Star Trek Archives The Best of Peter David

Star Trek Archives The Best of Peter David is a collection of Star Trek the original series comics written by Peter David. The book contains three stories originally contained in 5 comic books. Peter David is one of my favorite authors so it is no surprise that I would enjoy this book.

The first story titled Retrospect is about Monygomery Scott's (Scotty) love of his life, other than his even stronger love for ship engines, Glynnis Campbell. The story starts with her dying (a surprise to Kirk and McCoy who did not even know of her existence) and then goes backward in time showing their relationship. In the story 5 and 10 year marriage contracts are mentioned (they were married at one time with a five year contract and then she mentions extending it for another five years or maybe splurging on a ten year contract). The idea behind termed marriage contracts makes sense to me, given the number of and increase in divorces, but still disturbs me somewhat. I am of the opinion that marriage should not be entered into without considerable thought put into it and should be for life. I am also of the opinion that marriage is mainly a religious rite. Civil/legal marriages have little meaning to me.

The second story, The Return of the Worthy, is about a group of insufferable geniuses whom were found cryogenically frozen for a little over 300 years on a planet. The group is cocky and boastful as all hell but they really are as good as they believe themselves to be. They were specifically chosen for their abilities and had saved and influenced many cultures before being tossed across the galaxy by Apollo (Greek God seen in the original series) and forced to freeze themselves to survive. On their planet of origin, Karimea, there is a legend that they, The Worthy (the name they were given prior to their departure from their world), will return in the time of their greatest need. This appears to be the case since things on their homeworld have gone bad in the intervening years. Sadly they arrive too late their entire civilization has destroyed itself. The last part of this story criticizes the Federations noninterference law known as the Prime Directive (the Karimea had told the Federation to go away and leave us alone). In the end Kirk tricks the Worthy into continuing their original explorations and helping species the Federation can't or, more accurately, won't.

The last story in the book, Once a Hero, is about the death of a security officer. The story starts with Captain Kirk trying to compose a eulogy for the recently deceased officer who died saving Kirk's life. The Captain is having a very difficult time doing so because he knows next to nothing about the officer; he had to query the computer just to learn his first name. He goes around asking crew members about the deceased officer but no one on board knows much about him either. He ends up starting with the generic Star Fleet recommends for cases like this then goes off tangent and talks about how they are just words. You can't really honor someone whom you do not know and that he was just another nameless security guard. I found this one pretty interesting because of the question 'What would you say about someone who gave their life for you and you didn't even know them?' is an interesting topic.