53: More Like an Episode of Flying Circus

The 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.