Cura Te Ipsum (Wil Wheaton): A trial run with a new dilithium alignment results in an explosion that kills Doctor Hackard (who set it up) and a number of engineering staff. It also leaves the Enterprise without warp drive, shields, or transporters, and a long way from help. A planet is located that has dilithium, but there is a humanoid population that seems to have divided into two warring factions. They have to take a shuttle down, and while Scotty and his engineers hack into the mountain to extract dilithium (they can’t use phasers because of the dilithium gas in the atmosphere), Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Lieutenant Arbee go exploring. They unfortunately encounter some natives who accuse them of spying and a fight breaks out. Arbee instinctively uses his phaser, and he dies in the resulting explosion, along with the Zhoran strike force they were fighting. Spock is injured and develops an infection, but another group of natives turns up, one of whom is a young female healer, Misha, who identifies the infection as the Plague and offers to take Spock to her clinic to heal him. She had just been gathering the rare Suja Moss used to make the cure. Kirk learns that the warring had developed between the Kalans and the Zhorans because of the limited availability of the moss. General Gomi of the Kalans (and Misha’s father) demands that Kirk surrenders his phaser to him, because it was a weapon that they could use to defeat the Zhoran, but Kirk destroys it with an overload. Scotty had previously been telling Kirk that progress on obtaining the dilithium was being slowed by all the odd moss coating the mountain, and Kirk gets Scotty to gather about ten kilograms of it and bring it to the clinic. Scotty and his engineers arrive with armfuls of the moss, and Misha talks her father into sharing the find with the Zhoran, ending the cause of the war. The Enterprise gets its dilithium and heads to Starbase 42 for repairs. [Timeline: Stardate 5218.1]
The Trial (Mike Wellman): Kirk suddenly vanishes from the bridge. The nearest planet is Kos, which has said it doesn’t want contact with outsiders, but they do allow Spock and McCoy to beam down. There they find that Kirk, and quite a few other aliens are being held captive. At Kirk’s trial he seems to be accused of behavior at variance with their personal belief, with specific crimes including his dalliances with alien women, allowing people under his command to die, and interfering in any way with other civilizations. A Klingon captain, Commander Kafk, had been fighting similar sorts of charges for six years, but Kirk pleads guilty (which he sees as pleading guilty to being human) and he is sentenced to life in prison but placed on probation in the custody of his crew. [Timeline: Stardate 4610.3]
Communications Breakdown (Christine Boylan): It was twelve days after Nomad had taken away Uhura’s memory (or at least part of it), and McCoy and Chapel had been working with her to restore it. An ensign was at the communications station when a message comes in, telling the Enterprise to return to Malur to provide aid to survivors. Despite the damage it had received, the Enterprise heads back there, and Uhura is cleared by McCoy for return to her post. When they are able to pick up the distress signal themselves, Uhura says she can sense something suspicious concealed in it but can’t identify the specific concern. Her fears are discounted, and Kirk has her removed from duty, thinking she was suffering residual effects from Nomad. When a landing party is getting ready to beam down, Uhura (with McCoy’s help) forces herself into the group. After they had beamed down, the Enterprise comes under attack from what is believed to be an automated defense system from the planet. Only one life-sign is found on the planet, and Uhura tracks down the person behind it and subdues him. The survivor was a thief who had been on a prison shuttle when the planet was attacked. The ship that he had been on had crashed when it tried to land, and he was now the sole survivor. The secret message, hidden in his distress call, was a call to fellow criminals so that he could auction off all the goods left on the planet. While Kirk doesn’t approve of the thief’s actions, he leaves it to Federation authorities to decide what rights he has and search for other survivors. [Timeline: Stardate 3623.5]
Scaean Gate (Diane Duane): A delicate partnership has been achieved between the planets Elethia and Alsand after years of warfare. As part of the agreement, the Ethelian monarch, Queen Apathei, will rule on Alsand in place of their own royal line, which has died out, and the Enterprise is called in to transport her from Elethia to rendezvous with an Alsand ship. There have been reports of pirates in the area, and of attacks by an insectoid race, the Harst. Apathei becomes enamored by Dr. McCoy, but Apathei’s thirsk, her lizard-like pet, causes problems when it keeps escaping on the ship. Three ships attack the Enterprise soon after it leaves Ethelia, but they get driven off. The ships are presumed to be Harst, although Spock is puzzled by some sensor readings of them. They meet up with the Alsand ship, and McCoy escorts Apathei over to it. The thirsk escapes there as well, and when McCoy tracks it down, he realizes that it has been genetically engineered to record information about the technology around it, and it has gathered information on Federation, and now Alsand, technology, all with Apathei’s knowledge. The information was to provide leverage over the Alsandit if needed. The Enterprise and the Alsand ship come under attack from more supposed Harst ships, but Spock establishes that they are actually Alsand ships that are faking their signals. Scottie is able to remove the thirsk’s recording ability, and Kirk challenges Captain Tyren of the Alsand vessel about the faked Harst ships that attacks them. He also suggests that Apathei’s first act as regent on Alsand should be to dismiss all their admiralty. (Timeline: Stardate 4556.7]
Forging Alliances (Paul Benjamin): At the request of Sarek, Spock visits Vulcan’s Forge for a celebration of Surak’s birth and he is accompanied by Kirk and McCoy. Just as the celebration is starting, a herd of Le-Matra, accompanied by a young boy, attacks the assembly. The Le-Matras get driven off, although one of them and the boy (S’Vol, who is now unconscious) are captured, and then the Vulcans start acting very emotionally. The Vulcan doctor, Dr. Sassik, who is treating S’Vol warns McCoy off when he offers help and Spock shouts at Kirk for interfering in a fight. Spock does manage to regain some control, but then he, Kirk, McCoy, and Dr. Sassik find themselves barricaded in the treatment room with S’Vol and his father, Tar’ak, as other Vulcans try to batter the door down. Soon after the boy had been born, Tar’ak saved his life by a treatment involving extracts from a La-Matra. A few months ago, during his Kahs-wan ordeal, the boy had gone missing and was believed dead, but seemingly had been ‘adopted’ by a La-Matra. His telepathic abilities had broadcast his animalistic emotions to the Vulcans around, and when McCoy applies a compound to suppress the telepathy, the emotions cease to be broadcast and the Vulcans regain control of themselves. [Timeline: Stardate 3982.4]
Art of War (Wil Wheaton): The Enterprise responds to an emergency call from a mining facility on Angrena, where their hydrogen reserves had exploded and destabilized the area. A Klingon ship, with Captain Kring, also picks up the distress call and responds with the intention of taking the tritanium that had been mined. The Klingons arrive at the planet just after Kirk and his team had beamed down and a battle breaks out. Kirk is battling Kring when the ground breaks up under them, and they both find themselves below ground in the mines. They resume their fighting, but then they have to work together to defeat a Jeru (a massive creature that thrives in mines). Kring saves Kirk from the Jeru, and Kirk saves Kring from a deadly fall, and then they work together to escape as they see more Jeru hatching. By the time they emerge onto the surface again, the other Klingons have been defeated, but Kirk says that Captain Kring and his surviving crew should be allowed to leave. As a result, Kirk is arrested and charged with freeing an enemy without cause, but after recounting what occurred, he is acquitted with a reprimand on his record. Kring is also arrested, and he is charged with cowardice. The Klingon court does not accept that a human would act honorably, so Kring is convicted of having surrendered and now being a spy. He is consequently executed. [Timeline: Stardate 3905.9]
Bandi (David Gerrold): Sulu and Altman bring a Bandi-Bear (that looks like a teddy bear) aboard, but it escapes from the bio-lab. Kirk is annoyed at having another animal being brought aboard and demands that it be locked up. Unfortunately, the creature is a strong empath and broadcasts emotions to protect itself, and it can pick up the emotions of those around it. When the emotions start affecting the crew, Kirk considers having the creature killed, but that just creates more emotional problems, with the crew taking weapons to guard the Bandi-Bear and stop Kirk getting near it. Finally, Kirk forces himself to show love and concern for it, which calms the bear down, but it then starts radiating love to everyone and crew get all lovey-dovey with each other. Spock solves that by knocking the Bandi out with a neck-pinch, and the creature is then held in a transporter buffer until it can be beamed down to the biological preserve at Cawley Station.
The Humanitarian (Luis A. Reyes): Spock is left in charge of the ship while Captain Kirk recovers aboard Starbase 47. The Enterprise gets called in to help at Rudimon, which has been at war for seventy years but now has a tentative peace settlement in place. Enterprise teams start carrying out maintenance and repair work in the planet’s capital city and Lieutenant Tique, whose family had come from Rudimon, is placed in charge of security. Then an explosion occurs under a facility that was being repaired, with almost seventy fatalities from the Enterprise (about 20% of the crew), and more fatalities among the inhabitants of Rudimon, including Governor Laisll. Spock sees no way that the Enterprise can continue its mission at that point with so many injured crewpersons to be treated, and they have nearly completed the evacuation when Tique gets shot by an unknown native and dies in Spock’s arms. Through all this, Spock maintains that he has no feelings, and he continues to act logically. Back at Starbase 47, Kirk sympathizes with what Spock had gone through, knowing that Vulcans do have emotions although they control them. One sign of the emotion Spock had been experiencing showed in the fact that he hadn’t made a single captain’s log entry during the period of the emergency. [Timeline: Stardate 1347.5]
Inalienable Rights (Nathaniel Bowden): There is excitement, especially from Scotty, when it is realized that a ship that they are seeing is the inaugural test flight of a warp-capable ship from the planet Makon III. Kirk, McCoy, and Scotty take a shuttle down to where the other ship landed, in order to make first contact with the people of the planet. The leader, President Wan’brek, invites the Enterprise team to a banquet, but it soon becomes apparent that they are meeting with only one group of natives, and at least a cold war exists with another group, the Mols. Also, the leaders that they are meeting with seem think they have a right to own those of lesser professions, and the leaders are horrified to find that they are sitting at the same table as a healer (Dr. McCoy) and a mere engineer (Scotty). Jeena (the inventor of their warp drive) does break out of her captivity to meet Kirk and gets a tour of the Enterprise. They have another, more heated, meeting with the same leaders the next day, but leave saying that obviously the fact that they have warp drive doesn’t mean they are ready to have contact with others.
Side Effects (Chris Dows): The Enterprise encounters a disabled spaceship, and a team beams aboard to see if they can help. They find a lot of people of various races, being held, unconscious, attached to a kind of life support system, but they seem to have had parts from other beings grafted into them, and sometimes mechanical parts. Then a wormhole opens up nearby, with another craft coming through it. The team is preparing to beam back to the Enterprise, but then one of the comatose beings, a youngish woman with mechanical attachments, revives and attacks Chekov. The Enterprise gets caught in a confinement field by a ring of satellite and then dragged through the wormhole, and they find themselves being dragged towards a space station positioned near a black hole. The other ships also dock at the station, and the woman and the other revived aliens board the station. Chekov is found to be infected, and McCoy realizes the woman’s body contains the only cure. The space station had been placed near the black hole so that time dilation would allow its inhabitants to survive while the experiments, to find a cure for what was killing off their race, were conducted on the ship over centuries in normal space. A battle breaks out between the revived occupants of the ship and the people on the station, and Kirk and his team get caught in the middle. The woman, Danzek, was the daughter of the station’s lead researcher (Dr. Mynzek) and has effectively led her group to a take-over of the station but the battle causes the station to start to break up. The Enterprise group have to fight their way past the woman and her followers before they can beam out, and Spock gets a blood sample from her, along the way, that McCoy can use as a cure for Chekov. The Enterprise escapes through the wormhole they entered by, but they see an escape pod disappear through another wormhole, and they believe the woman (who bears a resemblance to what will become known as a Borg Queen) is in it. [Timeline: Stardate 4722.8]
Anything But Alone (Joshua Ortega): The Enterprise is exploring near the Alexisian system when it gets a message that Spock recognizes as being similar to those that used to be sent out by the Ximega, before their sun went supernova. Tracing the signal to the planet called Ximega II, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down and find a thriving colony, although they all seem to be affected by occasional migraines. They hear that the colony’s instigator is Prekraft, but they are told he doesn’t talk to people much anymore. They go to see him anyway and find that he travelled from Ximega when he knew it was doomed, bringing records of people’s forms and consciousnesses and the nanotechnology to recreate them. The colony had thrived for a while, then a solar storm killed off everyone except for him and his wife, Lin. The storm also destroyed the computer records that might have recreated them, but he had his memories and he recreated them from that. His wife had died soon after that, and he recreated her too, but it was her recreation that had sent the message bringing the Enterprise there. Controlling the lives of everyone in the colony was becoming too much for him, giving him headaches that were displaying on the others. His ‘wife’ talks him into abandoning the task that is draining him, pointing out that he will always have their memories. As he lets them go, the colony vanishes and Prekraft beams up with the Enterprise team, thinking of a new beginning. [Timeline: Stardate 4010.6]
‘Til Death (Mike W. Barr): The Enterprise finds a class M planet that shows no signs of life, and they go into orbit to check it out but come under attack from missiles from two locations on the planet. Teams beamed down and discovered a sarcophagus at each location with power connections to them and a dead body in each. Both sarcophaguses are beamed up for study. Soon after that, the crew start to polarize on gender lines, with men and woman picking fights with each other. Kirk’s solution is to separate the sexes into different parts of the ship, men to the engineering section, women to the saucer, and then go and check on the sarcophagus. There they find that the two bodies have regenerated into a good-looking young man and women, and they go off and start leading the separated men and women crews. Spock had momentary contact with one of them and gleaned that their names were Nadira and Faron, and they had been in love but that grew into hatred. Their telepathic abilities had led the two sexes into war against each other, until there was just the two left. The men separate the engineering section from the saucer in order to battle the saucer section with the women. A comment by McCoy leads Kirk to beam Nadira and Faron back down to fight among themselves or whatever else they wanted to do. That restores sanity to the crew. [Timeline: Stardate 3376.5]
Oban (Jim Alexander): A long war between the planets Xanvia and Xoxxa has ended, and the Enterprise is to take a peace gift from Xanvia to Xoxxa. The gift is a cute creature, called Oban, that had gone extinct on Xoxxa during the war, but which the Xanvians had recreated for them. It is found that the Oban pheromones make people feel calm and relaxed. The Xoxxans had previously given the Enterprise a gift called the Weave, which was a screen that incorporates Xoxxa microorganisms that produce patterns varying with the viewer’s mood. When Oban followed a couple to the Weave, the screen shows anger and Oban transforms into a massive vicious creature that kills several crewmen who try to stop it. A Xanvia warship that turns up demanding that Oban be delivered to the Xoxxa, which only confirms Kirk’s suspicion that Oban had been intended as anything but a peace offering. Finally, the creature that Oban had become is lured to the transporter with the Weave and beamed down to an isolated area on Xoxxa, but it seems resistant to multiple phaser blasts. Kirk finally kills it with an overloaded phaser explosion, which causes the gas-filled creature to explode too. [Timeline: Stardate 4410.1]
Orphans (Rob Tokar): The planet Lowaria had been part of the Uijwhan Empire but had now gained its independence, although it doesn’t have its own defense force. It has applied for Federation membership and asked for assistance against pirates that have been seeing it as easy pickings. The Enterprise is providing escort to a Lowarian freighter, and the two ships find themselves surrounded by craft shaped like large humanoid robots, each having a single pilot onboard. The pirates goad the freighter into firing on them, which causes feedbacks in both ships, because the pirates had created an invisible web connecting the vessels. With multiple systems knocked out on both ships, the humanoid-shaped pirate ships attack, and one drives a massive sword through the Enterprise’s viewscreen. However, the Enterprise is able to repel the pirates and capture one of the vessels along with its pilot, who turns out to be a kid. The Lowarian Representative, Melkor, explains that the pirates are called Haarkos and were children taken from their parent, genetically altered and originally trained to be the military for the Uijwhan Empire. With the empire gone, they have become pirates. Kirk gets the young captive pirate, Xill Kofza, to talk to him (sometimes it’s more like shouting) and takes him for a tour of the ship. He is particularly shaken when shown the body of the pirate whose sword was still protruding into the bridge. She had died from shrapnel from the blast, and she had been the Haarkos Alpha (their leader). Xill realized he was now in that role. He had known that it was futile to attack the Enterprise but had been afraid to tell her. Then the other pirates return, and Xill says he needs to go out to them, and Kirk (under objections from Spock and McCoy) allows him to take his humanoid craft out. Xill enforces his position as Alpha, pulls the sword from the Enterprise and surrenders the group to the Enterprise. The Haarkos get adopted into Lowarian families and, under supervision, become the defense force for Lowaria. [Timeline: Stardate 5268.7]
[Comic-book story]
Gaius’s father had been the captain of the prototype cloaked Romulan ship that the Enterprise had attacked, and which had self-destructed after being disabled. The Klingons, Commander Kor and Captain Koloth, had been manipulating the Romulan Praetor to get the Romulans to fight a proxy-war for them against the Federation in order to get around the Organian Peace Treaty. The Klingons also wanted to get the Romulan’s cloaking device. Kor and Koloth work on Gaius, playing up his father’s heroism and painting Kirk as a treacherous villain who had mercilessly murdered his father, fueling Gaius’s anger. They also manipulated Romulan affairs, so that Gaius became the next Praetor. Gaius has his fleet deliberately cross from the Neutral Zone into Federation space. They are intercepted first by the USS Yorktown, which was using the cloaking device that Kirk had captured. Then a Klingon fleet turns up, plus three more Starfleet vessels, and, along with the new Romulan flagship with Gaius aboard, a battle breaks out with everyone firing on everyone else. Finally, the Organians decide to act. They stop the fighting and show Gaius how he had been manipulated and how his father had really died. Gaius’s mind could not take the truth, and he becomes insensate. His wife, Elee’n, takes over as ruler of the Romulan Empire until their unborn son comes of age, and she orders all Klingons out of Romulan territory.
Comic-book story of the lady who became known as Number One in the first pilot episode of Star Trek. It starts with her as a cadet on the shakedown cruise of the USS Enterprise, which the Klingons try to capture. Then we see her aboard the USS Fortune as they investigate a distress call on Tau Alpha III but come under attack from an alien spacecraft and sacrifice their ship after beaming down to the planet to await rescue. Later she is on the Ventura and beams down to investigate a colony near the Romulan neutral zone, only to find that the colony had died out and had been recreated by a robot that hoped to take over the ship. Then she gets reassigned to the Enterprise and they discover a planet which had been populated with human clones bred to be warriors but transported to the planet by Gary Seven back in 1969. Later the Enterprise gets drawn into some peculiar zone that appears to be millennia into the future, and the Enterprise and her crew start to age dramatically. They discover the zone is controlled by the last survivors from the end of the universe who are trying to find a way to stop the universe ending and have to be talked into facing their fate and releasing the Enterprise.
Comic-book story of the final mission of the Enterprise, before Kirk is promoted to Admiral and Spock and McCoy resign their commissions. The mission is to Archernar IV, which is actually an abandoned alien space station that is now populated by the giant insects that were left behind, of which the spider-like creatures (known as Archernarians) are now sentient. It is also discovered that a piece of equipment on the station is a tremendously powerful weapon, and a faction of the Archernarians try to use it against the Federation team, but they are defeated before doing too much damage (although they destroy a survey station and damage the Enterprise). Then it is discovered that some of the millipede-like creatures (known as Crawlers) have also become sentient, and a battle breaks out between the two sentient races, but the king of the Archernarians is wise enough to bring about a truce between them. It also turns out that the Orions had found out about the weapon and planned to steal it, but then the Archernarians and Crawlers find that their station is really a vessel that can move between universes, and the Orion raiders are destroyed when the station/ship disappears as it resumes its travels. [Timeline: Stardate 6835.7]
The Gorn (Scott & David Tipton): The Reliant’s Captain Clark Terrell and First Officer Chekov are part of a team that had been that had been treating at outbreak of Symbalene blood burn on Te Awamutu VII. They are returning aboard a shuttle when the primary power transfer conduit blows. They manage to land on a planetoid, but the shuttle is unflyable. As they are exploring the area where they landed, Skiles is killed when he triggers a booby-trap. A Gorn squadron is on the planet and notices the landing. When General Relik realizes it is a Federation vessel, he sends a rescue team to provide assistance, wanting to return the favor Kirk did in saving the Gorn captain. When Captain Terrell sees the Gorn approaching, he has warning shots fired. The Gorn doctor tries to get closer to the Federation team so that his translator will work, but he surprises Lieutenant Bates, who fires on him. When Dr. Bianca Wilder sees the medical equipment on the Gorn’s belt, she realizes this had been a rescue mission, not an attack. The Gorn are horrified at the attack on their doctor and an attack force is sent, but by the time it arrives, Dr. Wilder has got the Gorn doctor, Thak, patched up enough to explain the misunderstanding. Peace is established, although the Gorn will be relieved when the creepy mammals are recovered by the Reliant. [Timeline: Stardate 7952.6, 15 years after Kirk’s encounter with the Gorn on Cestus III]
Vulcans (James Patrick): Pike had recently added Spock to the Enterprise crew, but his logical, unemotional decisions seldom go down well with other crew members, like Lieutenant Jose Tyler. The Federation receives a request from some civilian leaders on the war-torn planet of Magefferus-3, requesting their intervention, and the Enterprise is sent. Pike, Spock, and Tyler are among the team that beams down intending to meet with the military leaders in the city of Pomapoli. Their transport gets diverted, and they find themselves facing hostile military personnel who open fire on them. Security Officer Reed is mortally wounded, and while the others escape initially, they are all ultimately taken captive. The military are puzzled by Spock showing no emotion and being unafraid of them, even when one slices a knife through part of Spock’s hand. They are especially intrigued (as is Tyler) when Spock says that Vulcans do have emotions and used to be warlike but had learned to control their emotions. The Enterprise team are taken to meet the various planetary leaders, so they can hear Spock’s story. The end result is that the military leaders agree to meet with civilian leaders onboard the Enterprise, starting peace talks. Pike has a talk to his crew about being more welcoming and suggests to Spock that he keeps some of his logical decisions to himself.
Andorians: The Old Ways (Paul D. Storrie): Ortees Sharad was an Andorian Starfleet officer, serving as an analyst in the Intelligence Department. He gets a ride on Picard’s Enterprise when he goes home on leave, and, on Andor, soon encounters the hostility that has grown against Starfleet and the Federation. When he meets with an old friend, Thrynn, he gets taken captive by the ‘True Heroes of Andor’, of which Thrynn is the local commander. General Kovan plans on forcing any strategic Federation information that Sharad has out of him. However, Sharad challenges Kovan in accordance with the code of Ushaan, meaning a duel to the death, and Kovan is killed. Sharad is still surrounded by Kovan’s traditionalist supporters, and Sharad challenges them, declaring that he is a true Andorian and willing to die, and asking if they are. [Timeline: Stardate 47996.7]
Orions (Scott & David Tipton): Captain Christopher Pike is getting bored among the diplomats on Babel, but then he sees an Orion woman, Leata, about to knife a Tellarite, Administrator Muso, and Pike prevents it happening. Muso then goes to shoot Leata, and again Pike intervenes. When he informs Admiral Mendez about it, he is asked to keep an eye on Muso. What Pike sees and hears leads to him becoming very suspicious of Muso, and he secretly checks out his quarters. There he finds Leata again, and she informs him that Muso is a gangster who had killed her sister and has put a contract out on Pike. The two of them are then confronted by Muso and three associates, and while Pike tries to protect Leata, she proves to be much more adept at subduing Muso and his group. Pike does manage to talk her out of killing him, but Muso and his associates are taken into custody. Leata gives Pike a record of Muso’s bounties and other crimes.
Borg (Andrew Stephen Harris): Strange things are happening, including Geordi being beamed up from an asteroid with some Borg changes. It is found that the Borg have set a tachyon wave moving backwards in time in order to have everyone born as a Borg and assimilate their own past into their future perfection. Admiral Janeway says they have already anticipated this eventuality, and the solution is to explode a transwarp core inside a pulsar, sending an anti-tachyon wave forward in time to collide with the Borg’s tachyon wave and eliminate it. Picard believes that this could eliminate the Borg as well, and he argues for a different solution. Picard locates a vortex where a number of future events were converging. The Enterprise heads there. Picard has himself, with the help of Geordi, beamed down to the site where a Borg was about to assimilate a young girl who would grow up to be the Borg Queen that comes up with the tachyon wave plan. Picard uses Borg arguments to argue against the action, telling the Borg to adapt, and finally convinces them. [Timeline: Stardate 56344.5]
Romulans (John Byrne): the same story as the first part of ‘Romulans: Pawns of War’
Cardassians (Arne Schmidt & Andy Schmidt): A group of Cardassians, who call themselves the Rom Knights, infiltrate the Federation prison Ananke Alpha with the intention of killing