Gorgan

Gorgan, the "Friendly Angel"

For the Klingon Chancellor, please see Gorkon.

Gorgan (also known as the "Friendly Angel") was a noncorporeal being preserved in a cave on the planet Triacus. Spock's research suggested that Gorgan was possibly the last survivor of a race of marauders who used Triacus as a base from which to pillage the Epsilon Indi star group, until their victims rose up and destroyed them. The same space legends suggested that one survivor fled to a cave where it awaited the right "catalyst" to send it once again marauding across the galaxy.

In 2268, the Starnes Exploration Party accidentally released Gorgan from his cave. He used the party's children to evoke the fears of the adults, eventually making the adults mentally unstable and driving them to suicide. He further manipulated the children to follow him in his quest of conquering the universe.

On stardate 5029, Gorgan used the children to establish mind control over the crew of the USS Enterprise and forced the ship on a heading for Marcus XII. Gorgan hoped that nearly a million children on Marcus would join the other children as their friends. The rest would be their enemies, to be destroyed.

The children could collectively summon Gorgan by twice chanting:

Hail, hail, fire and snow

Call the angel we will go

Far away, for to see

Friendly Angel, come to me

(The children chanted "High, high fire and snow", instead of "Hail, hail", during their second summoning of the Gorgan.)

Gorgan was defeated by Captain Kirk, when he turned the children on him by recalling their lives with, and deaths of, their parents. Losing the children's obedience, Gorgan lost his power and dissolved into oblivion. (TOS: "And the Children Shall Lead")

Gorgan was played by Melvin Belli.

Curiously, Kirk first spoke Gorgan's name when he summoned the being. There was no reference to his name, other than "Friendly Angel".

In The Q Continuum series of books by Greg Cox, Gorgan, along with the Beta XII-A entity, the Sha Ka Ree God, and a malevolent being known as 0, were brought into this dimension by a much younger Q. The group committed a number of atrocities, including the destruction of the Tkon Empire- Gorgan serving as the catalyst to trigger a civil war between the central Tkon homeworld and some of its outer colonies in protest at the resources being expended on a project to replace their dying sun with a younger star- before being defeated by the Q Continuum.

External link

• Gorgan at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works