Name: Devil World
Author: Gordon Eklund
Publication Date: 11/1979
Publisher: Bantam Books
Page Number: 153
Historian’s Note:
Some time before The Magicks of Megas-tu
Cast of Characters: Captain James T. Kirk Commander
Spock Dr. Leonard H. McCoy
AKA “Bones” Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott AKA
“Scotty” Lieutenant Commander Gregory Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu Lieutenant Nyota Uhura Lieutenant Kyle Lieutenant Radly Marcus Nurse Christine Chapel Ensign Pavel Chekov Crewman Albert Schang Crewman Doyle Crewman Mosley Commodore Wilhelm Schang Gilla Dupree Dr. Faustus Captain Jacob Kell Dazi Reni Bates Many unnamed Danons
Starships and/or Starbases: USS Enterprise NCC-1701,
Starbase 13
Planets: Heartland
My Spoiler filled summary and review: Decades before
the Enterprise’s famous five-year mission, a Lt. Marcus was leading a
landing party to aid the colonists of the planet Heartland. Yet, when they arrived, the landing party
discovered that all the colonists had gone hopelessly insane.
In the present time, the crew of the Enterprise is enjoying some well-earned shore leave on Starbase 13. Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy are all enjoying a magic show performed by a Dr. Faustus. Dr. McCoy is annoyed with Spock ruining all the illusions by logically explaining each time how they were done. Then the show gets weird, when Faustus decides to summon demons to his show. Ugly demons start appearing left and right. They don’t seem to hurt anybody, but they are ugly and that bothers McCoy. Then a woman shows up wearing a mask like it is 2020 outside, and faints. Everyone forgets about the demons, and they focus on helping the woman.
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| The lady's health is our primary concern |
When they get her to the station’s
sickbay, McCoy gets her stable and awake.
The woman is named Gilla Dupree.
Dupree is a religious nut whose weird dieting restrictions threaten her
health, but she doesn’t care because she is only concerned for her next life in
the reincarnation cycle. For a religious
nut, she is aware her views aren’t “sensible” and is oddly philosophical about
it. She also is a famous artist with both Kirk and Spock being amongst her
legions of fans. Dupree is looking for
Captain Kirk to help her find her missing father.
Kirk goes to talk with the Starbase 13 commander, Commodore Wilhelm Schang, who happens to have been Kirk’s former boss. Kirk explains that situation about the famous artist, her father and this forbidden planet she wants to visit in order to find him. Schang explains that her father is the infamous former Starfleet officer, Captain Joseph Kell. Kell left Starfleet and went to live with the Klingons. Kirk referred to him as “Kell the traitor.” Schang says there is no evidence he ever gave them Starfleet secrets, so he was more of turncoat than outright traitor. Kirk is still committed to find him, and also investigate if the planet should still be under quarantine. The quarantined planet, Heartland, has a native species known as the Danons. At their prime the Danons once ruled half the galaxy and even visited Earth. However, their star-spanned civilization declined and all that remained were a few hundred, all living in a single village. They gave the Federation permission to set up the colony so there would be other intelligent life on the planet.
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| Please make my son not so useless |
Schang has one final request. He confesses to Kirk that he is a deadbeat
dad. He never saw his son, Albert, while
he was growing up and as a result, Albert is now useless. He pulled strings to get his son into
Starfleet Academy, however being useless and lazy he washes out after the first
year and sent into the fleet as a mere crewman.
He wants Kirk to take him under his wing as his captain’s steward and
make him less useless. Kirk reluctantly
agrees, and part of the comic relief of the rest of the book is Crewman Schang
being annoying and whiney, while making a mess of his job.
So, the Enterprise takes off for its mission with an artistic religious nut and a useless Academy washout. When they arrive, they try to make contact with the planet hoping Kell may still have some communication equipment with him. They make contact but not with Kell, it turns out one of the original colonists managed to retain his sanity and was not picked up by Starfleet when it sent a ship here decades ago. Kirk decides to lead a landing party and agrees, with some reluctancy, to take both Depree and Schang with him. They beam down and meet up with the survivor, who is named Reni Bates. The name matches the one Spock had found amongst the colonists missing after the rescue. Bates claims to have seen Kell, and that the Danons cannot be trusted. Bates is willing to take them to the Danons, if Kirk agrees not to believe anything that the Danons tell him. Kirk humors him and they head on their way.
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| Trust only me! |
As they
approach the Danon village Bates makes himself scarce. The Danons all look like depictions of the
devil in Earth’s Christianity. They
encounter Kell, who is a jerk and won’t give them or his daughter the time of
day. The Danon leader, Dazi, seems more
friendly and even arranges a place for them to sleep during the night. Kirk and
Dupree have a heart to heart. Dupree is
concerned for her father and Kirk is now in love with Dupree. (I swear the only thing a beautiful female guest
star needs to do is breathe and Kirk falls head over heels for them.) Spock
also reports to Kirk that he can sense a disembodied presence, but he is unsure
of its nature.
Dazi stops by to make sure they are
doing okay and even enjoys a game of poker with the security personnel. At one-point Dazi whispers something to
Crewman Doyle. The next morning Doyle is
missing. They later find him completely
naked, and his memory totally wiped. The
once Starfleet Security Crewman has been reduced to a mental state of
infancy. They send him back to the
ship. Kirk goes to confront Kell and
informs him that they are all leaving him included. Dell doesn’t seem convinced. Kirk leaves Dell’s hut with him and the
landing party is surrounded by Danons.
They try to beam up only to discover that the Danons are blocking the
transporter signal.
Spock decides to try to make mental
contact with the presence. The presence
overwhelms Spock and for a moment Spock seems to have lost his mind. McCoy confirms this is only temporary, but he
needs to get him back to the ship. The
Danons allow this.
At this point Bates reappears. He tells Captain Kirk the story of Danons. He explains that their reign as a great galactic power ended when they crossed swords with a species called the Torgas. The Torgas stripped them of their empire, forcing the Danons to retreat to just their homeworld, Heartland. In their defense they built The Great Machine. The GM had all Danon knowledge, and the late Danons had their consciousness to be absorbed by it. It drove back their enemies, and the Danons became to worship their creation as a god. They would even sacrifice most of the children to it leading to a decline in population. Eventually all the young were sent to it which is why there are only a few hundred left. The GM then suddenly needed more people and asked the Federation to set up a colony but when it tried to merge the humans to the GM’s collective consciousness it caused the humans to go insane. Kell is the only human who hasn’t so the GM has chosen him to represent it to the larger universe. Kirk has Bates tell the story to the rest of the landing party and shortly after hearing it Depree went missing.
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| reminds you of the devil |
Kirk goes looking for Depree only
to discover that she has contacted the GM and asked to take her father’s
place. As she is younger and far more
durable the GM agrees to cut ties with Kell.
Kirk tries to get her out of there, but a Danons overwhelm him. Kirk is danger of being killed by the swarm
of demon-looking people until he is saved by the no longer useless Crewman
Schang.
Later, on the bridge of the Enterprise,
Kirk is upset about the loss of Dupree.
Everyone else got out and back to the ship, including Kell and Bates. McCoy lets Kirk know that he shouldn’t be so
upset, because it will be Dupree who gets the last laugh. It turns out she was terminally ill the whole
time. She wanted to find her father to
say “goodbye.” When she saw he had been
turned into the agent of the GM, she volunteered to take his place knowing she
would be dead in a month. With her gone
the GM will no longer have a human to reach out with and will cease once the
last of the Danons die.
Additional thoughts: The story is a fine tale with
clear beginning, middle, and end. The
main problem I have with it is the side stories are more interesting than the
main event. Danons, one of the great
spacefaring species that ruled the galaxy long before the present powers
did. They are like the Preservers or the Slavers. The only difference between
those other two is there are still some left.
A species that once numbered in the trillions is now reduced to a
hundred living in a small village. What
is it like to be them? What goes through
one’s mind when they see their kind heading into extinction while other species
are rising and thriving? Now we have
this problem with the episodes too, but the difference is they are limited by
budget, books are not.
There are also things introduced
with no payoff. We have the magician
summing demons in the beginning, could they have been related to the
Danons? Nothing comes of it. We learn that the Danons may be the reason
humans came up with the Devil, despite sort of already meeting the devil. The Devil is known to make deals for people’s
souls. Could the Great Machine be responsible for that? Could that explain what happened to
Doyle? None of this is ever explored.
In reviewing Eklund’s other book I praised the author for having a strong understanding of the characters. He seems to have forgotten a lot of what he knows in this book. Starfleet doesn’t salute and never has, yet in this story Kirk keeps insisting on being saluted. He has never done this in the past. When Commodore Schang is about to load his son onto Kirk. Kirk says he doesn’t use servants. Tell that to all the various yeomen, who get his coffee, clean his clothes, makes his meals etc. Kirk complains they keep assigning him women and they get themselves confused for being his wife. Often says he wants a male yeoman who wouldn’t be mistaking for a spouse. Kirk’s only concern should be Crewman Schang’s incompetence. Kirk makes a joke about going down with the ship and Scotty responds the Enterprise isn’t a ship. Since when? They always refer to the Enterprise as a ship.
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| Kirk "I don't have servants!" |
In the end why didn’t Kirk talk the Great Machine into suicide like he normally does, or at the very least blow it apart with the Enterprise’s phasers? I don’t care about the Prime Directive; Kirk has violated it for less. Bates makes it very clear that the GM is responsible for the almost extinction of the Danons. If Kirk ignored the Prime Directive under the justification that the local people aren’t evolving when they are being ruled by a computer, but when a local people is being exterminated by said computer why would he hesitate? Bates himself uses the word genocide to describe what was happening. He was probably hoping Kirk would act on his reputation.
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| This is a ship! |
The only thing I thought was right
was Kirk following hopelessly in love again.
This time for Dupree. However,
it turns out she is going to be one of those doomed loves of his. Loving Captain Kirk can often be fatal. It isn’t guaranteed to happen, but it must be
a concern. The book also did right by
Captain Jacob Kell, as we seen with both Matt Decker and Ronald Tracey, a
starship captain’s sanity cannot survive the loss of his or her crew. Kell’s
loss of sanity was not as extreme as the other two, he just decided to live
with the Klingons and then turn his mind over to a great computer. Speaking of the Klingons, despite their
constant mention they never show up in the story.
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| Why not blast it with phasers? |
Given her experience with mind
wipes, I wonder if Lt. Uhura could possibly help poor Crewman Doyle regain his
lost mind. After her experience with Nomad, I think she would be the best to help him find his way out of the
tunnel.
In the end, we got a Star Trek
story that was good but not particularly great.
Should it be canon: Sure, I have a lot of issues
with the characterization. However, that
is also true of many episodes such as “The Paradise Syndrome” and “Turnabout Intruder.”
Cover Art: The cover art is a bit of a lie and a
spoiler. It has Gilla Dupree in the
center, sitting on a throne, all dressed up.
It hints of her ascension in the end where there is not a lot of
foreshadowing to it in the story. She is flanked by Kirk and Sulu. Kirk makes since but Sulu a very bit role in the story so featuring him on the cover is the lie. Behind them are some huts,
so that part is honest.
Final Grade: Final Grade 3 of 5
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