Writer Dick Wood and artist Alberto Giolitti continue Gold Keys Comics journeys with the U.S.S. Enterprise with When Planets Collide. It was released for December 1969. And that had to be horrible for Trek fans. It’s December, 1969. There’s been a grand total of six issues since October 1967!

The dramatic opening splash page has an image that looks very much like the bridge, except for the wheels and levers all over the place. And the ship’s hull is being punctured by a meteor shower!

The Enterprise is in the Alpho Galaxy where they discover two planets seem to be on a collision course. There’s no real explanation of how that happened, no orbits, no gravity wells, they just seemed to be racing towards one another through the emptiness of space.

There are some strange things to see on the ship, including a radio operator literally wearing headphones. And I don’t know where Kirk, Spock and a blonde Scotty (in a green uniform) are working from but it isn’t the bridge. More strange things abound, the nacelles are rockets again, and Spock is using a draft board for his calculations.

Captain and First Officer decide that they can destroy the uninhabited planet to save the other. So off they go to the properly called Transporter Room (which still looks like the teleportation chamber). Scotty, Spock and Kirk beam down to the surface to set explosive charges – why not just use phasers or photo torpedoes?

But wait! The planet is inhabited. The landing party is captured (yet again) by giant bubbles and then placed into electric chairs where they will be interrogated by the inhabitants. The chair will force them to tell the truth.

Kirk is able to reach his phaser. For some reason they weren’t disarmed. And then attempts to convince the inhabitants that they aren’t a threat, and that Starfleet is there to help… all at phaser point.

The story makes a point of saying that both the landing party and the planet’s residents speak Esperanto (no longer esperanta). Sure.

The planet, Morti, is filled with life, under the surface. They have even engineered an artificial sun to help them with their agricultural needs. So Morti cannot be destroyed. The Enterprise heads off to the second planet, which also appears uninhabited.

As they travel towards it, they discover that a rock sample Scotty picked up on Morti is reacting to a pull from the other planet. What is going on? The team beam down, should we really be surprised by the fact that it’s inhabited as well?

It seems the rock is drawn by strange ores in the mountains of the planet. The crew figure that if they blow the ore-filled mountains that should help keep the planets from colliding. So Spock, Kirk, Scotty and McCoy beam down to deal with that.

And just as they are about to return to the ship, Spock is grabbed! And surprise, surprise, it’s another underground culture on this planet known as Inicrust.

Spock suggests to the inhabitants that the blow the mountains and the ore it contains, but the inhabitants use those ores and energy to power their own technologies.

So Spock has to come up with a new plan – it always seems to be Spock. Sorry my Vulcan friend, but maybe let someone else shine.

Spock suggests traveling back along their previous route and grab a piece of supernova material that could serve to repulse the draw of the planets. But they’ll have to lasso it first! Yup lasso.

They have twenty-six hours to get the piece into position, and they’ll have to pass through a meteor shower to make it in time.

With four minutes to spare, the Enterprise delivers its cargo, and wow, it works. But what about all the seismic and gravitic changes that would affect both planets? Shouldn’t the inhabitants been hurt?

Spock says no, and we’ll have to take his word for it, because the story concludes right there and then.

This one feels a little all over the place, but I do like a lot of the art, especially with the Enterprise in space. The journeys continue next time when the Enterprise crew arrives at The Voodoo Planet!