Review by Win Wiacek

Gold Key Archives Volume 5 reprints Star Trek comics originally published from Summer 1974 to Summer 1975 in this sturdy full-colour hardback collection. At the time quibbling fans had little to moan about and a great deal to cheer as the series was the only source of new adventures starring the beloved crew of the Starship Enterprise.

Following an introduction by Trek writer expert Bjo Trimble, the exploratory escapades resume with a fast-paced thriller written by Arnold Drake and illustrated as always by Alberto Giolitti.

Here the USS Enterprise arrives at a planet which seems recently deserted, only to discover aberrant solar radiation is causing planetary matter and objects to shrink into non-existence. With the landing party captured by the diminishing natives, Chief Engineer Scott investigates the sun itself and gets a major overdose of the radiation. In a desperate race against time, Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy must pull out all the stops to save the incredible shrinking man and the ‘Dwarf Planet’.

John David Warner scripts and Angelo Todaro assists Giolitti in crafting ‘The Perfect Dream’ as the Enterprise crew face a Starfleet board of inquiry after their last mission ends with the obliteration of a planet. As the testimony unfolds the bemused officials hear the incredible story of an unstable world-sized ship, a utopian culture chillingly reminiscent of Earth’s feudal Shogunate of Japan, a deranged geneticist using clones to build an impossibly idealised and stratified society and a mad scheme to repeat the experiment with Vulcans grown from Spock’s stolen DNA.

In ‘Ice Journey’ (Warner and Giolitti) the Enterprise conducts a highly suspect population survey on sub-arctic world Floe I, which soon drops Captain Kirk, Spock and evolutionary specialist Dr. Krisp into the middle of a eugenics-fuelled race war.

‘The Mimicking Menace’ is written by George Kashdan, and pits the veteran starmen against deadly duplicates of themselves on a bleak volcanic asteroid before they discover the attacks and bizarre energy drains are the result of first contact with a radically new form of life.

Allan Moniz scripts ‘Death of a Star’ with the Enterprise on site to observe a star going nova and catapulted into calamity as sensors pick up a planet full of life-readings where none should be. Moving swiftly to evacuate the endangered beings they are astonished to discover only one creature: an old woman who claims to be the dying sun.

Warner then concludes the entertainment with ‘The Final Truth’ as the Starfleet vessel officiates for new planet Quodar joining the Federation. The mission goes dreadfully wrong after Captain Kirk’s shuttle – full of crewmembers and a Starfleet Admiral – crashes on pariah world Tristas, where the survivors are captured by sadistic scientists obsessed with discovering the secrets of life. As Spock organises a rescue mission the embattled Kirk uncovers a staggering cosmic secret the Ministers of Science have been carefully concealing for eons.

Bold, expansive and epic, these are great stories to delight young and old alike and well worth making time and space for. Although online sites list a Volume 6, as yet this remains unpublished, leaving roughly half of Gold Key’s original Star Trek run still only available as the now expensive original comics.