Star Trek 733: When Planets Collide

733. When Planets Collide

PUBLICATION: Star Trek #6, Gold Key Comics, December 1969

CREATORS: Unknown (writer), Alberto Giolitti (artist)

STARDATE: 23:009 - Follows the last issue.

PLOT: The Enterprise notices two planets flying through space on a collision course. Though both seem uninhabited, they both prove to have an underground civilization (the Morti and the Inicrusts). Somehow, the two worlds are magnetically attracting each other across the void. Solution: Grabbing a white dwarf fragment with repulsive force and placing it between the two in the nick of time. Along the way, the crew also has to deal with a meteor swarm that busts through the bulkheads all over the ship!

CONTINUITY: None to speak of.

DIVERGENCES: A blond Scotty.

PANEL OF THE DAY - How big IS the Enterprise anyway? (Cutaway reveals all)
REVIEW: I'd call this the first issue without any redeeming value. Not only is the science immensely dumb, from the premise to the solution to the meteor swarm with no real consequences (after they leave the field, they happily make coffee!), but the story is repetitive as well. Two planets are visited with highly similar results. One has aliens with gimp balls in their mouths and an underground artificial sun, the other has reptilian roman legionnaires and slippy slides, but they're basically the same. So yeah, dumb and forgettable.