Science vs Sorcery!

 

cover art by George Wilson

The Enterprise once got captured by a giant disembodied hand controlled by the Greek god Apollo. So the crew really shouldn't have been surprised when a giant genie takes his turn capturing the ship. That sort of thing happens all the time.

In Gold Key's Star Trek #10 (May 1971), both George Wilson's cover and Alberto Giolitti's interior art capture this moment beautifully. And the script by Len Wein is a lot of fun as well. 

Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scotty are teleported to a nearby planet, where they are confronted by a sorcerer named Chang. Chang explains that a rival sorcerer is holding his (Chang's) city hostage by suspending a giant flaming sword above it. Chang can only defeat his rival if Kirk and crew fetch him a magic wand called the Sceptre of the Sun. 

Since Chang threatens to crush the Enterprise unless they help, Kirk agrees. With a pretty girl as a guide, the four Federation officers march across a wilderness towards the location where the sceptre is kept. 

Along the way, they encounter rock giants who are resistant to phaser fire. Kirk outsmarts the giants and gets them to destroy each other, but then the group is captured by sword-wielding warriors.

These guys, though, are able to give Kirk more background information. They are part of a group that fled Earth in 1997, at the height of the Eugenics Wars. They were in suspended animation for a few centuries while their ship brought them here. They began a happy and peaceful existance, only for one of their members--Chang--to mysteriously gain enormous powers and set himself up as dictator.

Kirk and his men team up with these guys. Spock defeats a giant robot, allowing them to get the spectre and return to Chang. The sorcerer shows his gratitude by trying to kill everyone after explaining he's going to use the Enterprise to fly him around the galaxy on a journey of conquest. Spock foils this by demonstrating that Chang's conjurations are all illusions--he wields no actual magic. The point of the quest was to get the command officers of the Enterprise killed so Chang could take over. Kirk fights Chang, who gets killed. 

It's a fun story, though not without a few logical gaps in the plot. There's no real explanation for how Chang got his illusion powers and his plan to kill Kirk and company seems unnecessarily complicated. Since he was forcing them to go on the quest by threatening to destroy the starship, why create a backstory about a rival sorcerer threatening his city? (Though this does give Alberto Giolitti a chance to draw an awesome panel depicting this.)

Still, these are all the sort of plot holes that can be filled in via fan theories, so what the hey. Also, Len Wein puts in a subtle call back to an original TV episode with the story title "Spectre of the Sun." It's a call back to the episode "Spectre of the Gun," in which an alien race uses illusion to attempt to kill Kirk and his men. 

Years ago, I wrote  critical post of Gold Key's Star Trek comics. I've since realized I was wrong. Though silly moments and occasional plot holes are sprinkled throughout the comics, the same was true of the TV series. And,though Gold Key never produced a story as good as the classic TV episodes, they did give us entertaining tales and great art. This issue is a prime example of this.

Next week, Batman travels to another planet to solve a crime.