Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

1. The Enterprise is invited by Commodore Travers encouraging a visit to remote colony, Cestus III Outpost

2. On landing the away team discovers the colony has been destroyed.

3. The Enterprise team, Spock, McCoy, and Kirk has come under attack prevent beam up. Sulu is acting as Captain. The enemy out numbers the away team and have taken high ground.

4. Laser and photon beams are ineffective against the enemy ship. Communications are being interfered with. Kirk order Sulu too "Protect my ship." A strategy to draw the enemy into believe the away team is helpless. The enemy locks onto Spock's tri recorder and creates a feedback loop that destroys it.

5. Enemy ships actives their transports and the Enterprise beams up the survivors and the team.

6. The aliens are merciless, murdering woman and children, they wouldn't let for a moment. Commodore Travers asks "Why did they do?" Kirk says, "It has to be a trap." Enterprise is the key to protection in this section, "Clear and Immediate, Invasion". Spock conjectures that "it is an invasion". Spock says, "very well, you must make sure the alien vessel near reaches its home base." The implication is that Federation vulnerability has been ascertained and the enemy knows that invasion is possible with little resistance.

7. The alien vessel has moved to an area of space with little knowledge, more like "space legends". The Enterprise chases the enemy at wrap seven.

8. Spock does not want to obliterate the enemy. Spock advocates comprehension of the sentient being. Spock does not see the immediate military threat nor does he acknowledge the large loss of life. Kirk declares "a crime has been committed" and he wants punishment, the policeman of the Universe. Kirk ends the discussion with Spock by asking ,"Is that clear". Warp eight.

9. The alien scans the Enterprise. Uhura observes the scan does not demonstrate hostility. The alien ship drops to sublight and stopped dead in space. Phrasers locked to fire. The same phenomena affecting the alien ship incapacitates the Enterprise leaving no power. A tractor beam from an unidentified power from a distant solar system is holding the Enterprise.

10. The Metrons perceive the two ships have entered their space on a mission of violence. The dispute will be settle by one on one combat. The Metrons perceive they are putting a stop to the violence rather than interfering. The loser's ship will be destroyed. The Metrons pass judgment stating "There will be no discussion."

11. The asteroid has been provided with air and weapons. The alien Agorn is a reptile being who is extreme strong but slow, possibly a hundred times stronger.

12. McCoy says to Spock, "You're the one always talking about logic. What does logic say now? What are you going to do to help the Captain." Spock says "there is nothing that can be done."

13. Agorn makes a sinister and evil laugh while he makes a rope trap.

14. Kirk rolls a rock on the alien but alien survives uninjured.

15. Kirk builds a canon use bamboo tube, gunpowder (sulfer & potassium nitrate), and diamonds. The canon injures Agorn.

16. Spock falsely persuades McCoy into believing that "they may be in the wrong. The aliens may have been trying to protect themselves when they attacked the outpost." The aliens are the aggressors. The aliens were the aggressors killing all the Cessus III Colony. The aliens did not react with a defensive strategy. Kirk decides not kill the alien captain. One moment Kirk demands retribution and justice and in the next he decides to be merciful. The end result was no justice and no punishment. It seems Kirk believed Spock in the end. Kirk does not insist that Metrons imprison the aliens, a trial be held to determine guilt or innocence, just an arbitrary decree, "let them go".

17. The Metrons are 1,500 years old and appear like a boy. The Metrons complement Kirk for demonstrating the advanced trait of mercy.

Although Gene Coon was forced to concede his idea for "Arena" may have come from elsewhere, I recently discovered the origins were not Fredric Brown, but Clifford Simak. In the thirteenth through the fifteenth chapters of "Cosmic Engineers," written years before Brown's short story, we find the protagonist's ship stopped dead in space by a mysterious force and our heroes forced to wage hand to hand combat with a couple of erect, sentient reptilians known as "Hellhounds," who are out to destroy the universe by a means not unlike the plot of "Alternative Factor." Who knows when Gene Coon read the Cosmic Engineers, but he was probably innocent of plagarizing Brown. Despite the cheesy effects, these two episodes are pure science fiction in the best of the genre, adapted, not plagarized from one of my all-time favorite SF writers, Clifford D. Simak, not Fredric Brown.