53: More Like an Episode of Flying CircusThe Return of the
Serpent.
During The Original Series, Kirk made many life-shattering
decisions for civilizations he'd just met. In "The Apple," the
discovery of naive humanoids living in a Garden of Eden-like
setting on Gamma Trianguli VI was too much for the Captain to take.
The people were happy, but they worshipped a god who turned out be
a machine named Vaal. And when this machine saw Kirk as a threat,
he destroyed it—leaving the People of Vaal in chaos. "Well, there
goes paradise," quipped McCoy. End of story.
Or was it? In this episode of Literary Treks Matthew Rushing and
Christopher Jones are joined by Standard Orbit's Drew Stewart to
discuss the three-part DC Comics story from 1987 called The Return
of the Serpent. The comics tell the story of Kirk's return to Gamma
Trianguli VI two decades later and the consequences of his actions
in "The Apple"—and does so with the help of a dinosaur.
In our news segment we check in on Una McCormack's upcoming TNG
book Home Again, which has been rebranded as a DS9 novel called The
Missing, Greg Cox's TOS movie-era novel Foul Deeds Will Rise, and
Paula M. Block and Terry J. Erdmann's Lust's Latinum Lost (and
Found). We also dig into the collaboration between IDW and Harlan
Ellison to bring the original script for "The City On the Edge of
Forever" to comics, check out Ryan Williams's Star Trek Lit-verse
Reading Guide, and review Star Trek Ongoing #31, I, Enterprise,
Part I.
# Captain KirkThe central character from Star Trek's Original Series, known for making significant decisions affecting entire civilizations.
