THE BLUE QUIET

 

Name: Star Trek: The New Voyages 2 – Story 6 “Marginal Existence”

Author: Connie Faddis

Publication Date: 1/1978

Publisher: Bantam Books

Page Number: 20

Historian’s Note: Sometime after The Second Season of the Animated Series   

Cast of Characters:  Captain James T. Kirk         Commander Spock              Dr. Leonard H. McCoy AKA “Bones”              Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott AKA “Scotty”        Lieutenant  Hikaru Sulu              Lieutenant Nyota Uhura          Lieutenant Horst Gorshim           Lieutenant Elva Vigeland     Nurse Christine Chapel          Ensign Pavel Chekov      unnamed  blue aliens

Starships and/or Starbases: USS Enterprise NCC-1701, shuttlecraft Discovery Registry unknown and one unnamed shuttlecraft

Planets: unnamed planet

My Spoiler filled summary and review: The story begins with McCoy leading a landing party on a planet that has had most of its civilization vanish over six hundred years ago.  Yet in an abandoned city they have found life support pods set up for suspended animation. The people inside look like Andorians, but without the antenna.  Some of the people in there are still alive.  Excitement soon turns to terror as they are attacked.

Kirk is going to have to rescue McCoy

                The Enterprise was busy with studying a supernova.  When McCoy’s shuttlecraft did not make the rendezvous, Kirk left Scotty in command of the ship while he, Spock, and another landing party would take a second shuttlecraft to find them.  When the second landing party arrives and they enter the building.  Mr. Spock quickly concludes that the pods are for suspended animation.  Chapel and Chekov find a local young man who is completely non-verbal, a trait that seems common among the indigenous of this area.

Spock chooses to go with Kirk so Scotty takes command.

                The find the three crewmembers who were missing in the pods as well, except they weren’t doing well.  Spock and Chapel are able to save McCoy and Vigeland but Gorshim was too far gone. The landing party find itself attacked by the silent natives on the outside but also by a robot that tries to put them in the pods on the inside.  The robot is triggered by sound. 

Spock later concludes that the outside natives were descendants of those who refused to enter the pods six hundred years ago or had otherwise escaped at some later date.  Since the robots are triggered by sound the inhabitants evolved their society a nonverbal culture.  Kirk wants Spock to wake one up and they are attacked by the robot.   In the battle Kirk is knocked unconscious, when he wakes Chekov informs him that Spock was able to pull him out of there.  Spock managed to find the central computer and revive those in the pods.  With the tyranny of the robots at an end they head back to the Enterprise.  

Additional thoughts: This was a fun little story.  The only real complaint I have about it is its short length requires everything be solved rather quickly.  There was a lot of buildup that did not follow with a great deal of reward.  For example, it would have been fun to hear from of the recently released humanoids. 

                This does seem to be a huge prime directive violation though and that is mentioned once.  However, Kirk could probably get away with it with his selective interpretation of "developing" civilization.  With Spock waking all the survivors up that line is well crossed. I do like the references to the Botany Bay and the events from “Space Seed.”

This is a little too familiar 

                Kirk did not talk the machine into killing itself this adventure.  The in-story reason however was the machine was not smart enough to be talked into suicide.  Kirk compares the computer to the old IBM 360, which in the real world had been discontinued the same year this volume was published. It is clearly not an AI.         

Should it be canon: I see no reason why it shouldn’t be.  It’s a self-contained story that fits right in.

Cover Art: As I stated in the first story:

The cover has the Enterprise flying in front of what appears to be a wrecked space station.  Both appear to be in orbit around a planet that you can see part of in the corner.  There is this red haze that surrounds everything.

Final Grade: Final Grade 3 of 5