Kirk, determined to get back into space, is offered the position of observer at the tryout of a giant automated rescue ship, Recovery, designed by Myron Shulman. Kirk had ‘trashed’ the idea of the ship when it was presented to him. The Tholians, Romulans and Klingons are also going to be present. McCoy (unknown to Kirk) is an observer on the Recovery; Kirk and Kevin Riley are aboard the Starhawk (captained by Zhanya Akhmatova), Kirk later transferring to the Paladin, which he captains after allowing Captain Romolo to join his friend Akhmatova on Starhawk (Romolo is later killed in action). Shulman has had a brain insert fitted (unknown to him) by the Tholians and he reprograms Recovery which fires on the other ships and heads off towards Tholian territory with Kirk in pursuit. It stops when it notices another ship (Tholian) approaching, and the Klingons also arrive. McCoy manages to remind the Recovery's computer that its duty is to save lives and it transports all but Shulman off to the Paladin. The Klingons invade the ship and blow up Recovery. Spock, on Vulcan, has some sense of what is going on but tries to shut it out of his mind.
The Enterprise’s command section (the saucer) has completed its upgrade at the San Francisco Navy Yard, and Captain William Decker is in charge as it lifts off and does a celebratory loop around the San Francisco Bay before heading up to Spacedock Four to reconnect to the engineering section that is completing its upgrades. Admiral Nogura calls Kirk in to congratulate him on the upgrade and talk him into taking on the additional role of public relations liaison with the press, starting out almost immediately as a guest on the following day’s ‘WorldNews Saturday’ interview program related to the upcoming Apollo Tricentennial and the Dart Project. That project involves the Space Shuttle Enterprise being taken out of museum storage and fitted with impulse engines and modern controls so that it can fly around the Moon on Apollo Day with other antique spacecraft. Kirk also finds out that evening that his wife (Vice Admiral Lori Ciana) is leaving on a tour of the ‘new human’ settlements and most likely will not return to him. Nan Davis (the newscaster) is very happy with the interview with Kirk about the Dart Project, but mentions that she has to leave in order to get to New York to interview a Klingon (Doctor G’dath) who is teaching a high school class there because prejudice meant he couldn’t get the kind of job he was qualified for. Kirk asks to join her, and after the interview Nan asks if she can get some shots of G’dath while strolling in the neighborhood. While out walking, the three of them get attacked by four thugs, although between them they succeed in knocking out all four. The night before, G’dath had completed a project involving a globe that utilized energy from the universe itself, providing a new means for space travel, and the initial tests had far exceeded G’dath’s expectations. Keth and Klor (Keth’s subordinate) at the Klingon Embassy had been secretly monitoring his activities, both in the classroom where he taught and in his apartment, and they had arranged for the attack after seeing his successful experiment. G’dath guesses that his discovery and the attack are linked, and takes the kitten (Leaper), that had recently adopted him, and leaves his apartment to call Nan to ask for help. Kirk is with Nan when the call comes in, and G’dath tells them about his discovery and Kirk says he will get Starfleet to help. They beam in to his apartment but Keth and Klor had already broken in and stolen the globe, killing one of G’dath’s neighbors in the process. Kirk gets his chief-of-staff, Kevin Riley, to arrange security for G’dath, but Riley is distraught after his wife (Anab) had failed to renew their marriage contract and he mistakenly orders standard security (which doesn’t block transporters), rather than priority one security. The following day, G’dath’s class is being broadcast live when Keth and Klor beam into the classroom, capturing G’dath and holding the students as hostage because they don’t have any good escape route planned. Riley notices what is happening and is horrified by his mistake, so he has himself beamed to New York and arranges for a flitter with shuttle capabilities that Keth and Klor can use (also arranging that the flitter’s shields will fail soon into the flight). Keth and Klor take G’dath, along with Riley and Joey Brickner (one of the students) as hostages. Kirk and Nan had been filming the initial test flight of the Space Shuttle Enterprise, intending to be at G’dath’s classroom for the end of his class. When they find out what had been happening, Kirk talks the shuttle’s captain, Alice Friedman, into taking them on a chase after the flitter, which they succeed in grabbing with a tractor beam. Keth had forced G’dath to attach the globe to the flitter, intending to use it to take them to Qo’noS. However, G’dath triggers the globe and it takes them into lunar orbit, dragging the space shuttle with it, but damaging the shuttle in the process. Decker arrives with the U.S.S. Enterprise and, with the flitter’s shields now down, he is able to have Riley and Brickner beamed off. They have problems identifying which Klingon is G’dath, and then they have problems locking onto him, but they beam him off just as he triggers the globe to cause it to explode and destroy the flitter, although G’dath does sustain injuries. A number of G’dath’s students had been antagonistic to the idea of having a Klingon teach them, but he is overwhelmed by the support he receives from them all while he is recovering in hospital. Although he is now receiving job offers from all the leading universities, G’dath decides his true vocation is as a high school teacher. He also contacts the Organians to ensure that neither the Klingons nor the Federation get their hands on his (now destroyed) invention, because he sees it as being too dangerous to be let loose again. Scotty gets the Space Shuttle Enterprise repaired in time for Apollo Day. After their short separation, Lori arranges to meet up with Kirk on Centaurus before starting her tour. [Timeline: 18 months after Kirk had first become an Admiral, shortly before the events of Star Trek: The Motion Picture]
Sulu is working as a test pilot at White Sands (testing a Wraith shuttle equipped with the captured Romulan cloaking device), Chekov is at Starfleet Security Academy, Annapolis, and Uhura is teaching at Starfleet Academy. By chance, the three of them meet up with Dr. Piper who talks Chekov into spending some time assisting him with research on a captured Klingon disruptor. Then the disruptor is stolen, Dr. Piper is killed, and Chekov ends up on the run, being blamed for the theft and the murder. The plans for the cloaking device are also stolen, and some suspicion falls on Sulu, and, when the Wraith malfunctions, Sulu is believed to have died, but actually he escapes with the Wraith shuttle and is later instrumental in rescuing Chekov. Admiral Kirk comes to suspect some plot to discredit the old Enterprise command crew and goes off-planet to seek evidence of who is behind it. Uhura, Sulu and Chekov gain evidence that Jackson Kahle (an elderly ex-starship captain who now runs the weapons company UniPhase Incorporated) is behind the events, and he is one of the organizers of a conference between the Federation and the Romulans (the Romulan Territorial Conference). Uhura makes the first move (at the conference) to present evidence against Kahle, but it is the Klingon Captain Kang who provides the first-hand evidence against one of Kahle’s co-conspirators (Commodore Willis), and that is the clinching evidence. It turns out that Kahle was trying to stir up a war between the Klingons and the Romulans, making profit from the war and ultimately leaving the Federation the strongest power after the two enemies had severely weakened each other. With the plot exposed, the Federation, Klingons and Romulans go their own ways with continuing mutual distrust, but at least not in full-blown warfare. Chekov gets promoted to Lieutenant and appointed as security chief for the Enterprise when it completes its refit. [Timeline: circa December 2269, shortly after Kirk was promoted to Admiral]
The shuttlecraft Halley, with Kirk, Sulu, Chekov, Scotty and McCoy aboard, is disabled by a gravitic mine, Sulu is badly injured, and Kirk’s knee is badly damaged. While Scotty tries to see what can be got working, Kirk is talked into telling the story of his attempt (the only successful one) at beating the Kobayashi Maru no-win scenario at the Academy. Kirk had beaten it by reprogramming part of the scenario (after a couple of unsuccessful runs at it) so that the attacking Klingons respected him and offered assistance. Chekov is next to get talked into telling his embarrassing Kobayashi Maru effort. He blew up his ship taking out the attacking Klingons in the process, but it was later pointed out that, although he had the crew escaping in shuttlecraft, they would all have been killed anyway in the resultant explosion. In another test he had “killed” (stunned) virtually all of the other cadets in the scenario, along with himself, in order to make sure he didn’t lose. While Scotty is doing an EV to launch a photon torpedo to smash an approaching asteroid (before it smashes them), Sulu is talked into telling his Kobayashi Maru story. He had taken the test right after his great-grandfather, Poppy, had died, and Sulu had avoided confrontation with the Klingons by refusing to cross into the neutral zone to attempt a rescue of the stricken vessel. Scotty then tells his tale. He had been in Command School to please his family, and Admiral Walgren secretly arranges for Scotty to be captain in the scenario to help him honorably get out of Command School and back into engineering where he really wanted to be. When Scotty uses an attack method to destroy nine Klingon warships, which he knows would not have worked in practice (but did fool the computer), to his delight he gets dropped from Command School. It begins to look as if they are in a no-win situation in the shuttlecraft, until Kirk thinks of converting the radio to absorb all radiation (turning it into a virtual mini-black hole) and aiming it at where they imagine the Enterprise to be. Spock has been predictable in his search pattern, and spots the anomaly and comes to the rescue. [Timeline: shortly after the events in Star Trek: The Motion Picture]
The Enterprise is sent to evacuate Federation personnel from Dekkanar, which has had a change of government. The matter is complicated by the fact that Dekkanar has been a base for surveillance of the Klingon Empire. It is further complicated when Captain Kasak sutai-Khornezh absconds with an experimental, remotely controlled, warship (Hakkarl) he was supposedly taking for a test flight, and arrives at Dekkanar trying to get the Federation to take action against him that would cause the Organians to cede Dekkanar to the Klingon Empire. Kasak’s mission becomes personal when he realizes he is dealing with Kirk, as Kasak was on the Klingon vessel involved in the Tribbles incident. While Kasak acts friendly towards the Enterprise and its crew, the PDI (Dekkanar terrorists) do try attacking the Enterprise and the diplomatic mission, causing a number of deaths on the planet. Then more Klingon warships turn up, accusing Kirk of stealing the experimental vessel. Kirk convinces Admiral Korzhan that he was not involved in the disappearance of the ship, which Kasak has now cloaked. Between the Enterprise and the other Klingon fleet, the experimental vessel (along with the controlling scout ship, Tazhat) are destroyed, and Kasak dies aboard. After seeing that they would have to deal with Klingons if the Federation leave, the governing authority on Dekkanar reopens negotiations with the Federation. The Organians never interfered with events, but had been watching them, and were encouraged by the way Kirk and the Klingons cooperated in thwarting Kasak’s schemes. [Timeline: Stardate 2213.5, Kirk is still an Admiral aboard the refitted NCC-1701.]
The Enterprise intercepts a Romulan ship traveling at sublight speeds that crosses the boundary from the Neutral Zone into Federation space. The ship is found to have a blown phaser-coolant line (later found to have been sabotaged) that had suffocated the crew, and the ship appears to be equipped with a new cloaking system that would allow the ship to fire its weapons while cloaked. There are also four small, attractive, rectangular polyhedron boxes, looking like artwork, found aboard the ship, which intrigue Spock. The ship is considered too important to be handled by a starbase, so the Enterprise tows it back to Earth. One of the artwork boxes is sent to researchers at Starfleet HQ and one to Starfleet’s Life City in the California desert, but the objects split when studied, releasing some form of virus that kills everyone in both buildings. Thankfully, both buildings are hermetically sealed and so the virus doesn’t escape into the environment. It is discovered that the virus almost instantly converts any oxygen into copies of itself, rendering anywhere it can access uninhabitable. Kirk had been visiting HQ but was in the self-contained Vault (an underground shelter and back-up control center from the time of the first Romulan War) trying to avoid a meeting with Admiral Nogura who wanted Kirk to resume an Earth-based office job. Consequently, Kirk finds himself trapped down there because it is shielded from transporters. Spock had been the one who originally found Saavik among the other surviving children on the Romulan planet Thierrrull, also known as Hellguard. They were the offspring of Romulans and captured Vulcans from the Vulcan science survey vessels Criterion, Perceptor, Constant, and Diversity. Spock had overseen Saavik’s education and invited the Starfleet Academy cadet to visit the Enterprise while it was at Earth. When he shows her an image of the artwork boxes she says she has seen them before in a dream. The dream had entailed thousands of these kinds of objects in a cavern on Hellguard, but Spock realizes that it is a repressed memory, not a dream, and gets permission from Admiral Nogura to visit Hellguard to investigate. En route they rescue a Romulan pirate named Achernar, along with his disabled vessel, and Saavik takes an instant dislike to him, not only because he reveals her name as meaning Little Cat. At Hellguard, they find a Romulan scoutship which they are able to grab and hold with a tractor beam, and then Spock and Saavik beam down and locate the cavern, but Saavik is wracked by reawakened memories. They also find that the captured Vulcans from the research vessels had died in tests of the virus that a Romulan secret military faction had been developing. The child Saavik had been brought to this cavern but had escaped after a group of ‘The Quiet Ones’ (the captive adult Vulcans) had sacrificed themselves on her behalf, and she had used a stolen knife to attack and blind the leader of the Romulans. They find that that blinded Romulan was still there now, guarding the collection of virus-containing objects that he developed. Among the things that go wrong are earthquakes starting to occur around the location where they are, and the blinded Romulan committing suicide before they can get information out of him. Spock gets Scotty to build a bomb that will implode the cavern and the viruses it contains and send it down into the planet’s molten core. Spock intends to place the bomb deep in the cavern, but Saavik views that as suicidal and she disables Spock and does it herself. Then it appears that the earthquakes will block her escape, but the Enterprise crew rescue her and Spock. By this time, a Romulan starship and two smaller vessels were approaching and the captured Romulan scout ship blows itself up, sending an energy burst back up the tractor beam and disabling the Enterprise. McCoy gets Saavik to talk about what had happened in the cavern and realizes that she had seen some of the objects break but she hadn’t died, and he deduces that something in the dust neutralizes the virus. Spock and an engineer named Bobby Harper, who had joined the mission at Earth because other engineering staff were on shore leave, ascertain that the affective compound is iron pyrite (Fool’s Gold). The captain of the Romulan warship that now had the Enterprise targeted, Praetor Tahn, had been part of the group that had been behind the work at Hellguard, but he was there to regain his stolen treasures that Achernar had, but now he thought that capturing the Enterprise would be a suitable prize. However, Spock, Scotty and Sulu start the self-destruct so he wouldn’t get the ship, and Saavik releases Achernar who informs Tahn that he can still get his treasures. On top of that, Federation forces were massed along the Romulan border and would have invaded by now if Kirk hadn’t talked Nogura into giving the Enterprise more time by offering to resume his old admiralty position at HQ. Tahn agrees to let the Enterprise go, but the Enterprise’s damaged computer won’t stop the countdown. Luckily, Harper has a childlike little friend (almost a pet) named Obo (a Belandrid) who is excellent at fixing things, and offers to do an ‘easy fix’. He does stop the count at 2, but only by using his own body to short out part of the system, and he initially appears dead, but his body manages to not-quite-so-easy fix itself. The Fool’s Gold works to neutralize the virus, a devastating war is prevented, the new cloaking device is found to be non-functional, Saavik is surprised to not be thrown out of Starfleet Academy for disobeying a superior’s orders, and Nogura doesn’t hold Kirk to the office job. [Timeline: Saavik had been discovered on Hellguard, along with the other children, a few months after Spock had abandoned his efforts to achieve Kolinahr. The main story would be several years later.]
The planet known as Flyspeck (official name: 1212 Muscae IV) is unusual in that it has three completely different sentient species, the Ornae (who are large blobs of protoplasm that can reshape themselves at will), Lahit (who are sentient trees), and ;At (who appear to be large blocks of stone, but seem to only partly exist in this universe and don’t show up well in sensor scans). The planet had been surveyed by one ship in the past, and the Enterprise is sent to try to negotiate with the three species to see if they will join the Federation. Dr. McCoy is part of the initial team sent down to the planet and is the first of the Enterprise team to encounter one of the ;At, but is then called back to the Enterprise to give his report to Kirk. When Kirk decides to go down to the planet to meet the ;At, McCoy is surprised to find that he is left in command of the ship (he had been jokingly complaining about Kirk having too easy a time, and saying how much more comfortable Kirk’s chair was than his own). But then Kirk vanishes, a Klingon ship arrives and a dispute starts between the two when a Klingon away team also disappears, and three other Klingon ships are called in, all threatening the Enterprise. Then a massive Orion pirate ship arrives and starts attacking the Enterprise. McCoy has built grudging respect from Commander Kaiev of the initial Klingon ship (the Ekkava) and Kaiev joins McCoy in battling the Orion, and the other three join in to defeat the pirate. Kirk and the lost Klingon away team had been moved forward in time by a week or so by the ;At and Kirk had learnt that the planet had been under attack recently by Orion pirates, so the planet’s inhabitants were a bit suspicious about encounters with aliens. Kirk gets returned to his ship during the culmination of the battle with the Orion, and the ;At are grateful for the intervention, and pleased to see that the Orion is driven off, not destroyed, and they agree on behalf of all three species to join the Federation (the ;At are seen as the protectors and benefactors of the other two species).
The Enterprise is transporting a delegation of Kaldorni to a negotiating session with the Beystohn League about a planet, Yagra IV, that both worlds want to colonize. Also onboard, attempting to understand the Kaldorni’s position, is Federation ambassador, Commissioner Montoya, and his wife, Cecilia Simons, who Kirk had had a short affair with in the past. After the Enterprise has left the starbase, they are notified that an unidentified body has been discovered on the starbase, believed to be one of the Kaldorni, and it is guessed that the person has been replaced by an agent for parties unknown. The Enterprise is diverted from its course a couple of times, first apparently by the acting Science Officer (Tenaida) and then supposedly by the acting First Officer (Commander Brady), but neither were on the bridge when the diversions happened. Spock is off the ship during this mission. Cecilia’s daughter, Janara, who is on the Enterprise crew and is half Deltan, half human, senses a wild cat-like creature aboard, but cannot initially identify who or what it is. The creature takes over the identity of another of the Kaldorni, after its first identity is discovered, and later kills Cecilia Simons. The shape-shifting creature (who goes by the name Srrawll) is finally captured, and discovered to be from the disputed planet, Yagra IV, which had not previously been known to have indigenous sentient life forms. With that known, it is realized that neither the Kaldorni nor the Beystone League can lay claim to it, and the planet is quarantined. During the mission, Kirk gets awarded three of the Kaldorni ambassador’s wives, but finally manages to work out how to give them back. Alternative planets are found for the two almost-warring parties, and the creature is handed over to a starbase for the Federation to decide what action to take. [Timeline: shortly after the events in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.]
The Enterprise is sent to the planet Talin IV to assist the FCO (First Contact Office) who are secretly monitoring developments on the planet, and have a base on the moon. Arriving at the planet they only just miss being observed by a space mission to the moon by a small craft from the planet, which the FCO team later claim to have warned Enterprise about, but the message had not been received. Development on the planet is similar to Earth in the late twentieth century, with the beginnings of spaceflight and the planet teetering on the brink of nuclear war. Something about the rate of development on the planet is unusual enough to have resulted in the aging Dr. Alonzo Richter (inventor of the Richter Scale of Culture) being with the FCO team. An apparent accidental detonation of a nuclear warhead leads to both sides on the planet launching missiles at each other, but the Enterprise defuses the situation without being observed, and the planet’s inhabitants believe a miracle had occurred to save them from a dreadful mistake. Soon after that, all the remaining nuclear missiles are launched, the Enterprise comes under direct attack when it tries to intervene again, the planet is devastated and the 'Enterprise Five' (Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu and Chekov) get forced to resign after being charged with violation of the Prime Directive, and Uhura gets dismissed from Starfleet after refusing to sign a document that she declared to be false. All six of them work their ways back to Talin to try to find out what went wrong, and they discover another moon base with hive-like creatures who refer to themselves as the Many, who had led the Talin to develop and use nuclear weapons to prepare the planet as a food source for something called the One. The One turns out to be a planet-sized space creature, not really sentient, that had survived somehow from a previous universe. Spock believes it would prove vulnerable to the Enterprise’s weapons, but Kirk decides that it was only acting on instinct and that other food sources could be prepared for it and it should be allowed to live (technically the Enterprise at this point is under the command of Scotty, with Kirk & Co. onboard as observers). The Enterprise crew is reinstated, it is discovered that because of the Talin’s ability to cocoon themselves the loss of life on the planet was not as severe as initially believed, and Spock had made the case for the Federation to provide the planet with support and assistance in its recovery. [Timeline: In the final year of Kirk's original five-year mission on the Enterprise]
The Enterprise arrives at Cragon V (a planet at an early industrial stage) a couple of months after the Klingons had established a presence there and started training the natives to be warriors. Kirk is pleased to hear that the leader of the planet (Weyland, who the natives call a god) had returned. Kirk tries to tell Weyland about the Klingons, but Weyland is not interested in having either the Federation or the Klingons on the planet and orders them both off, and demonstrates the ability to enforce his wishes. An argument between Kirk’s away team and the Klingons results in the death of a native boy and one of Kirk’s team (Lieutenant Garrovick) and the two groups end up back on their respective ships, both of which are now without power. Scotty, Sulu, and Chekov (who had been on the away team) find themselves sent back in time to past eras of their native lands and into battle zones. The Klingon captain, Kral, gets overthrown by his second in command, Kbrex, and (along with Vladra, who supported him) gets ejected from an airlock. Conveniently, Weyland allows the Enterprise to use its transporter in time to rescue them. As the orbits of both ships start to decay, Kirk talks Kral into making a temporary pact, and together they use a shuttlecraft to travel back down to the planet and confront Weyland, but they find themselves ambushed by Kbrex, who Weyland had allowed to beam down to the planet alone. Kbrex dies from a booby-trap he himself had set. Weyland is impressed enough by the cooperation between Kirk and Kral to relent of his elaborate plan to execute them all and restores power to the ships to enable them to leave, and returns Scotty, Sulu and Chekov just in time to save them from deaths in the wars they had been involved in. Weyland was a being from another continuum who had been attracted by the natives and had set himself up as their protector. [Timeline: shortly after the events in Star Trek: The Motion Picture]
The Midgwins live on the planet Elcidar Beta Three (Midgwis), and they have been against using technology, but they are now becoming unable to feed themselves adequately due to their reluctance to employ cultivation (preferring to rely on what Rhea – the spirit of their planet – gives them). The Klingons had tried to take over the planet earlier, and had surprisingly been driven off by the Midgwins, and now the Federation is trying to help the planet. The Enterprise brings a team to work with the Midgwins, but one of the team (Dr. Helen Gordon) had been having an affair with Captain Kirk and decides to stay onboard the Enterprise. When Kirk and the away team beam back up from the planet, Spock thinks he saw something else beam up, but nothing can be located. A Midgwin named Yarblis Geshkerroth, and also known as the Dream Walker, had used the beam-up to take over Kirk’s body, driving out Kirk’s spirit/katra. While people notice that Kirk is behaving a bit differently (and Helen is especially affected), it takes a while for Spock to realize what has happened, but then he manages to rescue the real Kirk and preserve his katra in the main computer. The Dream Walker (in Kirk’s body) takes the Enterprise back to the planet and is planning on wiping out Bindigo Warren because he sees them as succumbing to the Federation’s ideas of technology, and plans to have the Federation blamed for the attack. With the assistance of a Klingon scientist and Kailin Arxoras (the patriarch of the Bindigo Warren) they get Kirk back into his own body, and the Dream Walker is banished from the Consciousness Web (a mental linking within the warren) and commits suicide. Helen decides to join the team on Midgwis. [Timeline: during the fourth year of Kirk’s first five-year mission aboard the Enterprise]
The Enterprise is sent to mediate in a dispute between the planet Chyrellka (the fourth planet in the system) and its colony on Vancadia (the third planet). The two had co-existed peacefully for almost a century, but with only two years to go until the colony would get its independence, near full scale war had broken out because the colony was demanding independence now. On arrival at Chyrellka, Premier Kaulidren and his advisors arrive aboard the Enterprise with their ship, claiming they do not trust transporters. Kaulidren is eager to show Kirk images of the atrocities that the Vancadian rebels have supposedly carried out, trying to get Kirk to take his side. The Enterprise observes one of a chain of automated surveillance ships that the Chyrellkans had deployed around Vancadia, summarily shoot down an unmanned craft launched from the planet. The craft had been broadcasting a recorded message saying the Enterprise must learn the truth at Vancadia, so they head there. When they contact the colony, the leader of the rebels, Delkondros, talks of the Chyrellkans poisoning the colonists and requests a physician to examine the survivors. Around that time, a sensor indicates an intruder at the Enterprise’s main computer room, but an investigation indicates that it is a false alarm. McCoy and Spock beam down to provide assistance and assess the situation on Vancadia, but contact with them is lost soon after Kirk and others on the bridge hear a fight break out and an energy weapon fire, that seemingly destroys McCoy’s and Spock’s communicators, leading to the belief that both had died. Actually, Spock had quickly come to realize that Delkondros was a disguised Klingon, and with a bit of help from Councilor Tylmaurek, Spock and McCoy escape, although the three of them get accused of murdering the other councilors who had been at the meeting. On the Enterprise, they observe a shield (that the colony shouldn’t have the ability to power) suddenly cover a large part of the colony, and they also become unable to contact anyone on the planet, or even to contact Starfleet. Kirk agrees to take Kaulidren and his gro