Planet of death!

Reading the old Gold Key Trek comics makes me wonder just how rigid the quality control of The Franchise was back in the early days. (Also, take a gander at what these go for in the original printings. OW.)

Reading the recent Checker reprints over my lunch hour made me miss some of the Blish adaptations of the series. The writer of these isn't listed, though the inking and pencils are by Nevio Zaccara according to the GCDB.

I'm half-tempted to say that they explained the premise of the show in about five minutes, and gave the guy a shooting script or two. But the writer never actually saw the show. For example, in issue one:

The Enterprise has flames shooting out of the warp nacelles. The space language everyone speaks is Esperanta. Most of the dialogue is spoken by Kirk and McCoy, with a few choice bits from Spock. Yoeman Rand is mostly identifiable by her hair. Stardates have colons in them, and there are frequent references to "galaxy minutes" and "lunar hours." The crew, having encountered a mysterious planet, beams down in their teleporter to spy what's going on. In fine tradition, a redshirt buys the farm almost instantly, having been transformed from an animal into a planet.

Enter lots of phaser shooting. Some running. More shooting. OMG! Rand has been captured by plants! (With tumbleweeds acting as the equivalent of herding dogs, which I liked quite a bit.)

Then, once they figure out that the plants are using animals as food, they free Rand using the ship's phasers. And since the plants can make anything into more plants, the obvious solution is to commit planet-wide genocide, so the last page is the complete eradication of all life on Planet K-G with phaser fire.

One of the other issues involved some planet where they execute prisoners by shipping them what must have been a progenitor of the B-Ark from Restaurant at the End of the Universe, one-way missiles that impact on asteroids and then provide sustenance until such time as the asteroids (all of which have breathable atmospheres, by the way) explode. Kirk and his landing party are taken hostage. Kirk hands control of the ship over to Spock, with orders to leave. But a-ha! Spock is now in command so he tells Kirk to stuff it, metaphorically, and then rescues Kirk anyway! Then they leave all the prisoners to die because, dammit, that's how their society works.

There's some goofy bits but it's also all in good fun. Checker's up to volume 3 of the Gold Key series, and I know the DC series has been partially reprinted. (Do check out the Mirror Universe Saga if you haven't already—good stuff. The Best of Trek trade is also fantastic, having one of my favorite issues ever, where Kirk surrenders the Excelsior twice in two issues, all in the name of diplomacy.)

Kevin pointed me to this site, where I should submit a resume. I think I would be disqualified, having no felony convictions. Damn.