Star Trek Explorer - The Mission And Other Stories - The Guardian

STAR TREK TOS - Short Story  - Written by Gary Russell
2000 B.C. / 200,000 B.C. / Year 0
Published November 29, 2022
Read on August 16, 2025
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Taking place 500,000 years before 2266, The Guardian tells the story of Hob and his wife Tekhan, the last human survivors of the planet Exo III which is being overtaken by androids. 

It’s a nice prequel accompaniment to the TOS episode What Little Girls Are Made Of so I’ve placed a second reading on the timeline there as well. I believe it’s good to read in both places.

Hob and Tekhan basically know they are doomed and slowly move through the wasteland of Exo III toward the caves where they believe there may or may not be a switch to deactivate all the androids. They make it but more or less Tekhan gives up and drinks poison. Hob talks with the android Ruk (played by Ted Cassidy in the TOS episode). Hob basically tells Ruk, who is sympathetic to the human “masters” to safeguard the equipment in hopes that it might help someone one day, which is really one final act of hubris on his part (or charity depending on how you look at it).

I love the idea that this is the oldest moment in Star Trek (there may yet be one slightly older as a flashback in Spock’s World but I haven’t read that yet). I just love the idea that somewhere out in the stars before mankind ever existed there was a civilization further along and more doomed than we are. A distant future of the distant past. A really beautiful idea.