749. A World Gone MadPUBLICATION: Star Trek #20, Gold Key Comics, September 1973
CREATORS: Unknown (writer), Alberto Giolitti (artist)
STARDATE: 32:47.2 - Follows the last issue.
PLOT: The Enterprise returns the spoiled prince Raviki to his home planet where an unscrupulous regent is currently ruling. After trusted subjects try to kill the bratty prince, including his sister, the crew start thinking it's more than political. Turns out a comet passed by spewing gases that have given the population a bad case of SPACE... MADNESS! While Kirk defends the now proven courageous prince from rioters, McCoy and Scotty spacewalk through the comet's tail to get a sample and fabricate an antidote. McCoy gets a little nutty from breathing in the fumes and jumps through the Guardian of Forev--no wait, that's another episode. No, he goes nutty and has a zero-G fist fight with Scotty. When that's done, Scotty seeds the atmosphere with the cure and everything goes back to normal.
CONTINUITY: The Galileo makes another appearance. I guess they fixed it since #16.
DIVERGENCES: McCoy seems to know a lot more about vacuum cleaners than Scotty does. Baseball doesn't seem so forgotten anymore.
PANEL OF THE DAY - Take Me Out to the Ball Game
REVIEW: Star Trek has done a number of SPACE... MADNESS stories, and this one stands out by being at once comic booky (fighting in a comet's tail, hanging out of shuttles, etc.) and pretty violent (mad assassins getting killed, a murdered dog and a guy driving himself into lava!)
Yeah, that's hardcore. In the end, there's an odd moment with the prince taking his shirt off, but that's what makes it a TOS story. The story is little more organic that previous issues, with less reliance on "random encounters", but one does wonder what happened to the villain at the end. We never find out his final fate.
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