, his encounter with the memories of Kamin of Kataan, and his spell as Locutus. He’s not concerned about the first two, but he’s not eager to let Locutus out again. Nevertheless, he can’t refuse helping T’Mor and the others. [Timeline: Stardate 48503.8]

Perchance to Dream, part 4 (TNG – Keith R.A. DeCandido) Picard appoints Beverley to be in charge of the Enterprise because T’Mor infects Data via his dream program, and the rest of the command crew had already been infected. A guard is set to watch Data, but Data goes to engineering, following a dream sequence he had previously had, erects a forcefield around himself, knocks out everyone else in engineering with anesthetine gas, and starts lowering the containment field which will result in the Enterprise exploding. On the planet, Je’tran’s show is cancelled and then he is arrested by Du’re for what he had done with the Chova. Picard has a mindmeld with Dr. Selar to activate the characters of Sarek, Kamin, and Locutus and he has himself locked in the brig as a safeguard. That proves to be a good move because, while those characters (particularly Locutus) cause the Chova to die in him, Locutus then becomes dominant. With Sarek’s help and encouragement, Picard takes back control of his body, then frees T’Mor from the Chova, followed by Geordi and Worf who stop Data and regain control of Enterprise. Picard and Worf are then able to rejoin the inauguration ceremony for Ra’ch, and she awards Worf and Du’re the Te’ri Award for their work.

Forgiveness (TNG – David Brin)

The Palami had been quarantined for 50 years after causing a disastrous and deadly disease outbreak when something went wrong. Now they have petitioned to be released from the quarantine and, although the fleet is engaged in fighting the Dominion War, the Enterprise takes Ambassador Kuhlan there to handle negotiations. However, Kuhlan seems to be adamant not to end the quarantine. En route, Geordi realizes that the ship is intersecting a long-distance transporter beam that is degrading, and he is able to pull a human out of the beam. That human is Colin Blakeney, although he is very traumatized and doesn’t recall how he ended up in the transporter beam, and his trauma is only increased when he realizes that over 300 years have passed. He passes out again, but Dr. Crusher and Data devise a way to have him relive the time prior to him being caught in the beam using the holodeck and reading his subconscious via his emotions. It turns out that he and his partner, George Pimintel, had invented a transporter system that the Global Transportation Consortium, headed by Pascal Leight, wanted stopped because

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they had a monopoly on transportation systems. Blakeney’s wife and son had died as a result (directly or indirectly) of action spurred by Leight. Arriving at the mines encircling the Palami’s world, the Enterprise crew see a large fleet of Palami ships approaching from the other side, which seem to be ready to attack. Meanwhile on the holodeck, Blakeney had put together his new transporter and was going to test it by beaming himself, but someone had got into his lab and attacked him. As the power source was building up towards a dangerous overload, Blakeney and his attacker both fall onto the transporter pad. Blakeney now recalls everything that happened and realizes that his attacker is still in the beam heading for destruction in the Palami’s star. Data subdues him, steals (borrows without first asking permission) a shuttle and heads out to intercept the beam, requesting and getting permission from the Palami to fly through their fleet. Data successfully retrieves Blakeney’s partner, George (who had been secretly siding with Leight), from the beam, but then the shuttle gets too close to the star to pull out. Picard has to take the Enterprise in to rescue them, and the Palami fleet let them through. Blakeney is pleased to see his partner again, and it turns out that the Palami had spent their time collecting dilithium and making starship parts (now a couple of hundred years out of date) as a gift for the Federation, and that’s what the fleet was bringing. The example of Blakeney’s forgiveness and the actions of the Palami softens Ambassador Kuhlan’s position, and talks are opened with the Palami.

The Gorn Crisis (TNG – Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta) The Enterprise is sent to the Gorn homeworld to try to get their cooperation in the ongoing war with the Dominion. Unfortunately, they arrive to find that the Gorn Council Chamber has been attacked, and the bodies of the ruling council are lying amid the destruction. Two are found with lifesigns, one being Roooxx and another who says to tell Roooxx that the ‘secret cache’ is safe, but then that second one dies. The warrior caste known as the Black Crest had grown frustrated by the ‘appeasement’ of the political caste following Kirk’s victory against the Gorn captain, and the Black Crest had staged a coup with plans to resume the aggression against other races. In that connection, the Gorn fleet (after a brief encounter with the Enterprise) head out to take back the worlds known as Cestus III and Elkauron II. They meet no resistance at Cestus III but Riker had been working with a Klingon crew to shore up defenses on Elkauron II, and they put up a brief fight before making a strategic withdrawal to the Klingon’s ship, the Gar’tuhk. The Gorn board the Klingon vessel and look like taking it over until Riker has the internal temperature lowered, making the Gorn increasingly sluggish and easy to defeat. Meanwhile, Picard, Troi, and Crusher have been taken captive by the Black Crest warriors, but Data beams down and challenges the Black Crest leader, Slessshh. Data’s reaction time proves decisive in the fight, and Slessshh agrees in defeat to keep his promise and withdraw his forces. Picard stops Slessshh being killed by his own warriors by convincing them that weakness comes from fragmentation and strength from unity. The ‘secret cache’ is discovered to be a clutch of eggs under the dais, and they start hatching as new members of the political caste. Order begins to be restored to the Gorn home world, but they are not in a condition to help in the fight against the Dominion. [Timeline: Stardate 51701.3]

Divided We Fall part 1 (TNG & DS9 – John J. Ordover & David Mack) The Enterprise responds when they receive a message that the ship carrying Ambassador Odan is under attack, but they arrive in time to see the ship crash on a planet. They find Odan critically injured in an escape pod still attached to the ship (he’s the only survivor), and Beverley has to get the injured symbiont removed and kept in a synthetic nursery pool. Deanna enters the pool to

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see what messages she can receive from the Odan symbiont and learns that Odan believes the attack was carried out by the “Purists” on Trill who claim that the symbionts are not native to the planet but are there to take the planet over. Picard receives information of other attacks on joined Trill, which seems to confirm that. Deanna also got images from when Riker had temporarily hosted the Odan symbiont and Odan had been having an affair with Beverley, which has Deanna wondering where Riker’s affections really lie. Meanwhile, Ezri Dax receives a message that Dr. Lenara Kahn has been kidnapped on Trill, and the kidnappers want Dax to deliver 5 kg. of weapons-grade protomatter to the Tenaran Ice Cliffs on Trill in order to obtain Kahn’s return. The Defiant, captained by Commander Vaughn, delivers Dax there, but she finds Kahn dead in the snow and gets kidnapped herself, discovering that the Purists’ leader is Verad. A previous life of Dax had been involved with Kahn, which leaves Bashir wondering where Ezri’s affections lie. The Enterprise is approaching Trill, ready to assist Vaughn and the Defiant.

Divided We Fall part 2 (TNG & DS9 – John J. Ordover & David Mack) The freezing conditions had preserved Dr. Kahn’s body and Bashir is able to revive her. Verad uses a mind sifter on Dax to obtain the information he needs, and he is about to kill Ezri and the symbiont when a Starfleet team beams in and rescues them. The Odan symbiont is delivered to the Caves of Mak’ala but then Deanna senses rage from a point high up in the cave and two Purist snipers are seen. Signals from an antimatter bomb on a countdown to detonation are noted from a point behind the snipers, but those in the cave are pinned down by sniper fire and a shield is blocking anyone from being beamed in or out. The Odan symbiont has recovered now that it is in the pool and is trying to regain contact with Deanna (who’s one of those pinned down in the caves) to pass on a warning. Bashir and Deanna are starting to get their emotions straightened out.

Divided We Fall part 3 (TNG & DS9 – John J. Ordover & David Mack) The Starfleet team get the upper hand against the snipers and, while a captured sniper (Cail) refuses to give the combination to stop the bomb, Deanna is able to use her empathic sense to glean it from her. Picard had discovered that one of Verad’s accomplices, Jull, had been a Dominion collaborator and might have access to their weaponry. Ezri and Lenara remained comatose in sickbay, and Dr. Crusher discovers that both are infected with a retrovirus that, in a joined Trill, would weaken the link with the symbiont and will kill symbiont and host in a few hours. It is discovered that Verad was personally spreading the highly infectious virus on Trill. He is finally tracked down, but he takes his own life rather than be captured. Crusher and Bashir are trying desperately to come up with a remedy for the retrovirus before it is too late. Then Beverley remembers a comment that Lenara made during one of her lucid moments that implied that she had knowledge of a cure. To try and access that information, Beverley is prepared to temporarily host the Odan symbiont. Meanwhile, Picard has given Data the task of hacking into Verad’s computer to see what else he might have been planning.

Divided We Fall part 4 (TNG & DS9 – John J. Ordover & David Mack) Beverley recovers the formula for the cure to the retrovirus, but Data discovers that Verad had reprogrammed the automated defense ships around Trill to attack the planet that they were designed to protect. Despite heavy damage, the Enterprise and Defiant succeed in destroying all of the rogue ships before they do irreparable damage. Ezri Dax recovers, but Lenara receives too many injuries to have her symbiont returned. The Odan symbiont is implanted in Kinger, and he

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and Beverley share a final embrace before having to go their own ways again. [Timeline: Stardate 53181.9]

When The Stars Come A-Calling (DS9 – Ben Raab) This is the story of Benny Russell, a black writer in the US, soon after the end of World War II, and about the prejudice he faced as he tried to make a living for himself. Then he started seeing the people around him as if they were the strange aliens we know of as Klingons, Ferengi, etc., and then got the idea of submitting a science fiction short story to the magazine “Incredible Tales”. He got an enthusiastic response from the editor and a request to meet him. Benny was expecting the same rejection that he had received when meeting other publishers when they saw that he was black, but this time he was warmly greeted. Walking home through the city, the people he saw along the way had turned back to humans. [Timeline: in the 1950s. This was one of six stories in a Wildstorm Star Trek Special comic; the other stories are Bloodline, A Rolling Stone Gathers No Nanoprobes, Exercise in Futility, The Legacy of Elenor Dain, and The Wake]

N-Vector Part 1 of 4, August (DS9 – K. W. Jeter) The Defiant is away from the station, and Odo has left, so Kira had made Nog temporary chief of security. He finds that an EPS exhaust port and a number of other pieces of equipment had been sabotaged and have a potential for seriously damaging the station, if not destroying it. A Romulan shuttle with the xenobiological researcher, Senay, arrives. Senay had a laboratory on DS9 that had been approved by Starfleet command, but Kira doesn’t want him there and isn’t interested in hearing what he knows of the sabotage. Quark, very uncharacteristically, starts giving free drinks and making no-interest no-security loans until Bashir gets him sent for psychiatric evaluation. Quark suddenly comes to his senses and becomes very depressed when he realizes what he’s done, but someone seems to be intervening on his behalf because he finds some bars of latinum and a promissory note for more. Miles O’Brien had left DS9 to take up a teaching position at Starfleet Academy, but he finds himself arrested for the sabotage on DS9. [Timeline: after the events in the DS9 TV series.]

N-Vector Part 2 of 4, August (DS9 – K. W. Jeter) O’Brien is taken back to DS9, but Kira insists that the matter is now in her hands, not with Commander Jast, who had taken him into custody. But Jast isn’t going to let go of the matter easily. The explosion of a piece of equipment whose sabotage Nog hadn’t spotted results in several injuries and one death. Quark interrupts the mystery person, named Viqtor, who had been collecting and returning his losses, and he insists on a partnership with Quark that involves getting some “old junk” off of the station, but Quark notices that one item had come from Senay’s lab. Bashir is put in charge of investigating the supposed connection between O’Brien and the sabotage on the station, and when Senay lets him know that he has information about the matter, Bashir goes to see him. Senay says that an intelligent viroid called the N-Vector had infected the station, after infecting O’Brien for a short period of time, and the ‘sabotage’ was really the station deteriorating as the viroid tires of that host. Senay sees the mentally enhanced Bashir as a way to trick the viroid out of the station. He wants Bashir to inject himself with an agent that he can trigger and make Bashir appear dead, so the viroid would have to leave him and enter a specially prepared trap that Senay had prepared. It might have worked, except that Bashir had only faked injecting himself. He had been infected with the viroid all along, it having moved from Quark after causing him to give the free drinks, etc.

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N-Vector Part 3 of 4, August (DS9 – K. W. Jeter) The ‘sabotaged’ equipment on DS9 repairs itself, which makes Jast highly suspicious, and he confronts Kira. O’Brien (who is now a free man) and Ezri notice that Bashir is acting very different from normal, and they report it to Kira, but she’s happy with things appearing normal and doesn’t want to hear more problems. The Romulan zenobiologist, Senay, is interested however, and he fills them in on what is happening and gets their help. While Senay goes to meet with Jast and the Romulan ambassador who arrived on the Defiant, O’Brien triggers a potential overload in the main reaction chamber, setting off alarms throughout the station. That brings Bashir to O’Brien and Senay is able to inject him with the agent (‘therapeutic death’) that makes him appear dead, and the viroid is trapped in the special container. But Senay says it is not over yet. Meanwhile, Quark and Viqtor had taken the ‘junk’ to what Quark had expected to be a rendezvous point but turns out to be empty space. Viqtor opens the cargo bay doors, releasing the ‘junk’, and what was in the box taken from Senay’s lab emerges and pulls the ‘junk’ together into a station like DS9.

N-Vector Part 4 of 4, August (DS9 – K. W. Jeter) Quark thinks he can sell the new station for a fortune, but he then finds that his ‘partner’ had disappeared. Senay informs Kirk, Bashir, O’Brien and Nog that he had been working on the N-Vector virus and given it a way to transform itself into any shape, including humanoid or mechanical. While they had captured a remnant of it, the main part of the viroid had escaped, and Nog’s security measures showed that Quark had gone with it. Senay, Bashir, O’Brien and Nog set out to find it. They rescue Quark, but Senay says that now it had been discovered, the viroid would go dormant, and he insists on staying with it. The others beat a hasty retreat as the station/viroid breaks up and vanishes. It is realized that the virus could reemerge somewhere, but provided it wasn’t on DS9, Kira was happy. Quark wasn’t happy that he still had debtors.

 

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False Colors (Voyager – Nathan Archer)

Voyager discovers a debris field that seemed to be the remains of one or more starships, and then it is realized that Borg weaponry had been used and some of the debris itself was Borg. While they are digesting that information, a massive vessel arrives and grabs them with a tractor beam that also starts degrading their shields. Unable to contact the people on the alien vessel or break free from it, Seven suggests that she spacewalk over to the vessel. Janeway agrees and sends Chakotay and Tuvok along with her. They find that it is a pirate vessel that had incorporated a lot of Borg equipment into it, and although the pirates have the three of them trapped in a section of a corridor, Seven is able to interface with the stolen Borg technology and shut off the scanning of Voyager and the tractor beam holding the ship. The pirates attempt to attack them, but Seven is able to provide protective shields. The Borg equipment had already been starting to detach itself from the alien vessel and Seven helps speed up the process. Seven, Chakotay, and Tuvok escape in a self-contained section of Borg tech, and Voyager is able to beam them aboard, although the forced disconnection from the Borg technology shocks Seven into unconsciousness. With the remains of the Borg tech battling what’s left of the pirate ship, and that Borg tech calling for help from the Borg Collective, Voyager warps away as fast as it can go. The brief connection had left Seven nostalgic about that feeling of shared awareness, but with no desire to return to the Collective. [Timeline: Stardate 5368.9]

Exercise in Futility (Voyager – Stuart Moore)

Seven suggests an idea that could boost the power to the warp engines. B’Elanna sees it to be Borg mumbo-jumbo, but Tuvok can see no definite reason that it might not be possible, and Janeway considers it worth trying in order to get home quicker. Unfortunately, it leads to a warp core overload, and they have to eject the warp core, leaving the ship in a far worse state than before. Then the timeline resets and Seven suggests modifying the main deflector to create a wormhole that they could travel through to get home. Unfortunately, the far end of the wormhole comes loose and deposits the ship far outside the galaxy in the intergalactic void. The timeline resets again, and Seven proposes a method of speeding their return home using a method adapted from that used by the crew of the Equinox, but it ends up with a warp core breach destroying Voyager. When the timeline resets again, Janeway asks Seven if she is alright, because she seemed to freeze for a few seconds. Seven tells her that she had been running a few simulations in her head, but there was nothing worth reporting to the captain. [Timeline: Stardate 54002.5. This was one of six stories in a Wildstorm Star Trek Special comic; the other stories are Bloodline, A Rolling Stone Gathers No Nanoprobes, When the Stars Come A-Calling, The Legacy of Elenor Dain, and The Wake]

Avalon Rising (Voyager – Janine Ellen Young & Doselle Young) Voyager receives a prerecorded message from somewhere on the surface of a planet that they were passing. It was from an alien race that had made use of an ancient tower (called the Blind Tower as it had no windows) to store some highly dangerous weapons and left a native tribe to guard it. They intended to recover the weapons but had got wiped out by their enemies. They want someone to complete their tasks. Ion storms make regular beaming down impossible, but the Doctor was able to be sent down. He finds a medieval society and becomes known as a wizard after helping the young Squire Weylyn finish off a monster that had killed the knight he had been serving after the knight recklessly attacked the monster. The Doctor tells Weylyn about

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his clan Starfleet, where squires are called cadets and knights are known as ensigns. He finds out where the tower is, and he takes Weylyn along because Weylyn is in disgrace with his clan after not being able to protect his knight. They find the tower, and there are only ten people guarding it by then, so the Doctor has little trouble entering it, contacting Voyager and using the technology in the tower to punch a hole through the ion storm to allow an away team to beam down and enforce order. Weylyn wants to go with the Doctor, but instead, the Doctor ‘knights’ Weylyn as an ensign and tells him he will have to find his own purpose. Weylyn ends up leading the clan that had been guarding the tower and leading them on a mission to search out new truth and wisdom wherever they go.

Elite Force (Voyager – Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning) Voyager had been training an elite Hazard Team to take on the Borg when needed, but then they get attacked by an unknown craft that is immune to phasers. However, photon torpedoes destroy it, but the explosion sends Voyager into a region of null space where they find themselves in the midst of a collection of derelict ships and being approached by a Borg cube. Borg drones invade Voyager, stealing vital components and a few of the crew are assimilated (including Lt. Foster, who had led the Hazard Team), but one of the drones is captured. Seven is able to contact it via the connection that the Collective has. She learns that the Borg cube had been similarly trapped here, and it had taken the parts to help restore the cube’s capabilities. They also learn that another vessel approaching them is called a Harvester, and it takes technology and people for what is called “the Forge”. Janeway orders the Hazard Team to recover the stolen parts from the cube, which they succeed in doing, although Ensign Munro ends up being taken to task for not firing on Foster, who was then a drone attacking them. When the Harvester ship arrives, it is taken by surprise when the restored Voyager attacks it. The Harvester retreats and heads home, but the Hazard Team, now led by Tuvok, had beamed aboard. Because of a dampening field presumably from the Forge, Voyager is not able to maintain the same pace as the Harvester. Tuvok’s squad has to fight off swarms of creatures on the Harvester, but they reach and board the space station called the Forge and find it is a breeding ground for an army led by something called Tarlus that plans to invade surrounding space, creating new Forges along the way. Tuvok and the others succeed in holding off the creatures that are attacking them and lowering the dampening field, enabling Voyager to get there faster. They then plant charges on the station, but the Borg arrive again, led by the drone who used to be Foster. But he says that the Collective has assessed that Voyager is useful, and when the explosive charges weaken the structure, the Borg cube joins with Voyager in destroying the Forge. That collapses the null space, and Voyager finds that it has been thrown back into the Delta Quadrant but two years closer to home. [Timeline: Stardate 53854.7]

The Planet Killer part 1 (Voyager – Kristine Kathryn Rusch & Dean Wesley Smith) Voyager finds a trail of destroyed planets along with some destroyed ship, and there is only one lifesign among the wreckage. They beam the alien aboard and he says something about the monster will eat us all, before he lapses into unconsciousness again. Seven establishes the route that whatever is destroying the planets is taking, and they travel at high warp to what is expected to be the next target for the planet killer. They arrive to find the cone-shaped vessel breaking apart and devouring the fifth planet in the system, then turn towards the third planet. Tuvok has identified the attacking vessel as being made of neutronium, that is resistant to Voyager’s weapons, and Seven identifies the weapon as being a neutron beam as used by Species 4672,

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who were now extinct. She also says that the Borg had encountered the vessel and tried to assimilate it, but they had lost several of their cube ships in the attempt. The alien they had rescued, Tam, a Rekced from the third planet in this system, says that it’s indestructible and he is the sole survivor of their fleet that was sent to destroy it. Anyway, Janeway decides to have Voyager fly across the “mouth” of the vessel and fire into it, which does make it lose interest in the third planet, but it turns its attention to Voyager and fires an energy spike at them.

The Planet Killer part 2 (Voyager – Kristine Kathryn Rusch & Dean Wesley Smith) Voyager is damaged by the blast, but repairs are carried out. Happily, the planet killer returns to devouring the remains of the fifth planet. They realize that this is the same type of vessel that Kirk had faced 200 years before, and studying how he disabled the one back then, they come up with a plan. They recover and repair Tam’s ship, and after Voyager has again fired into the mouth of the vessel, Tam and B’Elanna fly Tam’s ship into the cone-shaped vessel. Having set a timer to cause Tam’s ship to explode, Voyager beams the two of them out.

The Planet Killer part 3 (Voyager – Kristine Kathryn Rusch & Dean Wesley Smith) The plan doesn’t work, and Voyager has to retreat. Seven devises a plan where she creates nanoprobes that would act as a virus and block the planet killer’s absorption of energy from the planetary waste it had devoured. They devise a delivery method involving probes, but the vessel destroys those before they can get close. The Doctor offers to have himself beamed aboard because the vessel is unlikely to detect a hologram, and B’Elanna devises a neutronium casing for his mobile emitter, so that will be less noticeable against the vessel’s own construction. Tom Paris beams the Doctor aboard from the Delta Flyer while Voyager distracts the vessel. Voyager then gets caught in a tractor beam, but Tom fires on the vessel which allows Voyager to escape, but then the Delta Flyer gets caught by the tractor beam. Happily, the nanoprobes that the Doctor had delivered start a rapid power drain within the vessel. That leaves Tom able to beam back the Doctor, and the Voyager crew are speculating what Tam’s people will do with the shell of the planet killer.

Double Time (New Frontier – Peter David)

The Excalibur gets word that the planet Haresh was coming to the attention of the Redeemers, and the population was split on how to address the matter. After discussing the matter with his command crew and Si Cwan, Captain Mackenzie Calhoun decides to take Excalibur there so he can mediate between the opposing sides. But before they get there, they receive word that a deadly magnetic storm is approaching the colony world of Enev. Realizing that they just have enough time to get there and had just enough space to hold everyone from the colony onboard while the storm passes, they make the diversion. That mission goes perfectly, but when they arrive at Haresh, four days later than originally planned, they find that a Redeemer had been attacked and killed, which had released the ‘doomsday virus’ he had in his blood, and the whole population of the planet was dead. After brooding on the matter for a while, Calhoun orders a slingshot maneuver to be carried out, sending them back four days. Commander Shelby is not happy when she discovers that, but she is left in command while Calhoun negotiates a settlement between the opposing sides on the planet. That goes successfully, but then the Timeship Relativity arrives from a few hundred years in the future, and its Captain Braxton tries to convince Shelby to take command away from Calhoun and restore the timeline. Then a Redeemer ship arrives, and when Calhoun orders Excalibur to fire on it, Braxton is prepared to

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disable Excalibur. But the issue is settled by the arrival of the Enevians from 1500 years in the future, who drive off the Redeemers and the Relativity in gratitude for what Excalibur had done to save their race. But Calhoun is disturbed to find that the Enevians had become the tyrannical rulers of the area in their day. Shelby is concerned that Calhoun would attempt another time-travel adventure to try and fix that, but he resists that idea.

 

Mighty Midget TV comics (UK)/Gold Star

Star Trek #2, 1976

The Perfect Dream, by John Warner

Enterprise had stopped to investigate a planet (Rifas-L) and found a human-like population who told them that conditions there were ideal, although the Enterprise crew were puzzled by seeing only a handful of fascial types and there were no children around. They met one man (Ekoe) who had made a model house and who asked to leave with the Enterprise. Then some people called the Collectors, dressed like ancient Japanese warriors, rounded up a lot of people, including the man who built the model house, and executed them for being old, creative/mutant, disfigured or intelligent. One of the natives, named Oshino, could not understand Uhura’s horror at that, pointing out that perfection had to be maintained. Meanwhile, Spock had discovered that the planet was actually a spaceship-cum-lab, run by Yamoto. The natives were all clones, and Yamoto captures Spock to gain a sample for cloning. Then the Collectors come for Oshino, who has started to have fleeting memories of the cloning chamber. The Enterprise team (who were also on the Collectors’ list) protects her, and Oshino leads them to The Palace of Life where she suspects Spock had gone. As they break into the building, it sounds an alarm in Yamoto’s lab, distracting him enough to allow Spock to escape. Oshino tells the Enterprise team to leave while she goes after Yamoto. As the Enterprise leaves orbit, they see the planet/spaceship breaking up. A tribunal pardons Kirk of any culpability in the destruction, and a ship that is sent to investigate the remains discovers the model house floating in space. [Timeline: Stardate 30-19-12]

Star Trek #33, September 1975

The Choice, by Allan Moniz

The Enterprise is sent to investigate an anomaly that is believed to be the site of the Big Bang but, as they are approaching the location, engines and sensors cut out. Sulu gets sensors working sufficiently to establish that there is a cylindrical object floating close by. They find that they can power a work-pod by thought alone, so Kirk, Spock and Lt. Nova use it to recover the cylinder. Once aboard, a scan shows that there is a human inside, and then the top end opens and out climbs Captain Kirk (we’ll call him Kirk2). Kirk2 explains that he is from the previous collapsed universe and was chosen to remain in order to inform the one person in this universe that has true free will what to do to break the endless repetitions of universes. Kirk2 expects to take command of the Enterprise and leave Kirk1 behind in the cylinder. Kirk1 has other ideas about that, and Kirk2 challenges Kirk1 to a fight to the death, which Kirk1 accepts. [Timeline: Stardate 17:01.02]

 

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The Choice: Part 2, by Allan Moniz

The battle starts using swords and phasers, and then another Enterprise appears which is controlled mentally by Kirk2 and it starts attacking the ship. Kirk1 orders Lt. Nova and her cybernetic helmet to the bridge and the whole crew to join hands with her, to strengthen her as she powers the ship mentally. That allows the ship to maneuver and shield itself from attack. It appears that Kirk2 is on the verge of defeating Kirk1, but when Kirk1 orders shields dropped momentarily, the ship is rocked by a blast from the other Enterprise causing Kirk2 to stumble, and Kirk1 stuns him and has him put in suspended animation back in his cylinder and set adrift. A ghostlike image of Kirk2 appears to say that Kirk1 had been the person with free will and he had exercised that will in choosing to set his phaser to stun, not kill. But he doesn’t say if that was the right choice. After joining hands with Lt. Nova again, they are able to move the Enterprise out of the region of the primordial atom, and the fact that they find themselves in their own universe is seen as confirming that the correct choice was made. (Note: the only way that story ever made sense to me was if it was a record of one of Kirk’s dreams; then it was eminently believable.)

 

Newspaper & Miscellaneous Comics

Star Trek: The Ghost Planet, by Dick Wood

At the planet Numero Uno, Kirk’s Enterprise confronts the Twin Supremes then uses its magnetic generators to tear at the Doom Rings and send the matter further out into space where it explodes.

Star Trek: When Planets Collide, by Dick Wood

The Enterprise discovers two rogue planets heading for a collision at the Alpho system which is likely to disrupt the planetary system there. The first plan is to destroy one of the planets which has magnetic mountains (originally called Foreign Planet 1 but becomes known as Planet Morti), but then they find that it has a civilization living underground with farms and its own artificial sun. Inspection of the other planet reveals it to have an unknown metal in its surface that exhibits a strong pull on rock from the first planet. Then Spock recalls a planetoid that should give a repulsive force to stop the planets colliding, and the Enterprise attempts to pull it into position which entails flying through meteor storms. [Timeline: Stardate 2300.9]

 

The Orville

Artifacts, part 1 of 2

David A. Goodman

Captain Ed Mercer is delighted to ‘accidentally’ run across one of this old professors, Lamarche, at Outpost 47. But it wasn’t an accidental meeting. Lamarche was looking for a ship to help him track down the hidden 3.4-million-year-old Zankon fleet from when the Zankon empire was overwhelmed. Gordon Malloy isn’t as happy to be working with a professor who had accused

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him of cheating at one point, and especially unhappy when he hears that the location of the lost fleet is the Cruxis System that has four stars and interactions between their electromagnetic and gravimetric fields that make it next to impossible to navigate. The admiral isn’t over-enthused about the plan either, but he gives the go-ahead. However Isaac confirms that Lamarche’s ideas look good, so Lamarche and his assistant, Chalmi (from Sephalda), join the Orville. Chalmi had been ‘rented’ from its parents for a food synthesizer and the promise that she could return home once Lamarche had found the lost fleet. On entering the Cruxis System the ship starts losing multiple systems and seems to be heading for a structural integrity failure, and Mercer commands the ship to withdraw. Lamarche intervenes to prevent withdrawal, taking helm control and pushing the ship the last bit of the way. That results in multiple injuries and three death, plus an almost total shutdown of ships systems, and Mercer immediately has Lamarche placed in the brig. But when Isaac gets sensors working again, they find themselves surrounded by ships of the lost fleet. Without any remaining operational propulsion system, Mercer sees their only hope is in finding if there are working systems on any of the ancient Zankon fleet.

Artifacts, part 2 of 2

David A. Goodman

Lamarche says that he knows how to operate the ships, but he insists on doing it personally and taking his assistant, Chalmi, along. Consequently, it is Mercer, Malloy, Isaac, Talla, Lamarche and Chalmi who board a shuttle to investigate one of the ships. They initially cannot find an access point, but then an opening appears. An oxygen atmosphere is also detected inside, so they go investigating. Just after Malloy says that it could take a month on a ship that big to find the bridge, the team find themselves teleported there. At that point, Lamarche admits that Chalmi’s race contains at least 90% of Zankon DNA, and she should be able to control the ship by her thoughts. She is able to power up the ship and maneuver it, and Lamarche gets her to test the weapons by blowing up an asteroid. Lamarche wants to use people from Chalmi’s race to run the almost invincible fleet for the Planetary Union, but Chalmi just wants to go home now that her side of the deal with Lamarche has been fulfilled. Lamarche ends up back in the brig and Chalmi beams herself back onto the Zankon ship and powers it and its weapons up. Mercer and the crew are concerned that she might be planning to kill Lamarche by destroying the Orville, but she destroys the rest of the Zankon fleet, to Lamarche’s horror. By that time, Isaac had reestablished communication with the Planetary Union and assistance was being sent, so Mercer wishes Chalmi well as she returned home. Malloy is happy to have been proved right about Lamarche being an asshole.

 

Books of Star Trek Comics

Star Trek – The Newspaper Comics, Volume 1 1979-1981

These books contain a series of comic strips commissioned after Star Trek – The Movie came out. Titles for the stories are those used in the books, and they may not have been used in the original newspaper strips.

 

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Audition Strips (ST-TOS Thomas Warkentin)

The Enterprise is approaching the planet Delphi IX when a large mass registers on sensors. That turns out to be a large starship with an unknown means of propulsion. This alien ship appears to be on a collision course, and Enterprise is unable to outrun or outmaneuver it. Even firing main phasers at it from close range is ineffective. Thankfully, the alien ship doesn’t directly ram Enterprise, but the crew are thrown about and well shaken up as the ship passes directly beneath them, just grazing them. [Timeline: Stardate 7935.3]

Called Home (ST-TOS Thomas Warkentin)

Uhura picks up a signal that just says ‘Come’ in the language of an ancient race called the Toltan. Following the signal, they arrive at a planet that had been devastated by a nuclear war centuries before, but they find that the signal is coming from the planet’s moon, which has remarkably low gravity. They also find that there is the remains of a rocket-propelled spacecraft on the surface, and Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to inspect it. They find that it is a 900-year-old vessel, and two sets of footprints lead away from the ship and end at a set of tread-marks. Sometime afterwards, a strange vehicle that had been the source of the signal comes into view, and it telepathically transmits a message that they are loved, but it sends out a paralyzing beam and tentacles that grab the three of them and take them to an underground facility. There it places them in hypersleep chambers alongside two small aliens who had presumably landed with the 900-year-old ship. Spock fights off sleep long enough to send a message to Scotty to beam the five of them up. They learn that the aliens had landed on the moon in order to try to enforce worldwide peace on their planet. Then the Enterprise starts to be pulled down to what Spock has ascertained to be a giant spaceship build like a moon. When the two aliens hear of what’s been happening, they ask to be returned to where they had been because they believe their gods/creators control the moon and will take them to their paradise. Unable to break away from the tractor beam, Kirk agrees, and when they are returned the tractor beam is released and the moon-ship departs to destinations unknown. [Timeline: Stardate 7495.5]

Dilithium Dilemma (ST-TOS Thomas Warkentin)

The effort to free itself from the moon had fused the Enterprise’s dilithium, so they head off on impulse power for Forma VI, where there used to be a dilithium mine, but they arrive to find a Klingon heavy cruiser in orbit. Not wanting to display weakness, Kirk has Scotty use up most of their remaining dilithium to make a warp 3 jump into orbit, which gets the Klingon ship moving out to a distant orbit. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, and Ensign Taskul (a mining expert) beam down to meet the colonists. While Sulu and McCoy are taken on a tour of the area by a colonist to see the local wildlife, Kirk, Spock and Taskul are taken to the abandoned mine, and Taskul confirms that there’s no dilithium left. Sulu and McCoy had been shown an old Klingon ship that had crashed on the planet decades before, and they discover that there is dilithium aboard. When McCoy tries to pass that information to Kirk, it is overheard by a Klingon team that had been on the planet and by that time had taken Kirk’s team, along with their colonist guide, captive. The Klingons had hoped to use Kirk’s team as hostage to obtain dilithium from the Enterprise’s supply, but now they had other ideas. Realizing that their value as hostages was gone, Spock kills the lighting by ripping out an electrical junction box, and they all escape from the mine through the darkness. Both groups head for the dilithium at the ancient ship, with the Klingons in the lead. But McCoy had also notified Scotty about the dilithium and that they couldn’t contact Kirk. Scotty uses the last of the Enterprise’s power to beam up the dilithium, then uses that to

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power the transporters and send a security team down, led by Chekov. That results in the Klingon team being taken captive. Kirk contacts Kodrash, the captain of the Klingon ship, and says he’s releasing the captured Klingons into his custody aboard an escape pod and also including enough dilithium to get the Klingon ship home. But Kodrash fires on the escape pod, destroying it, on the assumption that it was the kind of trap he’d use. [Timeline: Stardate 7504.3]

The Real McCoy (ST-TOS Thomas Warkentin)

McCoy’s ex-wife, Joann, and her new husband, disgraced doctor Anton Zauber, are planning on gaining possession of McCoy’s identity and living off the royalties he earns but currently donates to Starfleet charities. To do that, Zauber has been altered to look and sound like McCoy, and they infect the people at the fueling base at Tarsus II with Rigellian Fever in order to attract the Enterprise, and specifically McCoy, there. While treating Joann, McCoy is rendered incapable of movement and speech by a poison, and Zauber takes his place. The real McCoy is taken back aboard the Enterprise in an isolator, because Zauber/McCoy might need to get information from him. Suspicion grows of Zauber/McCoy due to some of his actions and words, and finally Kirk and Spock decide to check out the mysterious occupant of the isolator. Since opening the isolator was supposed to be deadly to the occupant, Spock does a mind-touch and discovers it is McCoy. As Kirk, Spock and McCoy are walking down a corridor, Joann (who had been getting queasy at the thought of murdering McCoy) partially redeems herself by ‘exposing’ Zauber, although it now was actually McCoy. The Enterprise had been delivering the Zaranite philosopher Zantra to Zaran, where he was going to campaign for Zaran’s secession from the Federation, but Zantra had suddenly collapsed with one of his two hearts scarcely beating. When McCoy hears that Zauber is preparing to do open heart massage on Zantra, he hurries to sickbay to stop him, realizing that what Zantra was experiencing was just a method that aged Zaranites had for letting a heart repair itself. As Zauber confronts McCoy, Zantra recovers and attacks Zauber from behind, enabling Zauber to be taken into custody. Having had more time to think during his healing trance about Zaran’s connection with Federation, he has decided not to campaign for Zaran’s withdrawal because the Federation needs their logic. [Timeline: Stardate 7536.2]

Double Bluff (ST-TOS Thomas Warkentin and Tom Durkin) The Enterprise is surveying a planet that is a potential new home for the inhabitants of a planet that’s expected to be hit by a giant asteroid, but then a sub-warp vessel is seen approaching them. The ancient ship is held by a tractor beam, but it shows signs of breaking up, so Kirk has the two occupants beamed aboard. They turn out to be a Klingon couple, Morg and his sister Chetar, who claim to be fugitives from Klingon justice after they spoke out against the government and they claim sanctuary, which Kirk grants provisionally but restricts their movements. They don’t take the restrictions well, and Chekov gets a good workout and a black eye restraining Morg. After a thorough checkout, their vessel is brought aboard for cleaning, disinfecting and repairing. Then a Klingon battlecruiser, the Rakor, arrives and Captain Tunzos says he is there to bring the fugitives back, and he’s prepared to destroy both vessels rather than return empty-handed. Kirk calls his bluff, and Morg and Chetar thank Kirk for believing them but say they can’t stand Federation regulations and hygiene and opt to leave. While their ship launches from the shuttlebay at the rear of the Enterprise, Kirk has two high-speed pods launched. He truthfully tells Tunzos that the fugitives are not in them, but naturally Tunzos assumes it’s a lie and destroys both pods and returns home, satisfied with a job well done. Meanwhile, Morg and

 

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Chetar continue their escape at sub-warp, and the Enterprise gets on with its work. [Timeline: Stardate 7541.1]

Aberration on Abaris (ST-TOS Thomas Warkentin)

The planet Abaris is expected to be destroyed in a collision with a large planetoid in a couple of days, and the Enterprise is sent to rescue the archaeological team of Paul and Elsa Hoff. When Kirk, Uhura, and McCoy beam down, a fault occurs in the transporter and only their communicators are retrieved. Spock, Sulu, and Ensign Grey Wolf take a travel pod down to the archaeologists’ camp and find footprints that indicate that Kirk’s team did arrive, and they lead to a small pyramid structure. A stone door is found in the pyramid, with steps leading down. They find images on the walls, and when they meet up with the Hoffs, they are shown a corridor with images representing a timeline that terminates with a large image of the Enterprise, and the image had been made 5000 years before. The Hoffs deny seeing Kirk’s team, but Sulu finds one of Uhura’s earrings, and then Kirk appears. They had been drugged by the Hoffs, who had been planning on drugging Spock’s team too. Then an armed and masked alien appears who had overheard that the discoveries were of incalculable valuable, but Paul Hoff declares them only valuable to researchers, and he tackles the alien. That causes the alien’s weapon to fire, bringing down part of the ceiling and blocking their exit. Happily, Scotty had got the transporter working again, and Kirk wants them all beamed up. But the Hoffs say they aren’t leaving without the native population, of whom there are 2,000. Luckily, they are very small humanoid-like fungi, and the Enterprise was able to accommodate them all somehow. As the ship makes a hasty departure, they view the planet being destroyed in the collision. The alien that had attacked them had also escaped and was actually a human female who was making plans to get the better of Kirk next time they met.

Husian Gambit (ST-TOS Thomas Warkentin and Tom Durkin) The Enterprise pulls into the most remote Federation orbiting drydock, Hus-24, for its biannual maintenance and they find that the Venture, with Captain Morgan Avery, is there also. The planet is lacking in almost anything you’d expect at a place for shore leave, but the Husians prove to be able, if unimaginative, workers so the work is completed in record time. However, when Kirk and Spock bid farewell to the dockmaster, they get stunned and find themselves in shackles and chained, along with the other male crewmen of both ships, and tasked with working the mines. The females, including Avery and Uhura, are put to work in the fields, and the Husians’ “spiritual leader”, Edrem, plans to use the two Starfleet vessels to take whatever they need, rather than them having to work for it. A Distotian crewman is able to squeeze his head out the steel collar then attack a guard and steal his phaser rifle. With that, they are able to cut through the chains, and Kirk uses the power-drained rifle to bluff another group of guards and take their phasers. They then escape from the mine in an ore train, but they come under fire from the Husians outside. Meanwhile, Avery and Uhura had succeeded in setting the grain field on fire, enabling the ladies to escape from their overseers and go to free the men. The Husians find themselves under attack from two sides and are overwhelmed. Scotty captures Edrem as he tries to sneak away. Kirk is content to leave the Husians to Federation justice, as the Enterprise and Venture set out again on their respective missions. [Timeline: Stardate 7559.0]

 

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Head of State (ST-TOS Thomas Warkentin and Peter Jacob) Zeta-Atez is the largest of a confederation of 6 large planets and 12 small ones known as the Gates of Scylla, and they have a new Imperator named Dykranus who has just come to the throne and has twice threatened to leave the Federation and twice rescinded that idea. The Enterprise has been sent to find out what is going on because Zeta-Atez is a major source of Lozite-M which is obtained from a plant with razor-sharp leaves, and it is vital for modern weaponry. Klingon forces are massing along the border, ready to take advantage of the situation. The initial meetings are with Prime Minister Chak who says he speaks for Dykranus, but he does finally agree to take them to meet with Dykranus. That meeting doesn’t go well, with Dykranus declaring that they will be leaving the Federation, but McCoy and Chapel are left puzzling over Dykranus’s constant need for naps. Kirk decides to take his team of Spock, McCoy and Chapel back to see Dykranus without telling Chak, who they have grown to mistrust. This time, Dykranus greets them warmly, saying he would never withdraw from the Federation, but then he collapses. McCoy gets an inkling about what’s happening and insists that Dykranus’s headdress is removed, which reveals that he has two heads which are out of synch with their sleep patterns and had entirely different viewpoints. The deformity is congenital and will soon prove to be fatal, and a successful separation of one head has never been achieved. The anti-Federation head of Dykranus wakes up and is furious that the Starfleet team had observed his deformity. He grabs a leaf of Lozite-M and, using it as a sword, goes to attack Kirk but trips and severs one of his own heads. Dykranus is beamed to sickbay, where McCoy and Chapel attempt to stabilize him. Kirk and Spock inform Chak of what has happened, and Chak joins them on the Enterprise. When Dykranus was born with the deformity he had been kept hidden from the public and Chak had always been there to attend to his needs. McCoy and Chapel are successful in their efforts, and the restored Dykranus recommits to Federation membership. The Klingon forces return to their bases. [Timeline: Stardate 7988.3]

It’s a Living (ST-TOS Thomas Warkentin)

The Enterprise leaves Starbase 22 headed for Argus IV to investigate the growing seismic disturbances there. As they are leaving, they are told that Admiral Nogura had authorized a passenger to travel with them, and it turns out to be Jo Williams, a well-known broadcast journalist, who is preparing a documentary about them. When they arrive at the planet, they find that the earthquakes are increasing. Spock notices lifesign readings from underground, and he has the Enterprise check on the lifesign readings with its sensors, and the readings are confirmed. Kirk also discovers that Max Vargus, who had run the mining operation, had just sold the mining rights to Harry Mudd. The earthquakes continue to grow in intensity and frequency, and it’s decided to evacuate everybody to the Enterprise. Spock determines that the planet is effectively an egg about to hatch. Harry Mudd is on the bridge and sees his new purchase split apart as the stupendous creature emerges; he quickly leaves the bridge, having seen enough. A little while later, Vargus enters, rejoicing that Mudd had sold him back the planet for half the money he’d paid, and said Mudd had told him that the earthquakes were over. Technically that was true because the planet was now in pieces, and Vargus is not happy when he discovers that. Harry Mudd is not happy when Spock points out the Vargus should soon be extremely rich, because the thermium that they’d been mining from Argus IV was now readily available for collection in orbit.

 

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The Savage Within (ST-TOS Sharman DiVono)

Enterprise is on a survey mission to a double-star system, Epsilon Anubis, which includes a neutron star. They find a derelict ship with another ship attached and strong lifesigns, but the orbit of the neutron star is bringing it closer, and the radiation will soon start affecting and then kill everybody onboard. A team including Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam over, but they come under attack by a clan called the Shi’E that is led by an attractive female named Korm Nal. Apparently, there had been other tribes aboard, but it seems that at least two of the tribes had died out after another close encounter with the neutron star. There are also massive insectoid creatures called the Eloksi who were from the starship attached to the derelict, and they capture McCoy. The captain of the derelict is N’Ga, and Korm Nal want to take the power away from him, so she uses Kirk’s desire to contact the captain in order to get close to him. Kirk has to restrain her from having him killed. It turns out that the Eloksi communicate telepathically, and while their effort with the Shi’E clan had usually proved fatal, they achieve a measure of success with McCoy and then with Spock. At Kirk’s urging, N’Ga and his supporters go through an elaborate ritual that includes the actual sequence of button presses to start the remaining engine. With the Enterprise and the Eloksi ship helping with tractor beams, they all move clear of the approaching neutron star. [Timeline: Stardate 7692.7]

Quarantine (ST-TOS Sharman DiVono)

On Sarsithia, the Sarsith (humanoids descended from amphibians) have finally succeeded in ridding their planet of the invading race, the Mirmonot, after a 450-year war. However, now the planet is suffering from a plague, and the Enterprise is sent to assist. The planet had been on a war footing for so long, and General Onoth believes they need a new enemy, and he plans to create one if necessary. Dr. Chapel accidentally gets infected while studying the plague, and it evolves in her body to cause her to become unconscious and get injured. Spock comes up with a serum that is administered to Chapel, but Onoth’s doctor, Tath, gives her a tranquilizer to try and stall her recovery. Instead, the treatments react and cause Chapel to awaken with a paranoia that she’s on a prison planet, and she breaks free and steals a spacecraft. Meanwhile, Onoth has sent two of his supporter on what seems to be a suicide mission to fire on a Klingon warship just across the border of Klingon territory and attempt to draw the warship to Sarsithia. That succeeds, but the Klingons fire on the small vessel and destroy it, although the Enterprise is close enough to beam the two Onoth supporters off. Kirk tries to smooth things over with the Klingon captain, but then Onoth’s fleet arrives and starts attacking the Klingon ship, and the Enterprise as well. Chapel’s stolen ship had also started attacking the Klingons, but Spock is able to beam aboard her ship and apply a quinidine derivative before getting her back onto the Enterprise. The Klingons destroy Onoth’s ship and the rest of his fleet turn tail and head home. The Klingon ship has suffered damage, so it heads back to Klingon territory, but Kirk has the Enterprise try to overtake it, because he knows that that Captain Kolak still thinks this was some Federation plot. [Timeline: Stardate 7708.3]

Star Trek – The Newspaper Comics, Volume 2 1981-1983

Restructuring is Futile (ST-TOS Sharman DiVono)

The Klingon ship is tracked to an asteroid field surrounding a planet (Iskonia), but the ship had been disabled and there are no lifeforms aboard. Enterprise had also encountered a sub-light probe that apparently seemed to have been launched from Iskonia years before and was still

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broadcasting a message warning about the Omnimind. They try contacting the planet but get a response from Kolak, and Kirk takes a team down to meet with Kolak, but they have an encounter with robots who capture them and take their communicators and phasers. They do break out of their confinement but get attacked by Kolak who had been programmed by the Omnimind to kill them. Instead, Kirk reminds Kolak that he’s a Klingon captain, and the Omnimind influence starts to be overcome, resulting in Kolak attacking the robots, dying in the attempt but facilitating the escape of Kirk’s team. They meet up with Harre, a native who takes them to their underground refuge from the Omnimind, in the sewers under the city. They also meet Lyra, a beautiful cyborg who was a failed effort by Omnimind to ‘perfect’ humanoids, but Lyra is now Strike Force Unit 3 fighting against Omnimind. Harre explains that they were not native to the planet, and Omnimind had been their main computer, containing all their race’s accumulated knowledge, but it had started out protecting them, then trying to perfect them, and then trying to destroy them. Not having heard from Kirk’s team, Scotty has a 3-man security team, led by Lieutenant Marsha Latham, sent down to locate Kirk’s team and, around the same time, Spock and Uhura succeed to making a primitive communicator and contact the Enterprise. Kirks team and Lyra go to meet up with the security team but, by that time, the security team had been captured and taken into Onmimind’s central complex. Kirk and Lyra lead the attack on that complex and find that Omnimind had created a robotic replica of Latham (which it seemed to think was perfect) and put its own mind into it. Spock had already realized that there was more to Omnimind than computer logic, and Kirk starts trying to convince the Omnimind/Latham replica that it had flawed logic, fearing death while a computer doesn’t die. While Omnimind is confused, the team is able to destroy its replica form, at which point the computer banks start behaving strangely. Then an image of a face appears who introduces himself as Ilik Na, the original leader of those that had settled there. Fearing that his colony would fail without him (and also fearing death), he transferred the essence of his mind and body into Omnimind and set up part of it to protect the colony (and which ultimately led to the planet’s problems) while he searched the universal knowledge for the purpose of life. He had come to the conclusion that the ultimate purpose of life was death, for without it there’s no continuity, a conclusion that disappointed Kirk and Spock. But it did result in the end of the reign of the robots, and the humanoids of the planets were left to build their own civilization with a little help from a sociology team. [Timeline: Stardate 7717.5]

The Wristwatch Plantation (ST-TOS Sharman DiVono & Larry Niven) The Enterprise is tasked with taking a delegation of the small Bebebebeque to investigate what has happened to their colony on Mimit which was founded 15 years previous but hasn’t been heard from since. Scotty and the other engineers love the Bebebebeque for the way they are able to miniaturize the Enterprise’s technology and free up space, but the rest of the crew are getting paranoid about the ‘bugs’ flying around on their anti-grav sleds right in front of their noses. A Ferreth alienologist named Mernat was also aboard, ostensibly as an expert on the Bebebebeque but really there (as only Kirk and Spock know) to try and track down the people believed to be smuggling Theep aboard the Enterprise. Theep is an illegal drug that only affects Ferreths, but it is also extremely corrosive. The culprits are discovered, but not before damage results from the corrosive effects. The Enterprise also has an encounter with a heavily armed Kzinti ship. The Kzinti are not permitted to have such armed ships and, as expected, the Kzinti authorities deny all knowledge of it. A brief encounter is ended when Enterprise continues at maximum warp to Mimit, and the Kzinti ship, Giant Killer, is unable to keep up with them. The Bebebebeque

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colony had been on the verge of starvation soon after its founding when a member of an indigenous species, a Ravager (that had not been known of initially) emerged from hibernation and ate the crops that the Bebebebeque colonists had been expecting to survive on. They were saved when some Kzinti arrived for their annual Ravager hunt, but the Kzinti then enslaved the colonists for their technical prowess. When the Enterprise arrives, Kirk takes a team down on a shuttle, but it gets shot down and crashes. Although the occupants survive, the shuttle and crew are then attacked by a Ravager. The creature is stunned, but the Kzinti on the planet and their Bebebebeque slaves are alerted to the craft’s arrival. A group of Kzinti are sent to investigate, but the Bebebebeque have a resistance group that has built its own transporter, and they are able to rescue the crew and bring them to their secret base under the Kzinti ground base. By that time, the Enterprise is again facing the Giant Killer and Kirk learns from the colonists about a weakness in its weapon but alerting Scotty to it results in the Kzinti finding out where the colonists secret base was and starting to attack it. The Kzinti encounter the Ravager at the shuttle and resulting injuries leave a trail of blood which attracts the Ravagers to the Kzinti base, so the Kzinti have other things to worry about. The outcome is that the Enterprise destroys all but one of the Kzinti ships from Mimit that are sent against it, and the Giant Killer appears to self-destruct. However, the crew had been beamed off at the last moment and were now aboard their last surviving vessel, and their leader is planning his revenge. [Timeline: Stardate 7731.1]

The Nogura Regatta (ST-TOS Sharman DiVono)

The Enterprise is back at Starfleet HQ for repairs when they get roped in on a starship regatta or race to celebrate Admiral Nogura’s birthday. His son Kyoshi, who is a cadet at Starfleet Academy has organized the race as part of his psychology course. Among the other ships in the race are the Rim Explorer with Captain Clark (an old friend of Kirk’s) and the Bold Venture with Captain Vera DiMarco (who had been one of Kirk’s students at the Academy). Kirk soon discovers that the course takes them through space known for pirates and ‘free traders’, and Kyoshi had made a deal with a free trader named Sturdevant to carry out delaying tactics to slow the ships down. However, Sturdevant thinks that mere delaying tactics would be beneath him, and his ship attacks the Rim Explorer, using a cloaking device to hide his ship. He has also realized that Kyoshi could fetch a good ransom, so he holds Kyoshi and his fellow cadets. When the Enterprise responds to the Rim Explorer’s distress call, Sturdevant considers selling the Enterprise to the Klingons, and the Klingons take him up on it. However, the tasks set for the Enterprise and the Bold Venture lead Kirk and DiMarco to both realize that there’s more to the race than has been let on, and DiMarco takes the Bold Venture to meet up with the Enterprise. Aboard his cloaked ship, Sturdevant realizes he can’t take on two Federation warships at the same time, and then Kyoshi and his friends break free and short-circuit the cloaking device. That leads to the Enterprise and Bold Venture together forcing Sturdevant’s surrender. He seems happy to end up in the Enterprise’s brig, realizing that the Klingon’s can’t get at him there for failing to live up to his promise. The Enterprise and Bold Venture have their own private race back to Starfleet HQ. [Timeline: Stardate 7760.5]

A Merchant's Loyalty (ST-TOS Padraic Shigetani)

The Enterprise has to travel through the Deltan 330 Graveyard Sector, and it observes two merchant vessels having an altercation. When the Enterprise gets fired on, Kirk decides to intervene, holds both ships in tractor beams and brings the quarreling captains (Krieger and Regas) aboard. One of them (Regas) is accompanied by a young female assistant, Zaia. Actually,

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the two captains were cooperating, and Zaia was there mainly to cause distractions while Krieger planted three bombs, the first at the transporter, the second over the main power routing, and the third on the life support panel. Zaia loses her bracelet in one scuffle, but Kirk finds it, with the result that when Krieger calls for them to be beamed back, it is Krieger, Regas and Kirk that get beamed aboard the merchant vessel, and Zaia is left on the Enterprise, fearing for her life since she knew one bomb would take out life support. Kirk learns that the merchant scavengers blame the Federation for ruining their business by cleaning up the area, and there was now a large group of merchant ships on their way to take apart the Enterprise as compensation. Zaia also spills the beans to Spock, although the Enterprise had been tracking the approaching ships until the second bomb takes out power to most of the systems. Spock is able to defuse the third bomb. Kirk learns that Zaia is actually Regas’s daughter, and he plays on that until Regas frees him and Regas and Kirk use an escape pod to get to the Enterprise. Krieger is happy to see them go, considering it one less person to split profits with. However, Regas had planted a bomb on Krieger’s ship before leaving, and that ship is disabled, and Kirk calls in the Deltan authorities to take Krieger and his crew into custody. The other approaching vessels had already started scattering after seeing the explosion on Krieger’s ship. Regas and Zaia are also handed over to the Deltan authorities, but Kirk puts in a good word for them after their belated assistance. [Timeline: Stardate 8123.2]

Taking Shape (ST-TOS Martin Pasko)

The Enterprise picks up medical supplies from the Federation planet Manark V, then heads out to deliver the supplies to the Vanowen Colony. However, Spock soon gets suspicious of McCoy and, by means of a nerve pinch and a brain scan, is able to show that McCoy is actually an alien that looks like him. Then Enterprise, having mysteriously ended up in the Neutral Zone, finds itself surrounded by Romulan warships that attack Enterprise, causing multiple injuries and then leaving. Because of the Enterprise’s damage and the urgency of the supplies, they rendezvous with the Potemkin but, when they go to beam the supplies over, they find that the crates are empty. Spock works out that the crates had each contained a microscopic alien embryo that had fed on the supplies, then gnawed their way out of the crates and lived and bred in the medical computer. There, they had used the scans of the injured crewmen to model their young and start replacing the crew. By that time about a third of the crew had been replaced, including McCoy, Chapel, Scotty, and Lieutenant T’Yee who tried to distract Kirk but kept being interrupted. When they realize that their plot has been discovered, the aliens (who, by that time, were over 90% of the crew) beam down to the surface of the planet Murakami II that Enterprise was orbiting, but Enterprise is left disabled and with its orbit decaying. While Kirk takes a team to track down the aliens, Spock and Sulu locate where the replaced crewmen had been stored and Scotty and Spock then get the ship powered up again. By the time Kirk’s team finds itself being surrounded by the aliens, the Enterprise is ready to respond to Kirk’s order to stun everyone on the planet in his vicinity. The shape-shifting aliens turn out to be Manarkites who had been secretly in league with the Romulans. [Timeline: Stardate 9546.3]

Send in the Clones (ST-TOS Gerry Conway)

Admiral Kirk gets given command of the Enterprise again in place of Captain Spock because there is a peace mission to the Sangdor Principality. Enterprise will be taking a pair of cloned ladies, both known as Lyssa, as the diplomatic couriers. Each of them, along with the original Lyssa, carries consciously part of the code to decrypt their message to the Sangdor. The original

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Lyssa is already on planet Sangdor. Scotty takes an instant dislike to the Lyssa clones because his nephew, Brian, joined the Diplomatic Courier Corps and died in such a cloning process. When the two wander into Engineering, Scotty follows them back to their quarters and is found there holding the murder weapon used on one of the Lyssa clones (say Lyssa1) who was lying dead on the floor. Lyssa2 is later found catatonic in a closet. At that time, Enterprise enters Sangdor space and is immediately attacked by a Sangdor warship that demands their surrender. In an effort to find out what is going on, Kirk had Spock do a mindmeld with the Lyssa2 clone, who turns out to have been feigning the unconsciousness. She was the actual guilty party, having grown jealous of her fellow clone, believing that Lyssa1 had been getting more attention from an admiring crewman. After starting a phaser-fight, Lyssa2 ends up stunned, and Kirk has Spock do another mindmeld to try and decrypt the full Federation message. That succeeds and Kirk passes it on to the captain of the Sangdor ship, who seems to be happy to return to the Sangdor home world to deliver it. The Enterprise returns to Starfleet HQ, believing they could report a job well done. [Timeline: Stardate 9580.03]

Goodbye to Spock (ST-TOS Gerry Conway)

The Enterprise is investigating the disappearance, 200 years previous, of a colony ship, and Spock and Lt. Cmdr. Singh take a shuttlecraft to investigate a distress buoy from the lost ship. In doing so, they get hit by an asteroid and crash, killing Singh and leaving Spock’s memory blank. Spock is discovered by Lady Dyana, daughter of the leader of the clan Omega Level III of the descendants of the lost colonists, Captain Argus. Dyana and the human-side of Spock fall in love. Argus is very unhappy about the relationship between Dyana and the demon-eared stranger, and when Kirk and McCoy arrive by shuttle to try and find Spock, Argus drugs them with doped mead. He then arranges a challenge between Spock and Kirk, but during the fight Spock regains his memory and knocks Kirk out to end the fight. Argus and his men then go to attack Spock, Kirk, and Dyana (who was standing with them) but Scotty had got the transporter working despite the electronic interference from the planetary ring, and a security team arrives to put a stop to Argus’s intentions. The restored Spock now knows where his duty lies, and Dyana is left with memories of her lost love. [Timeline: Stardate 9597.2]

Terminally Yours (ST-TOS Gerry Conway)

A shuttlecraft goes missing from the Enterprise and it’s soon found that it has been taken by McCoy. Not long before that, they had visited Circe-Two on an emergency medical mission but found that everyone there was already dead of a particularly virulent epidemic. McCoy had accidentally suffered a small cut on his hand while there, and he later found that he had contracted the ailment and had left the ship to protect the others onboard. Kirk sets the Enterprise searching for McCoy, and Spock investigates the records of McCoy’s blood samples and identifies the epidemic as one, known as the Red Plague, that infected part of Vulcan in the past. He takes a shuttle to Vulcan to search for the cure, which is the essence of a plant called Shi-Ka-Ti. He finds a sample of the plant and has minimal problems getting back to the Enterprise. Kirk had realized that McCoy had most likely gone to Circe-Two to live out his final days and, by the time Spock returns, McCoy has been found but is firing at them, threatening to kill them rather that infect them (paranoia is an early symptom of the disease). Spock distracts McCoy, claiming that Vulcans are immune to the disease, while Chapel sneaks up behind and injects McCoy. Then Spock has her inject himself, because he’s already feeling the effects. Both recover back aboard the Enterprise. [Timeline: Stardate 9620.0]

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The Retirement of Admiral Kirk (ST-TOS Gerry Conway)

Admiral Kirk gets relieved of duty as captain of the Enterprise and told he’ll be based at Starfleet HQ, which causes him to resign and take the job as captain of the free trader, Orion. McCoy joins him in order to keep an eye on Kirk. The owner of the Orion, Morbus, tells Kirk that their first mission is delivering crates of farm equipment to Epsilon-21, but he gets evasive when Kirk tries to find out more about the farm equipment. McCoy goes to check out the crates but gets knocked unconscious and kept sedated. Then Kirk goes to check the crates and find that they contain slaves, and he soon finds himself and McCoy locked in the hold with the slaves, as the Enterprise arrives and Captain Kirk orders the Orion to surrender to the Enterprise or be destroyed. However, the slaves are from a telepathic and empathic race called the Maroni, who had allowed themselves to be used as slaves so that they could observe other races, but now they were ready to take action. They had been in touch with Spock from before they set out, and now they touch the minds of the Orion’s crew and show them the error of their ways. After that, Morbus and his men are no longer interested in being slave traders, and Kirk is able to call Spock and tell him that all was under control. Kirk is heading back to Starfleet HQ and presumable a desk job. [Timeline: Stardate 9640.1]

Getting Real (ST-TOS Gerry Conway)

Two young boys (Mal and Joey), who enjoy playing video games, are walking home when they encounter Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Thinking that they are the actors from the TV show, they ask for their autographs. Since this was supposed to be a secret mission, they can’t let the boys spread the news, so Kirk has all five of them beamed up to the Enterprise. The mission was to shoot down the NASA shuttle Icarus that history showed had carried a deadly plague back to Earth, infecting a significant portion of the population. The boys are horrified at the thought of Icarus being shot down, and they succeed in stealing a shuttlecraft. However, they start to burn up on reentry and are rescued and pulled back onboard by a tractor beam. By that time, Spock had established that this had to be an alternate timeline anyway, so shooting down any shuttles was pointless. The two boys were beamed back down, because there was no evidence to support them if they did tell of their encounter.

Star Trek Comic Album (BBC edition)

The Youth Trap (ST-TOS)

The Enterprise is surveying a previously uncharted planet in the Zekbran system when the ship gets bombarded, and the warp engines disabled due to the disintegration of their zutotanium filaments. Two engineers are beamed down to the planet to try to locate more zutotanium, and they find it but then get hit by a ray and lose contact with the Enterprise. Kirk, Spock and McCoy beam down and find that the engineers are now young children, happily playing with the rocks. Then McCoy gets hit by a beam from a ray gun manned by two aliens and is turned into a 15-year-old. When Spock and Kirk try to rush the aliens, Kirk gets hit but nothing appears to happen, and the two aliens appear to be delighted. But then the two begin fighting and one gets knocked down to where Kirk and Spock are, while the other absconds with the ray gun. The alien explains that they were from the galaxy Trann, but their ship had malfunctioned and he (Laiko) had invented the ray gun as a power source, but they had then found that it could change someone’s age. They hoped to use it to stop themselves aging until they were rescued or managed to repair

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their ship, and they were calibrating the gun by testing it on the Enterprise crew. The other alien (Kooba) had taken the ray gun to use as a weapon to gain control of the crew he was with, and later control of their homeworld. Spock and Kirk get captured, and Kooba gains access to the Enterprise and starts de-aging the crew before beaming down again to take care of Kirk. But when he tries using the ray gun on Kirk again, Kirk grabs a shiny metallic panel and uses it as a mirror to reflect the beam, reducing Kooba to a baby. After restoring the others (but not Kooba) he smashes the ray gun. [Timeline: Stardate 3109.5]

The Legacy of Lazarus (ST-TOS)

The Enterprise visits the planet Gamma Alpha V that was studied by an automated probe ten years previous and was found to be class M but uninhabited. Now Spock finds a thriving community down there with a large city. Kirk leads a team consisting of Spock, McCoy, Sulu, Uhura and Albert in investigating the planet, first meeting George Washington and his wife, along with Helen of Troy. Everybody in the city is someone famous from Earth’s history. Washington explains that everything is provided for them, and the only place they can’t go is the silver spire in the center of the city. Kirk sends Sulu and Spock to investigate, and Sulu is later found, having been rendered unconscious, and Spock is missing. Actually, he is miles underground in the company of an historian named Alexander Lazarus, who had been driven by scorn from Earth and settled there along with his androids. They had built the spire which acted as a receiving antenna that recorded the thoughts and memories of Earth’s famous characters. An accident had led to the discovery of how to implant those memories in an android and turn it into a famous character, and the city had been built to house them. But Lazarus had grown bored of their stories and wanted to use Spock’s brain to tune his psi-clone device to Vulcan historical characters. When Kirk finds access to Lazarus’s underground facility, Lazarus turns his android characters to attack the Enterprise team, but Spock breaks free of his restraints and attacks Lazarus. Stray blasts from Lazarus’s phaser damage his computer, and Lazarus himself accidentally falls into his brain-drain chamber and has his brain fried. Spock calls Scotty to beam the others up, but Spock wants to save the records of the historical characters. However, as the facility starts to self-destruct around him, Spock finds himself beamed up by Scotty, and the Enterprise warps away as the planet explodes. [Timeline: Stardate 1026.3]

The Voodoo Planet (ST-TOS)

The Enterprise finds a planet that looks identical to Earth, and Kirk and Spock beam down to Paris where they first notice that there are no people or traffic around. Spock checks a structural beam on the Eiffel Tower and finds that it is papier-mâché, but then a laser beam hits the tower, and they have to run as it collapses. Just after that, a message is received that the Eiffel Tower on Earth has mysteriously collapsed. They start to speculate if it might be some form of Voodoo, when another laser beam hits the papier-mâché Coliseum and the real one in Rome collapses. They are able to trace the source of the beam to another planet where they find Count Dressler (who had been driven from Earth) was now the ruler of a tribe of Voodooites. When Kirk, Spock, and McCoy go to investigate, Kirk and Spock get captured but that allows them to see the procedure that Dressler uses, although the Sphinx becomes his third target. Then McCoy breaks them out of their confinement, and they beam back to the Enterprise. Spock recalls an ancient Vulcan clan who had some similar practice. He researches the practice of these “Pain Casters” and synthesizes the drugs they used, and Kirk and Spock are able to use it and overpower and

 

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capture Dressler. It looks like he will be given solitary confinement on an uninhabited planet, no trial needed.

Star Trek Year Five, Book 3, Weaker Than Man (ST-TOS)

Comic book format (Books 1 & 2 are featured in Volume 3 of this ‘Summaries’ series.)

Episode 7, Guide of Fire (Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly): The Enterprise is headed home as Kirk thinks of Sam, but the Enterprise is welcomed at Starbase 212 on the Federation border by a fleet headed by the Federation flagship, Theseus, with Admiral Koraxi. Attorney General Areel Shaw is also aboard, and she briefs Kirk of the Originalists who are campaigning to stop the exploration of the galaxy and want to concentrate resources on maintaining the homeworlds, and she also suggests that he should run for Federation President. Then a Klingon ship arrives with Dev Vo’Qul who claims the right to put Kirk on trial and execute him for his crimes against the Klingon Empire. He also says that he has a weapon onboard that will destroy the whole fleet if his demands are not met, so Kirk agrees to surrender himself to Vo’Qul. McCoy is troubled when his patients are taken aboard the Asclepius and he is not allowed to check on them, so he and Spock investigate and discover that the injured returning from 5-year missions are being used for experiments, and that Koraxi mostly wanted to get his hands on Bright Eyes (the Tholian – see “Star Trek Year Five, Book 4” starting on page 116). Spock is able to disable Koraxi, and the Theseus 's command crew are willing and even eager to assist Spock and Shaw. Shaw orders the ship’s captain to have Kirk beamed back from the Klingon vessel. Kirk is severely injured from the trials and tests that Vo’Qul had hoped would kill him, and when the Klingon vessel appears to be powering up its secret weapon, Kirk instructs the fleet not to attack the ship, but just to fire warning shots at it. He knew that Vo’Qul had no honor, and the Klingon vessel warps away. Shaw had found in Koraxi 's files that he was a secret Originalists and had given Vo’Qul the access codes that enabled him to arrive in their midst without warning. Kirk tells Shaw that it is she, not himself, who should be running for Federation President. [Timeline: Stardate 7251.1]

Episode 8, Vote Mudd! (Jody Houser): Areel Shaw talks Kirk into checking out the Andorian candidate for Federation President, because she’d heard that the person they’d selected supported the Originalists’ cause. Kirk first meets Renei who is the Campaign Chief of Staff, and she introduces him to their candidate, Harcourt Fenton Mudd. Kirk doesn’t believe for one minute that Mudd had changed his ways, and he gets Scotty to check out Mudd’s beautiful android assistant, Celia, to find out what Mudd was really up to. After one abortive attempt, Scotty gets her talking, believing that she was helping Mudd in the process. That enables Kirk to confront Renei and Mudd and declare that Mudd had Celia scouring the Andorian computers and stealing state secrets, patents and other data that he could sell. Mudd goes to escape the planet, holding a phaser to Renei’s head to ensure that nobody intervenes, but he backs into Spock who uses a neck pinch. Mudd and Celia are left in the custody of the Andorians, and Renei is tasked by the Originalists with the job of finding a new candidate. Gary Seven and Isis had visited Mudd previously, and Seven thought Mudd would serve his purposes well, but now he talks Renei into becoming the candidate. [Timeline: Stardate 7265.4]

 

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Episode 9, Weaker Than Man (Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly): Gary Seven had been raised as Caleb Howell of basically human lineage, but he always knew he was likely to be called on by the Aegis and kept himself fit for that purpose. Although Aegis agents have the potential to live forever, accidents can happen, with the result that Gary Six died and, at the age of 35 years and five days, Howell got the call to replace him. He was outfitted with his servo, given a physical and mental upgrade, and briefed at Aegis headquarters which looked down on the galaxy, and there he was given the designation Gary Seven and introduced to Isis. She would be his handler, and she preferred being in the form of a cat. At one point it was arranged for his path and Kirk’s to cross, so that Seven could meet the man that he would need to neutralize. When Isis had explained to him the goal of using the Tholians to end war in the galaxy by eliminating the other races, and then the galaxy and the Tholians would be frozen in time at that ‘perfect’ state, Seven is appalled. After all the work protecting the planet, everything will be gone! But Isis calms him down and convinces him that it’s for the best.

Episode 10, On the Death of a Friend (Jim McCann): The Enterprise reaches the Alpha Centauri system as it heads home, and it receives a faint message saying that Proxima Centauri is being ravaged by some airborne infection and everybody’s dying. Kirk leads a team, all wearing containment suits, down to the planet where they meet with Caylx Wairate who had sent the message. She says that there was an explosion to the west of the city, and then the infection seemed to blow in, the first symptom being a cough. McCoy has a medical team trying to find out what the infection is and, onboard the Enterprise, Chekov’s scans of the planet identifies a source of the infection and identifies it as Isis, Gary Seven’s pet. She transports herself to the Enterprise, and Chekov, Sulu, and a security team try to subdue her, but she transforms into a shape similar to a Tholian and is well protected from phaser effects. Ultimately, with Sulu attacking her with a sword and Chekov attacking the damaged body part with his phaser, they take her down and she dies. Spock’s team discovers an alien object at the site of the explosion and has it beamed into space with a warning beacon. On the planet, McCoy’s containment suit gets damaged, and he is presumed infected, so he gets beamed back to quarantine aboard Enterprise. After not showing symptoms, he talks his way back into working on a cure. He finds that the infection was designed specifically to attack natives of Proxima, and although of the same heritage as Earth humans, their DNA has evolved differently. McCoy realizes he is immune, and a way is devised to spread samples of his DNA over the planet, and that stops the infection. [Timeline: Stardate 7277.8]

 

Star Trek Year Five, Book 4, Experienced In Loss (ST-TOS)

Episode 11, Captains of Sea and War (Paul Cornell): Kirk is on shore leave when he meets (or is approached by) the good-looking Captain Laura Rhone of the USS Drake. After rescuing an ensign from being kidnapped, the two captains end up in bed. 6 months later, the Drake is engaging a Nausicaan ship but the Enterprise sweeps in unannounced to assist, and Rhone is furious with Kirk. But the two captains end up in bed. 2 months later, after she had intervened in an encounter between the Enterprise and a Romulan vessel, Rhone proposes marriage to Kirk. Then Kirk has a platonic encounter with Carol Marcus and also hears that he will be offered a promotion to Admiral at the end of the mission. Kirk mentions the encounter with Carol and the admiralty offer to Rhone and starts to express concerns, leading to Rhone storming out and

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withdrawing her offer. One year later, Kirk has accepted the position of Admiral but is soon faced with the issue of a small black hole that had appeared inside the orbit of the Moon. It is established that an antimatter implosion is the only thing that will stop the black hole destroying Earth, and the Drake is the only ship in orbit. After a quick discussion with Kirk, Rhone orders the crew to abandon ship, although the two ladies at navigation and helm demand the right to stay with her, and Rhone orders a collision course with the black hole. The Drake and the black hole vanish in a flash. 15 years later, Kirk has been demoted to captain, which doesn’t displease him, and he is definitely pleased to hear that the Drake has returned. Kirk and Rhone get reacquainted, and Kirk is ready to pick up where they left off. Rhone says she has accepted a promotion to Admiral but doesn’t see why she shouldn’t catch up on what she’d missed, although Kirk is under orders not to call her ‘Admiral’.

Episode 12, Under the Raptor’s Wings (Brandon Easton): The Enterprise is carrying a Tholian passenger, affectionately nicknamed Bright Eyes, and he is picking up a signal originating from Vulcan, although he says it shouldn’t exist. Uhura adjusts the Enterprise’s sensors to Bright Eyes’ vibrational frequency which enables her to also pick up a signal. Beaming down to Vulcan, they discover a tower that seems to be sending and receiving tachyon bursts from the past. Then an eruption occurs, and Spock vanishes, either vaporized or sent to another time and/or place. In actuality, he has been sent back to 370 A.D. (Earth calendar) to the Time of Awakening, also called the Year of the Great Schism, and he meets and gets arrested by Surak. In custody, Spock meets Rihan, who leads the rebels against Surak’s imposition of the no-emotion regime. When Rihan’s supporters break him out of the prisoner-of-war camp, Spock goes with them. A raid on a temple to capture the Stone of Gol is thwarted because Surak had been using the rebels emotions against them. Throughout this, Spock had been able to suggest to Rihan that he cannot win this war and placed the idea of them leaving Vulcan to find a new home for themselves. He later mindmelds with Surak, showing Surak that he wasn’t as free of emotion as he liked to believe. Surak had also seen Spock’s torment with his mixed ancestry and tells Spock that he needs to resolve that. The Enterprise had found itself under attack from craft that seemed to be cross between Vulcan and Romulan, and they realize that the timeline has been changed, although they can still remember the original one. The Enterprise’s warp core is damaged in the fighting, but then Gary Seven arrives. Although he’s annoyed with Kirk, Seven restores the warp core and gives them coordinates. That lets them get back to Vulcan and the mysterious tower. Although still under attack from the Vulcan-Romulan ships, Scotty succeeds in sending a morse code message to Spock telling him to get back to the tower. Spock knows that soon Rihan will launch a nuclear attack that kills Surak and, in turn, galvanizes the majority of the population into renouncing emotion, leading to the rebels leaving the planet and ultimately founding the Romulan Empire. As Spock approaches the tower he gets transported back to the Enterprise, the timeline is restored, and Spock is left planning to purge himself of his human emotions. [Timeline: Stardate 7283.4]

Episode 13, A Crypt Called Ithaca (Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly): Kirk announces that Bright Eyes has been accepted as a cadet at the Academy, but his attempt to talk Spock into accepting captaincy of the Enterprise after the 5-year mission ends fails. Then Seven absconds with Spock and the Tholian towers on Vulcan, Andoria, Proxima, and Tellar Prime activate, creating a gigantic Tholian web covering the heart of the Federation and trapping the Starfleet vessels including Enterprise. However, their previous experience with Tholian webs enables Enterprise

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to free itself. Seven tries to talk Spock into joining the Aegis’ plan involving the Tholians, which would effectively freeze all action in the universe in order to stop war and suffering. But when they go to shake on it but Spock nearly crushes Seven’s hand and brings him to his knees, and then Spock returns to the Enterprise. Kirk leaves Spock in command of the ship with orders to achieve a working peace with the Tholians while Kirk goes after Seven. Enterprise finds ways to get past the blockade between them and the Tholian Shardship, and Spock talks the Tholian leadership into allowing Bright Eyes to join them and tell of what he’s learned. That ultimately leads to the Tholians realizing that the Federation is not a threat but an inspiration. The Tholian web is deactivated before the Andorian, Renei, can talk the Federation President into carrying out desperate measures to try and free themselves. Meanwhile, Seven ends up traveling further back in time to kill Kirk or stop him being born, but he is constantly thwarted by Kirk turning up and interfering. Kirk finally reveals that he had been using the Aegis ‘pen’ from his first encounter with Seven, and he is able to have a serious talk with Seven about what they had both gone through (Seven’s actions were largely driven by the fact that he was still mourning the death of Isis, his Aegis handler). Bright Eyes remains, at least temporarily with the Tholians as an ambassador, Seven is taken into Federation custody and McCoy is hopeful that he will be able to correct the genetic adjustments that the Aegis had carried out on him, and Kirk relieves himself of command of Enterprise but again fails to talk Spock into becoming her new captain, so the two of them go on shore leave to Iowa together.

Episode 14, Epilogue (Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly, Jody Houser, Paul Cornell, Jim McCann, and Brandon Easton): The colony that Bright Eyes was the sole survivor of is being rebuilt as a joint Tholian-Federation venture, now called Enterprise. Bright Eyes meets up with Admiral Kirk (who has again found an excuse to leave his office on Earth) so that the two of them can sign the joint Federation-Tholian treaty. Kirk updates Bright Eyes on the crew, how Spock had left Starfleet to return to Vulcan, Sulu and Chekov were still having misadventures, McCoy is discovering that he is not a carpenter, and Scotty was overseeing the refit of Enterprise and gets invited on a date by Uhura. Kirk again suggests that Bright Eyes return to Starfleet, but Bright Eyes now sees his place as being with his own kind, making sure that the changes continue smoothly.

 

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About the Author

Geoff was eleven years old when Sputnik 1 launched the Space Age, and fourteen when Yuri Gagarin lifted off in Vostok 1 to start the era of manned space flight. He had been interested in science and astronomy from an early age, and to find himself in the era of space exploration was extremely exciting for him.

By 1969, he had moved from England to Ireland, so he saw Neil Armstrong makes his ‘one giant leap for mankind’ while sampling poteen for the first time at a friend’s apartment in Cork. By that time, the original Star Trek TV series had completed its three seasons in the U.S., but it was several years later before Geoff finally saw it. Seeing that magnificent white starship sailing majestically through the galaxy endeared him immediately to the series.

His interests in science tend to center around neuroscience, cosmology and quantum physics, which are subjects that frequently come up in the Star Trek episodes, and in the novels. While that may not be a good reason for him spending decades summarizing the novels, he thinks he can use it as a reasonable excuse.

His dissertation project for his MSc in IT was a learning management system for teaching

computer technology. He runs a much-simplified version of that at www.LaraAcademy.com (which is still available but not being updated). The site also contains a Star Trek section where a lot of the book summaries were first posted, but it hasn’t been updated in the past few years.

You can reach Geoff at gcanham@compuserve.com. He X’d his Twitter account when the Big Twit started messing with it, but you can find him on Facebook at

www.facebook.com/geoff.canham, although he doesn’t make a lot of use of social media.

He currently (2025) has three books available as paperbacks and Kindle ebooks through Amazon: “Free Will or Won’t … are we in charge of our lives or not?”, “It’s About Time … Relatively Speaking” and “Astronomical Alchemy” which has “How the universe created itself and us” as a subtitle on the inside page. That last book is also available as a hardback, and you can see a two-

minute introduction to it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KVrOwHVeRY.

His Goodreads page can be found at

www.goodreads.com/author/show/18839749.Geoff_Canham, and his Amazon Author page at

www.amazon.com/-/e/B07TFBL3FC

 

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