Comic Trade Review

Star Trek: The Key Collection Volume 1
© Checker Book Publishing Group

Mania Grade: B
Comic Trade: Star Trek: The Key Collection
Issue: Volume 1
Authors: Len Wein, George Kashden, Nevio Zeccara, Alberto Giolitti
Publisher: Checker Book Publishing Group
Pages: 228
Price: $22.95

Buy it now!

Star Trek: The Key Collection Volume 1

By: Robert T. Trate
Review Date: Friday, May 23, 2008

Paramount has exhausted all of its Star Trek stories over the last couple of years. All the Star Trek TV series have all been placed on DVD and are now even making the leap to the next format. Even Star Trek the Animated Series has been released on DVD. For those of us that love Star Trek and have become exhausted with the same old stories where do you turn? If you are too young to remember, there was a Star Trek comic book that debuted in July of 1967. Checker Book Publishing Group has reprinted these original stories in their original cannon bending glory. Fans of comics and pulp novels from the Sixties and early Seventies will enjoy this now unique approach to Star Trek.

Growing up with Star Trek we have been inundated with “Treknobabble”. Anyone with a decent knowledge of Star Trek could point out the flaws written in these stories. At times, they do border on ridiculousness. Besides expressions like “D Hour”, “Great Novas”, “Shades of Pluto” and “Rockets on Full” these stories also have a departure from your standard Away Team uniform. In the series a phaser, tricorder and communicator were enough. In the Key Collection stories the crew beams down with backpacks, rifles, wristwatches and canteens. This is nitpicking and in the long run it has little to do with the best part of the Star Trek Key Collection and that is the stories.

The stories unfold in two parts almost as if there are commercial breaks. The further I read into the Key Collection I kept reminding myself that Star Trek was still on the air. It wasn’t being rerun late at night with back to back episodes. It was still a living breathing thing that was growing and finding its place in the world.

Page from Planet of No Return in the Star Trek: The Key Collection Volume 1

Chapter 1: “The Planet of No Return” is a classic Star Trek story that leads to the discovery of a planet taken over by life altering spores. The spores mutate the genetic makeup of the host transforming it into a plant. Kirk, Bones, Yeomen Rand and a couple of red shirts journey down to the planet and discover a horrific world. This story started off on the right foot. Red shirt gets transformed into a plant, Rand is captured and Kirk makes a startling discovery. Spock then delivers the solution. However, it is Spock’s solution that really is the twist. It breaks several directives including the Prime Directive of the Federation making it off character and way outside of the Star Trek we have come to appreciate and admire.

Spock from Star Trek: The Key Collection Volume 1

Chapter 2: “The Devil’s Isle of Space” was by far the best story in the entire book and remained true to the Star Trek lore of today. Originally published in 1968, this story is about the Enterprise crew discovering a prison asteroid that will self destruct at a random time. The prisoners have no way of knowing the length of their sentence and are forced to fight each other in order to survive.

Vulcan logic saves the day for the Away Team but it is the combination of cunning villains, a great plot device and better than average dialogue that lifts up this story from the other seven in the book.

Chapter 8: “The Youth Trap” published in September of 1970, over a year after Star Trek went off the air, is on par with the TV episode of “Spock’s Brain”. It is corny and just plain silly, which is really a shame because it starts off with a youth rejuvenation machine then the story turns on itself and forgets all the great science fiction issues that Star Trek dealt with. Its ending is so off character and off cannon that it might be the one Star Trek story worth deleting.

Another downside of the Key Collection is that the relationships of Kirk, Spock and Bones are hardly touched upon. It would become the key factor in the Star Trek mythos but in these stories they were practically non-existent. Scotty, Uhura and Nurse Chapel are reduced to bit players and their likenesses never resemble the actors or their appearance from the last issue. Instead there are numerous red shirts that survive entire stories where any of these characters could have been inserted. Perhaps this will change with further reading of different Key Collection volumes.

The majority of the stories do have that one key element that shows they do belong to the Star Trek Universe. That is, of course, Gene Roddenberry’s vision of humanity working together and exploring the great unknown.

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Comments/Responses

joeybaloney • May 23, 2008, 09:15am •

Wow! I've got a vague recollection of owning a couple of these when I was very young. Really bizarre stuff as I recall. I remember one where the Enterprise arrived "precisely nowhere" per Mr. Spock and ran into some sorta cryogenic tube w/Jim Kirk from the previous Universe (y'know - the exact duplicate that was destroyed during our Big Bang birth?) who had been in stasis for however many billions of years it took the current Jim Kirk and Enterprise to evolve & find him, waiting to warn them about the coming destruction of the current Universe. Good guy that other Jim Kirk. Can't believe I even remember all that.

Thanks Rob. I gotta pick me up a copy of volume 1. Also didn't know the Animated Series was available on DVD. Got me a nice weekend coming up some time soon!

themovielord • May 23, 2008, 07:50pm •

Check out my review of the Animated Series (From when I was just a maniac): http://www.mania.com/themovielord/review/star-trek-animated-series-19731975_review_0_151.html

Redshirt1 • May 24, 2008, 03:32pm •

Actually I still have two issues from the original Gold Key series. I keep meaning to have them apraised and see if there worth anything.

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