Star Trek 796: A Mirror for Futility/The Time Stealer

796. A Mirror for Futility/The Time Stealer

PUBLICATION: Star Trek: A Mirror for Futility/The Time Stealer, Power Records, 1976

CREATORS: Alan Dean Foster and possibly Cary Bates (writers), Neal Adams and unknown, but at times looks like John Buscema (artists)

STARDATE: 5470 and 6134.6 respectively

PLOT: In A Mirror for Futility, the Enterprise finds itself in the crossfire between two sentient ships fighting their long-dead masters' last war now for 150,000 years. Though Kirk tries to bluff them with a non-existent fleet of UFP ships, it doesn't change anything. They no longer trust anything, certainly this bluff from a ship that might as well come from the other side. The Enterprise leaves them locked in combat... for eternity.

In The Time Stealer, the Enterprise investigates a time-slowing phenomenon that seems to pass by a planet from time to time. Its inhabitants beam over from a magic-driven ship - a barbarian and a wizard! Their civilization came from Earth long ago, but has been stuck in its Middle Ages because of the time-slowing effect. Spock and the wizard work together to cast a mindmeld spell that uses all thoughts of all inhabitants of the planet to short-circuit the sentien phenomenon's mind. It works, and Spock catches two twists in a row: The creature is a baby (which they tow to a safe distance) and the Earth civilization was Atlantis.

CONTINUITY: None.

DIVERGENCES: In addition to the usual off-model Sulu and Uhura, Chekov appears in a blue shirt and no Beatles haircut. Magic is a force acknowledged by Mr. Spock.

PANEL OF THE DAY - Captain Kirk and John Buscema's Conan
REVIEW: Two very talky stories, but the art (by various people, changing from page to page) looks handsome with its square-page format and beautiful ships. For a "read along" book, I was surprised (or "suprised") to see bad spelling and/or typos though. The first story is one that would be done in Star Trek later (Prototype, for example), and is reasonably well done even if it ends without much of a climax. The second is really funky, with its "magic is real" rationale, but not bad. Having Conan on the brdige of the Enterprise is certainly worth the look.

Comments

googum said…
Years later, I got one of the Fantastic Four comics that came with a Power Record I had: a lot of the word balloons had been edited down, and a bit sloppily at that. I don't know if that happened in this one, though.

Love that record, though. Is Stampede up next?
Siskoid said…
While I might do the audio-only stuff eventually, for now, I'm concentrating on the comics. And there's no accompanying comic on that one... is there?

I've got Dinosaur Planet and Robot Masters left before I jump to the first Marvel series.
rob! said…
I love that Conan is (unofficially) crossing over into Star Trek.
googum said…
Shoot, I was hoping you knew! Maybe there isn't a comic for Stampede, but that might be for the best: I've had a mental picture in my head of the animals, and I'm sure they'd end up looking different.