Card of the Week: The Alien

Life is full of surprises.  It is said that a pure pessimist gets only pleasant surprises, while a pure optimist gets only unpleasant ones.  For the rest of us, surprises can come in many forms.

This bonus The Alien card suggests the pending arrival of some type of surprise that can come with many layers.  An apparently pleasant surprise may, on closer evaluation, have strings attached.  Or an initially unpleasant surprise may turn out to be a harbinger of good news in the long run.  Look for the pleasant surprise, but keep yourself grounded in reality just in case.

Inverted, the Alien card suggests that a surprise can sometimes be a source of  wonder and excitement.  An unexpected encounter can lend a new perspective to older, more familiar experiences.

In “The Cage” the Enterprise is en route back home following a stressful previous mission.  In private, Captain Pike confides that he is growing weary of carrying the responsibility for the safety of his ship and its entire crew, and he imagines leaving Starfleet, retiring back home on Earth, or possibly even becoming a trader in exotic alien settings.  Later, on the planet Talos IV, Pike is captured and the telepathic Talosians explore his thoughts.  They use his recent memories and fantasies to create a series of telepathic illusions for him, inserting a woman named Vina into each, first as someone to rescue during their most recent mission, then as his loving wife in a potential Earth retirement, and finally as an erotic green Orion Slave dancer.  Pike finds the illusions tempting but insists on reality, and ultimately convinces the Talosians to free him.