The boldly going continued for Gold Key Comics in September 1969, when The Ghost Planet was unveiled to Star Trek fans. Dick Wood continues his writing travels with the Enterprise, and Alberto Giolitti supplies the art.

I remember all of the issues so far. I had them collected in The Enterprise Logs, which I read over and over as a kid. But this one. This one brought back a slew of memories as soon as I opened the cover, and saw the two angry bald aliens (the Justins). They always kinda scared me as a kid. I don’t know what it was about them, but they unnerved me.

The stardates for these missions continue to be problematic, and the Enterprise is still traversing whole galaxies instead of systems. But damn if I don’t dig some of the art. Sure the starship interiors are still a little crazy, but this Enterprise apparently has seat belts in addition to all the strange levers and consoles.

The Enterprise comes across a strange planet encased in colourful copper rings that are emanating a radioactive signal. When the Enterprise carries out its scans they discover empty city after empty city (but somehow miss the two orbiting satellites) just like in The City Builders.

Kirk and Spock had a four member landing party that leaves from the transport chamber (though it still looks like the teleportation chamber). And the beam down right in front of Toronto’s City Hall! Not really, but that’s what the image is.

They are summoned by a strange robot and a voice to a meeting room, and it’s mentioned again that these people, and the Starfleet crew are speaking esperanta. In this room, they learn the planet, Numero Uno (no I’m not kidding) is ruled by the two twin baddies, and both of them are named Justin. You have Justin I and Justin II.

It was at this point in the story that I noticed a couple of other visual things in the panels. The landing party belts have holsters for their phasers, and other accouterments. And wow, Spock’s ears are still super huge. Sorry pal.

The Justins reveal that with the arrival of the copper bands, the radiation drove them from the surface into space. The two satellites that the Enterprise DIDN’T detect. They’ve been okay so far, but overpopulation is threatening the inhabitants of both satellites.

Spock and Kirk are troubled by the satellites, and soon discover that the Unoites are not the peace-loving people that the Justins say they are. In fact there are two factions, both led by a Justin who have been locked in a struggle for years. If the Enterprise removes the bands, somehow, hostilities will resume. If they don’t remove the bands, the entire species will die out.

What to do…

The Justins suggest that the Enterprise leave monitoring devices in orbit, and near manufacturing plants. These devices would be programmed to explode should munitions be made. Kirk and Spock think this is a solid idea, but it sounds like a huge violation of the Prime Directive to me.

But the Justins don’t need to make weapons, they have caches that are discovered by Kirk and Spock, who is using a Geiger enhanced tricorder. A nuclear war could be imminent if hostilities resume!

When the Justins attack a la North by Northwest biplane sequence, Spock comes up with a last minute plan that will enforce peace. By leaving a threat over the Justins head…

That doesn’t seem to bother Kirk or Spock as their human adventure continues…

Next time we’ll see what happens When Planets Collide!