Name: Star Trek: The New Voyages – Story 3 “The
Enchanted Pool”
Author: Marcia Ericson, with an introduction by
Nichelle Nichols
Publication Date: 3/1976
Publisher: Bantam Books
Page Number: 20
Historian’s Note: Sometime after the second season of
The Animated Series and before The Motion Picture.
Cast of Characters: Captain James T. Kirk Commander
Spock Lieutenant Nyota Uhura Lieutenant Phyllida Gains Lieutenant Leslie Nurse Christine Chapel Ensign Pavel Chekov Crewman Bemis Crewman Latrobe
Starships and/or Starbases: USS Enterprise NCC-1701,
USS Yorktown NCC-1717, numerous shuttlecraft not identified.
Planets: Mevinna
My Spoiler filled summary and review: The Enterprise has been dispatched to
help the Yorktown that is transporting an experimental weapon code-named
Excalibur. The Yorktown had been
attacked by renegade Andorians. They
managed to take the Excalibur of the ship in a shuttlecraft and it is believed
that the shuttlecraft crash landed on the planet Mevinna. Mevinna is a class M planet that nevertheless
contains minerals the obscure both sensors and communications. The planet has
no intelligent native life forms. However, the planet has attracted many who
hate the modern Federation and want to return to primitive times. In other words, the planet has many space
hippies similar to the ones from “The Way to Eden.”
Since
sensors are useless are landing parties would be too slow the Captain organizes
teams into shuttlecrafts to explore the planet.
Spock is assigned command of one with two crewmembers, Bemis and
Latrobe. Believing they see evidence of
a crashed shuttlecraft they land and begin to look around. At this point it seems to the fan we might be
getting a repeat of “The Galileo Seven” and Spock is going to have a hard time
with his assigned crew again. Nope these
guys are red-shirted right away, when a force field turns on right where they
are standing and they are turned to dust. 
This event did not go well for Mr. Spock
Spock
now trapped on this planet under a forcefield that he has no control over and with
no way to communicate with his ship. He
comes across a pool of clear water.
Having developed a thirst, he drinks and while doing so a young
beautiful water nymph appears at his side.
She identifies herself as “Phyllida” and
declares that she is Spock’s “one true love.”
Spock has a number of different thoughts about her. Is she a hallucination caused by some thing
wrong with the water? Is she one of
those space hippies he has heard about?
Phyllida
says things that Spock finds to be nonsense.
She claims to have been a powerful princess who had spell but a upon her
and turned her into a nymph. She says
that in order to have the spell life lifted she must receive a kiss from her
one true love, who she claims is Spock.
While Spock is trying his best to use his equipment to find a way out of
this place, Phyllida keeps trying to lure him into a magic cave. At one point
Spock humors her and gives the kiss she desires and then immediately calling
her out for not transforming. She then reminds him that they must go to the
magic cave. They go there and then after
another kiss she revels to him the truth.
She is Lieutenant Phyllida Gains of USS Yorktown. The whole performance was just a show because
they are being watched by the Andorians, however their listening devices are not
present in the cave. From there the two
plan to break the force field that Lt. Gains discovered could be destroyed
using M-Rays.
Everything
is resolved the Excalibur has been delivered.
Spock and Gains have a good-bye moment where they discuss what happened.
Gains insists that Spock is still her one true love and as she leaves Spock for
a moment sees again as the water nymph.
 |
| Spock with Leila |
Additional thoughts: The best twist in any story are
ones that you don’t see coming but after when you go back over them the clues
appear obvious and you feel like fool for not noticing. Lt. Gains gives many clues to her true identity. She asks Spock if he would like to be the
commander (his actual rank). She says
that her regular clothes are fiery red dress (a reference to her Starfleet
uniform). She refers to flying insects
that are clearly meant to stand for the shuttle craft.
 |
| Spock with Zarabeth |
It is
clear why Spock was chosen to the main character in this adventure as any other
character, especially Captain Kirk would have jumped at the opportunity to kiss
Phyllida in the mystery cave. Also, as
Nicholas says at the start of her introduction that many women over the years
would like to find some magical way, they might be able to breach Mr. Spock’s
cold exterior. Gains leaves an
impression so where would we rank her among all the women that could be Spock’s
true love. Gains has potential but I don’t recall ever seeing her beyond this
story. I know that most people see Zarabeth from “All of Yesterdays” and many
like Leila Kalomi from “This Side of Paradise.”
Personally, I think his best lady love was Droxine from the “The Cloud Minders,” they may have had a one-night stand but the two seemed to understand
each other really well.
 |
| I thought this was Spock's best match! |
There
were some other minor details that I wondered about calling the weapon
“Excalibur” isn’t that already the name of one of their starships, the NCC-1664? I also thought it was strange that the bad
guys in this story were the Andorians.
Last I checked the Andorians were Federation members, not only that I
believe they were one of founding Federation members. So why are they the bad guys here? Granted the story did mention they were rouge
agents, but still I think it would have worked a lot better if the author had
used the Orions. I wonder if the author
was confused because an Orion pirate had stolen the identity and replaced an
Andorian diplomate in “Journey to Babel”?
After all there was no internet in the 1970s so no way of going online
to check.
 |
| To be clear this isn't a real Andorian. |
Should it be canon: Yes, like the other two stories
in this volume “The Enchanted Pool” would fit well with established Star Trek
lore as a single episode where everything reverts to status quo at the end. Its inclusion would enhance canon.
Cover Art: What I said for the first review in this volume:
“The cover is beautiful. You have the Enterprise flying in all its glory in the bottom center of the image. Behind it looks like a space station built on an asteroid. Flying above in the opposite direction is an unknown starship whose design I don’t recognize.”
Final Grade: Final Grade 4 of 5
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