Called Home

Called Home is a Star Trek: The Original Series comic strip. It is the first story in the US Comic Strips series, published by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. The story was set after, depicting events from Captain Kirk’s second five-year mission aboard the refurbished USS Enterprise (NCC-1701). In this story, written and drawn by Thomas Warkentin, the Enterprise investigates a distress call sent from the moon of a long-dead world.

Publisher’s Information

 * From the Syndicate sales kit sent to newspaper editors in 1979 (reprinted in The Newspaper Comics, Volume 1)
 * Star Trek, the Legend, is now Star Trek, the Comic Strip. Join the crew of the U.S. Starship Enterprise in its mission to explore strange new worlds and seek out new life and civilizations. Your readers now can participate in the adventures of Captain Kirk, Spock, “Scotty,” “Bones,” Sulu, Chekov, Lieutenant Uhura and the bald and beautiful new female navigator, ilia, every day plus Sundays in this fascinating comic strip.
 * Star Trek, its characters and its stars, have inspired 371 fan clubs and almost weekly conventions drawing up to 20,000 people in cities throughout the country. The “Trekkie” phenomenon has spawned more than 50 books, 400 fan publications and several masters and doctoral theses. Readers of all ages love Star Trek and will follow its comic strip adventures through uncharted space with fervor.
 * The Star Trek comic strip will be the beneficiary of the massive promotion accompanying the release of the new Star Trek motion picture. The comic strip will run in eight-week sequences. The story line will be the same for both the daily and the Sunday strips with an expansion of the plot on Sundays. However, both the daily and the Sunday strips can stand alone effectively.
 * The artist, Thomas Warkentin, a lifelong science fiction fan with an impressive list of credits to his name, will be producing both the art and the stories. Not only is he a superb draftsman, but his cliffhanging plots leave you thirsting for more. We know this fabulous new comic strip is a sure-fire winner. Launch Star Trek in your newspaper and, as Kirk says, “boldly go where no man has gone before.’’

Summary

 * Captain’s Log: Stardate 7493.5
 * On a survey mission through an uncharted sector of the galaxy, we have picked up a radio transmission from an unexplored sun system.


 * Stardate 7493.9
 * As the Enterprise enters parking orbit, the radio signal fades. Sensors reveal astonishing devastation… Evidence of planet-wide nuclear war, centuries before.


 * Captain’s Log: Stardate 7493.9
 * We are responding to a verbal radio transmission emanating from the moon of a planet devastated by nuclear war centuries before. The message consists of the word “come,” repeated in a language our computer identifies as Toltan, the speech of an ancient race.


 * Captain’s Log: Stardate 7494.0
 * Unable to pinpoint the source of a radio signal emanating from the moon of a devastated planet, First Officer Spock, Doctor McCoy and I have beamed to a centuries-old spacecraft on the surface.


 * Captain’s Log: Stardate 7494.1
 * Chief Engineer Scott recording. Captain Kirk, Science Officer Spock and Doctor McCoy are on the moon of a devastated planet to investigate a radio signal of unknown origin. The captain has ordered a security team standing by.

Investigating the spacecraft on the surface in thruster suits, Kirk, Spock and McCoy determined the hole in the ship was caused by a meteor after landing, so the ship had arrived there safely 900 years earlier. A hatch had been left open, revealing two sets of footprints, which dead-ended at a set of tread-prints. Uhura located the exact source of the radio transmission, a mobile robot transport craft which appeared over the rim of a crater, creating the tread-print pattern the landing party had been following. Suddenly it placed an energy field around the three people, paralyzing them while they heard in their minds messages of peace and love. Gently, robot tentacles gathered up the landing party and carried them down a corridor hidden below a boulder into a vast underground complex. They saw two humanoids in spacesuits at the end of a long corridor of hypersleep chambers, and were deposited gently into the next three chambers.


 * Excerpt from Captain’s Log: Stardate 7494.2
 * Inside the hypersleep chambers, our paralysis began to fade as we were subjected to a soporific vibration which, according to Spock, induces sleep by altering the electrical period of the cortical neurons. After Doctor McCoy and I had yielded to sleep, Spock used Vulcan mind-control to enhance his alpha state and suppress theta activity, remaining awake long enough to reach his communicator and have us, including the little aliens, beamed aboard the Enterprise.

Scanning the moon “in depth,” Spock reported it to be mostly hollow with a neutronium hull. In sickbay, McCoy and Chapel revived the two aliens, who explained to Kirk that their world was threatened by nuclear war, so they’d gone to their moon to use it as “a weapons platform” from which to “enforce planet-wide peace.” Their race believed their moon to be a spacecraft guided by “the gods.”

Suddenly the satellite grabbed the ship by a tractor beam and began dragging it toward a large opening on the surface.


 * Captain’s Log: Stardate 7494.3
 * We are caught in a tractor beam pulling us toward the moon.

Captain’s Log: Supplemental Entry’’’
 * With warp and impulse engines at maximum, we are still in the grip of the tractor beam.

Accessing its data banks, Spock discovered the aliens were “descendants of a species that was ‘planted’ on their planet by the builders of the moon,” a process they’d followed several times in other star systems, having left the people to evolve, watched by moons which were “observation posts, programmed to return with those who reach the level of technology required to achieve a moon landing.” Spock couldn’t ascertain why the moon didn’t leave with its two aliens when it found them 900 years ago, “but its program calls for it to return now. And we are preventing it from completing its mission.” Spock suggested that the moon was using the tractor beam because “it wants those little astronauts, Captain… with or without us.”

Kirk considered the possibility of using torpedoes to break off the tractor beam without inadvertently destroying the moon or the ship. However, the aliens proposed a different solution. Having been told that their world had been destroyed by nuclear 900 years earlier, they insisted on being returned to the moon, which they believed was a “scared vehicle that will carry them to a paradise.” Five minutes later, back in their spacesuits, the two aliends were beamed by Rand back into their hypersleep chambers. The tractor beam immediately released the ship, shooting it into warp. The artificial moon then left orbit of its planet, carrying its two passengers.

Characters

 * James T. Kirk • Spock • Leonard McCoy • Montgomery Scott • Nyota Uhura • Hikaru Sulu • Pavel Chekov • Christine Chapel • Ilia • Janice Rand

Starships and vehicles

 * USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

Locations

 * Metal moon • pre warp-drive spacecraft • robot transport

Races and cultures

 * Human • Toltan Gorn

Science and technology

 * thruster suit • hypersleep chamber • neutronium • tractor beam • heat scan • visual scan • delta wave • cortical neurons • wrist communicator • transporter • radio modem interface • photon torpedo • proximity explosion

Other References

 * radio signal • nuclear war • meteor • crater • landing party

Related stories

 * - Described the starship refit, crew changes, and technology updates that occurred prior to the events of this story.

Information

 * Consisting of 36 daily strips and 6 Sunday strips, this story was the first serialized Star Trek comic story published in the USA, predating the arrival of Marvel’s first multi-issue Star Trek comic story by one month. The first strip was published on December 2, 1979, whereas Star Trek (Marvel) #1 was released January 1, 1980 (with a cover date of April 1980). The content of Marvel's first issue was a partial reprint of material that had been released two days after the strip debuted, on December 4, 1979, in Marvel Super Special, Issue 15, the Star Trek: The Motion Picture (adaptation). debuted in theaters December 7, 1979.


 * This is the first of 20 story arcs set after the events of, and is set during Captain Kirk’s second five-year mission aboard the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701).


 * At the beginning of the next story, Scotty reported that their resistance to the tractor beam had resulted in heavy damage, having fused most of the ship’s dilithium. Kirk reported the ship was “marginally operational.” Events continued in Dilithium Dilemma.


 * An inadvertent continuity error occurred when Warkentin, having produced this story prior to the release of, depicted Ilia at the navigator’s station in panels published on Sunday, December 2, 1979, and Wednesday, January 9, 1980 (reprinted in The Newspaper Comics, Volume 1 on pages 14 and 28).


 * This story arc was not printed with a title. For The Newspaper Comics, Volume 1, Warkentin’s widow, Rosemary Warkentin, gave it a title from her husband’s scripts.