PLASUS (Jeff Corey), in The Cloud Minders episode of Star Trek (1966-69), served as High Adviser to the Governing Council of Ardana.Though Ardana held membership in the United Federation of Planets, they seem to have shared little with the Federation Council before their admission. Aside from sending a delegate to the Supreme Assembly, Ardana seems to have participated little in Federation affairs. Or at least, such was the case until USS Enterprise NCC-1701, Captain James T. Kirk commanding, paid Ardana a visit.How Ardana formed remains a mystery known, perhaps, only to the Progenitors and the Preservers. It was then, and remains today, the only reliable source of a mineral called zenite. Zenite has a natural antibiotic property that makes it invaluable in combating bacterial infections of plants, and especially crops. All Federation worlds prize it highly. But no one knew, before the fateful Enterprise visit, that raw zenite ore emits a colorless, odorless gas that significantly diminishes the mental capacity of anyone who breathes it.Centuries before anyone even heard of a Federation of Planets, the Preservers seeded Ardana with a population possibly of Spartans, of the highest intellectual class on one side, and the lowest class, or Helots, on the other. The Helots persisted to the time of Captain Kirk's visit as the Troglytes. That name comes from the term troglodyte, meaning a cave-dweller.For Ardana was, quite simply, an unsustainably dual society. The intellectual class devised a means of sustained anti-gravity levitation. They used it to build a city, Stratos, that became their capital. (Or perhaps the Preservers, for their own twisted amusement, or some other race that has thus far eluded discovery by Federation astro-archaeologists, built Stratos for the intellectuals, just to see what they would do with it.) The intellectuals moved into Stratos--and refused entry to the Troglytes. The Troglytes then came to do all the menial labor to sustain the city. This included mining zenite for export. All the while, the zenite ore gas kept them intellectually stunted and prone to unfocused violence.Never did the Troglytes successfully revolt--until Vanna, a Troglyte, came to Stratus for training as a servant in the Plasus household. Captain Kirk describes that household as having but two members at the time of his visit: Plasus himself, and his daughter Droxine. No one has ever inquired into Droxine's mother, how long ago she died, or what she died of. (Nor has anyone adduced any evidence that Droxine's mother died from an act of violence.)A widespread and devastating biological plague on the planet Marek II occasioned the visit of the Enterprise. The Federation Council arranged with Ardana to buy a consignment of zenite and sent the Enterprise to pick it up. But by then, Vanna's Disruptor movement had refused delivery of the shipment.Plasus knew what Vanna and her Disruptors had done. So when the Enterprise arrived, he extended an invitation to Captain Kirk and his first officer, Spock, to transport directly to Stratos and enjoy his, Plasus' hospitality. Kirk declined, pleading the pressing nature of the emergency.As Plasus could have told Kirk ahead of time, Vanna and two other Troglytes met Kirk and Spock at the main mine adit and tried to take them hostage. Naturally Plasus transported to the adit with two sentinels--ironically, also of Troglyte heritage. He and his escorts chased Vanna and several attacking Troglytes back into the adit. After ascertaining that Kirk and Spock had not come to harm, Plasus invited them to join him on Stratus.This they did. And that was the beginning of the upheaval that would change Ardana forever.Plasus' mistake, perhaps, was automatically assuming that a man of James T. Kirk's intellectual acumen and fighting spirit would see the Disruptors as he, Plasus, did. In so assuming he woefully underestimated Kirk and Spock both. When a captured Troglyte (who probably had vandalized an artwork in the Council gallery) leaped the railing to his death from a two-mile fall, Plasus did not take into account how Kirk and Spock would take that. When Vanna surreptitiously came to Stratus and tried to abduct Captain Kirk all over again, Plasus put her to a torture involving bright lights. (Troglytes, in those days, were light-sensitive.) An outraged Kirk actually threatened Plasus: The only way you will ever use that device again is on one of us! Plasus expelled both officers to their ship and gave orders to kill either man on sight.About an hour later, Captain Kirk called him by video to propose something that struck him as absurd: issue filter masks to all Troglytes, and the invisible, undetectable gas that kept them intellectually inferior would no longer do so, and they would become like Stratos dwellers! That conversation did not end well.But he also underestimated Droxine. For the first time in her young life she was questioning every precept Stratos dwellers had lived by for centuries. Not knowing how to answer her questions, he dismissed her, this after hearing that Vanna had escaped confinement, leaving evidence that Captain Kirk was involved. And as soon as Droxine left the gallery, Plasus found himself transported, first aboard the Enterprise, and then deep inside a mine--to confront Captain Kirk! Who brazenly informed him he had deliberately sealed the adit, and then ordered him--Plasus, High Adviser!--to dig for zenite! Plasus complied--and Kirk, apparently drunk with the power he then wielded, ordered Vanna to dig by Plasus' side.Plasus took that treatment for about five minutes, and then challenged Kirk to a duel with cavern mortaes. Kirk obliged. The two men struggled with might and main for another minute or two. Then Plasus overheard Vanna calling the Enterprise and saying simply, They'll kill each other! Help us! The next thing Plasus knew was finding himself aboard the Enterprise and seeing Spock confront his captain. Captain, the zenite gas has affected you! he cried. Plasus would need a full minute to grasp the implications: Captain Kirk had behaved in an uncharacteristically vicious manner. Plasus wouldn't have understood that, but Spock certainly would.And now came an anticlimax. Vanna agreed to surrender the zenite, in exchange for a full shipment of filter masks. Plasus, having little choice (especially since the masks wouldn't cost anything out of the treasury), agreed to the exchange. Somehow he brought himself to let the Enterprise go without complaining to Starfleet Command about Captain Kirk's unique brand of diplomacy.Plasus ultimately retired from public life--but not before seeing his daughter actually visit the mines herself (wearing a protector, of course), and then succeed him as High Adviser and broker the Droxine-Vanna Compact that has kept the peace on Ardana to this day.NOTE: Plasus is strictly a Prime Reality character. No log entry of any visit by Enterprise or by any other starship has come to light in the annals of the Alternate Reality. Show less «