"World Against Time" was a comic book story published by Gold Key Comics in January 1977, the 42nd issue of their TOS series. It was the 14th comic written by Arnold Drake and the fourth illustrated by Alden McWilliams. In this story, a landing party from the USS Enterprise discovered giant-sized humanoid children living in an abandoned city.
Description
- Table of Contents, Key Collection, Volume 5
- This edition features… "World Against Time" where the ravages of time and aging work in reverse and its inhabitants get ever younger. So tantalizing a concept that everyone can envision, if only for their own lives, to go backward and be young again. A constant theme within prose since Ponce De Leone discovered the fountain of youth and Ron Howard directed Cocoon. If only the notion had been visited on us all.
Summary
- Captain's log, stardate 19:29.06.
- Space probes of Newly Contacted Planet-137 showed no definite signs of life! But once we set down on NPC-137...
A landing party of Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scotty explored a city on the surface of newly discovered planet 137, one which was built for 12-foot-tall humanoid inhabitants. They found large letter blocks and a doll, then met a six-foot-tall baby named Baboo, who took them to a nursery where at least ten other children were playing with toys. He said Elya provided for them and would be back soon, so the landing party waited. McCoy was clocked on the head when Niki hit him with a rattle. Scott put Niki on his lap and told him a futuristic version of the Goldilocks fairy tale. However, Scott got annoyed when the baby soiled its diaper.
De-aging
Two young children arrived, Emperor Wenomi and Captain Bedo, one armed with a sword and the other a crossbow, and ordered the landing party to get away from the children. The captain was nervous and threatening, which was too much for Scotty, who pushed aside Bedo, and prepared to spank Wenomi. Then nine-foot tall teenager General Macador appeared and warned them away. McCoy asked them where their parents were. Lady Elya said they were their parents. They were de-aging and would be reduced to infancy and vanish in a few days, a time they called V-Day. They said they were middle-aged 40 days ago. Their oldest survivor, Emperor Wenomi, was 152 years old but appeared like a ten year old.
- Captain's log, stardate 1929.06, continued.
- On that strange planet populated only by children who play at war and power, we suddenly find ourselves facing a very real firing squad!
Macador's firing squad was stopped by Elya and Kirk. They explained that 193 days earlier, an earthquake exposed a vein of radioactive material within the society’s holy cave of Nooaja. Exposure de-aged animal life about one year per day, although it varied with distance from the cave. Wenomi said all their surviving people were in the city. They showed the landing party their holy Book of Nooaja, which depicted Nooaja, a large, glowing energy within a cavern, and their high priest Sharaba, who first discovered the de-aging effect.
Scott and Spock de-age
McCoy headed back to the ship to make an antidote to the radiation poisoning. Kirk and Spock thought it best to rebury the Nooaja radiation. But Macador interpreted the decision as heretical, so he knocked out Wenomi and ran for the cave. By the time Spock and Scott arrived with a canister of explosives, Macador was half his previous size and falling out of his clothes. As he ran scared into the cave to protect it, he got smaller until he disappeared, leaving only his clothes. Spock and Scott had also de-aged and were now teenagers. They quickly placed beta charges on a rock shelf near the Nooaja and ran for safety, now as six year olds, as the blast sealed the cavern.
Outside, McCoy and Kirk appeared with an injectable antidote. Elya and Wenomi asked not to be inoculated. They preferred that their people aged naturally while they figured out how to rebuild their civilization.
References
Characters
- Baboo • Bedo • Elya • James T. Kirk • Macador • Leonard McCoy • Niki • Montgomery Scott • Sharaba • Soota • Spock • Uzina • Wenomi
- Referenced only
- Goldilocks
Starships and vehicles
- Referenced only
- USS Enterprise (Constitution-class heavy cruiser)
Locations
Races and cultures
- Human • Oordon native • Vulcan
States and organizations
Science and classification
- antidote • arrow • beta charge • bow • Bow of Many Knives • crossbow • electronics • knife • lingua-disc • mace • phaser • space probe • sword • syringe • teleporter • weapon • wheel
Ranks and titles
Other references
- alien • armor • assignment patch • bird • Book of Nooaja • captain's log, USS Enterprise (NCC-1701), 2266 • cave • chocolate • city • day • de-aging • dog • doll • earthquake • emotion • fairy tale • Federation Starfleet ranks (2260s) • firing squad • fountain of youth • flute • Gardazian bear • helmet • high school • hour • Landu tree • leather • life • log entry • map • memory • milk • minute • month • murder • nursery • peace • plague • poisoning • Poji bird • pyramid • radiation • races and cultures • radium • rank • religion • rock • rubber • second • snake • spanking • Starfleet ranks • Starfleet uniform (2265-2270) • stun • teddy bear • telepathy • time • toy • V-Day • year
Appendices
Related stories
- TAS episode: "The Counter-Clock Incident" – The crew of the USS Enterprise rapidly de-aged during a visit to an alternate universe.
- TOS comic: "The Youth Trap" – An age-ray reduced Leonard McCoy to the age of a teenager. Spock and Scott were minimally de-aged, but many on the Enterprise were de-aged to children.
- TNG episode: "Rascals" – A transporter accident de-aged Jean-Luc Picard and three others.
Background
- The story took place entirely on the surface, with the ship and its medical database only referenced. The ship most likely provided Spock and Scott with explosive beta charges, though that was not stated.
- Elya and Wenomi wanted to rebuild their civilization over time, but the story did not delve into the genetic viability needed to make that happen with such a small number of known survivors.
- Elya was wise not to allow McCoy to give the antidote to her people. The survivors had been the most elderly people on the planet before the crisis. If their mammalian biology was similar to Human, once restored they likely would be unable to reproduce. Unless their technology included gene banks and artificial means of reproduction, and they were very quickly able to learn how to use them, restoring the people to old age probably would ensure the race's extinction.
- Sharaba said the de-aging phenomenon was planet-wide and mitigated by distance. In that case, the last survivors should have been found on the other side of the planet from the radiation source. Yet oddly they lived within walking distance, probably dramatic license so that Macador could participate in the conclusion.
- When recorded words from a doll were not translatable, Spock explained that their "lingua-discs are based on telepathy," requiring a living mind for a translation to be heard. Brainwave patterns were stated as being measured by the universal translator seen in TOS episode: "Metamorphosis". The landing party may have been using an earlier or different version of a translator device on this mission.
- Montgomery Scott said he had a nephew in Glasgow whom he'd once disciplined.
- On the cover, Kirk and Spock de-aged to children in front of Nooaja. However, in the story, Scott and Spock de-aged.
Images
Connections
Timeline
| Published Order | ||
|---|---|---|
| Previous comic: #41: The Evictors |
TOS comics (Gold Key) | Next comic: #43: The World Beneath the Waves |
| Previous story: The Evictors |
Stories by: Arnold Drake |
Next story: The World Beneath the Waves |
| Chronological Order | ||
| Previous adventure: The PsychoCrystals |
Memory Beta Chronology | Next adventure: One of Our Captains Is Missing! |
| Previous comic: The PsychoCrystals |
Voyages of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701), Year Two | Next comic: One of Our Captains Is Missing! |
Production history
- January 1977
- First published by Gold Key Comics
- June 2004
- Printed in the omnibus The Key Collection, Volume 5 (Checker Book Publishing Group)
- September 2008
- Included on The Complete Comic Book Collection DVD (Graphic Imaging Technologies)
- 13 September 2018
- Reprinted in hardcover in the omnibus Graphic Novel Collection #45 (Eaglemoss)
Translations
- 1978
- Dutch: In the omnibus Ruimteschip Enterprise Classics Strip-Paperback #2 (De Vrijbuiter)
- 1978
- German: As "Die Zeit läuft rückwärts" in the omnibus Raumschiff Enterprise Comic Taschenbuch #2 (Condor)
- 1980
- German: As "Die Zeit läuft rückwärts" in some editions of Condor Superheiden #1: Star Trek Jahrbuch (Condor-Verlag)
- 2007
- Italian: As "Il mondo dell'anti tempo" in the omnibus The Gold Key Collection, Volume 10 (Free Books)
External links
- World Against Time article at Memory Alpha, the wiki for canon Star Trek.
