The Robot Masters – Stardate 95.9066: Shipments of worker robots have been going missing across the Federation, including robots that Scotty was expecting to serve aboard the Enterprise. The missing robots are traced to pirates who are reprogramming them to serve as a mechanical army…for the Romulans.
The Logistics Of Stampede – Stardate 5466.9: Starfleet dispatches the Enterprise to help an agricultural colony with a unique problem – the indigenous livestock stampedes violently every six years, destroying every crop the colony plants. Spock and McCoy must find out how to prevent the devastating crop losses without destroying local wildlife.
The Human Factor – Stardate 96.024: An exchange of ambassadorial pleasantries with a new Federation member world goes horribly wrong when the ambassadors hijack an Enterprise shuttlecraft, and Lt. Uhura with it. Kirk storms into the capitol city of the Federation’s newest world, stopping just short of issuing threats if Uhura isn’t returned. When his landing party is attacked, Kirk and Spock go into hiding to try to find out what’s going on – and why Uhura is scheduled for sacrifice to this culture’s god.
The Man Who Trained Meteors – Stardate 95.801: The surface of a Federation colony world is laid to waste by a surprisingly dense meteor storm before the eyes of the Enterprise crew, and even the technological might of Starfleet can’t stop the devastation. When surviving colonists tell Kirk of a madman who can control meteors, the captain makes it his mission to find this man…only to discover that this maniac already has the Enterprise in his sights.
A Mirror For Futility – Stardate 5470: Two immensely powerful vessels are locked in endless combat. The sheer destructive power at their disposal is severe enough that the resulting disturbance reads as a massive space storm to the Enterprise’s sensors. Kirk tries to open contact with both ships, neither of them from a race ever encountered before by Starfleet, and discovers that the crew of each ship is long gone, victims of a war they refused to resolve. The ships’ computers are carrying out their final orders: finish the war, at any cost…regardless of the impact on anyone nearby.
Crier In Emptiness - (this story appeared on a previous album; you can see a synopsis here.)
Review: As with my previous review of another of Peter Pan Records’ Star Trek children’s story compilations, I tend to give these records quite a wide latitude in sticking to what we know about Star Trek lore – simply because the body of that lore didn’t exist at the time. Based on the original series and loosely on the animated continuation of that series, Alan Dean Foster’s Star Trek audio stories had a blank slate on which to build their stories, unencumbered by the framework built by the later TV series or even the feature films. (more…)