VANNA (Charlene Polite), in The Cloud Minders episode of Star Trek (1966), led the revolution of the Troglytes ( cave dwellers ) of Ardana. Her revolution ended almost bloodlessly after the surprise visit of USS Enterprise NCC-1701, Captain James T. Kirk commanding. She little suspected at the time that this visit would bring about lasting change on Ardana--and make her the mayor of a large city, with all the responsibility that goes with that office.Vanna was born in a cave, and her parents told her she would always stay in a cave. Her parents mined zenite, a mineral available only on Ardana. That was the only life she knew--until one day, the intellectual ruling class, who lived in a city called Stratos suspended miles over their heads, invited her to train as a servant in the household of the High Advisers to the Governing Council of Ardana. In that capacity, she came to know Plasus, the longest-serving High Adviser, and his daughter, Droxine.The trappings of privilege, and the soft life these Stratos dwellers led, filled her with disgust. But a subtle change came over her as well. She began to think more clearly--enough to get something of an education. She didn't get nearly as much education as Droxine got, but she got a better education than she would have gotten on the ground. More than that, she began to believe she might be able to change the way her people lived.These Stratos people had managed to create a city without crime--incredible, but true. So they didn't even think in violent terms. They didn't even guard their own property--they trained some of her fellow Troglytes to form a Sentinel Corps! They did as much violence as needed doing, which wasn't much. Sadly, they thought like hired bully-boys first and Troglytes second. They would be no help. But Vanna lived for the day she would return to the mines and start getting her people to work together as one--an act called organizing. So for years after returning to the mines, she organized. She had but one strategy at first: seize on or two high-value hostages, and press certain demands. Her chief demand: that her people have an opportunity to have their homes on Stratos. (She didn't think in terms of building another city in the clouds until much, much later.)Then came the Enterprise visit.The visit came about, Vanna gathered, because a botanical bacterial blight was raging on a planet called Merak II, and only a large quantity of zenite, with its natural antibiotic, therefore anti-blight, properties, could check it. Vanna, of course, ordered her revolutionary guards (whom the Stratos people scornfully called The Disruptors) to seize the shipment. She didn't know the United Federation of Planets, of which Ardana was a member, would send a Class One starship to pick the shipment up. She thought maybe the real mission of that starship would be a military strike or two against the Troglytes.Captain James T. Kirk and his First Officer, a point-eared man named Spock, appeared on the transport platform next to the main adit of the mine. Vanna took three Troglytes to try to seize them. But they fought too well for them, long enough for Plasus and two Sentinels to arrive and chase them away. Vanna got her team away, except for one, who fell before a Sentinel's directed-energy weapon. Not long after that, another Troglyte literally fell to the ground from the city. Vanna sighed. Some of her people would sneak onto Stratos, without a transport pass, to do petty vandalism. This would be the inevitable result.So after that, she donned a Stratos-style dress (stolen in an earlier expedition) and slipped in to try to take Captain Kirk hostage. Again he proved not only a better fighter but a light sleeper--and a sickening flirt, too. Sadly, between her shouting and struggling, she attracted Spock and Droxine, who had been talking outside. Droxine recognized Vanna at once, of course, and summoned the Sentinels. With the result that Vanna found herself chained to the Dais with its bright light. She was getting the standard bright-light treatment (she was still light-sensitive, though not as much as most of her people) when Kirk and Spock rushed in and stopped the treatment. To her surprise, Captain Kirk actually accused Plasus of applying torture and said if Plasus ever used that device again, it would be on himself or his second-in-command!Plasus ordered her unchained and confined in the prison quarters. The Sentinels divested her of the elegant dress she had worn and gave her a simple short-cut shift with prison markings in the ancient script of another language. (She would be shocked to learn later that script came from another world--the same world Kirk came from, in fact--a legacy from the Preservers, who seeded hundreds of worlds with populations taken from that world thousands of years ago.) There, Captain Kirk actually had himself transported directly into her cell. He told her a fantastic story: that zenite emitted a colorless, odorless gas that affected the mind of any who breathed it, and they should all wear filter masks to filter out the gas--and be able to think clearly enough to share equally in the benefits of a city like Stratos. Vanna let him get her off Stratos--and delivered him to her own guards, as the valuable hostage she had always sought. She even forced him to dig out zenite with his bare hands. As for that silly mask, she ordered that left on the transport platform to let Plasus know they now had a hostage.But again Kirk proved too clever. He got the better of her, recovered his own directed-energy weapon--and used it to seal the adit! Then he took out his hand-held communicator, and ordered his officers to locate and transport Plasus into the same cave-room with them! They had to wait awhile, but eventually Plasus did appear--and Kirk ordered Plasus, then Vanna, to dig for zenite.Half an hour later, Vanna felt faint. But she also noticed a change occurring. Not so much in Plasus--he always was a jerk--but in Kirk. He was not acting with the same collected cool he had shown when she first met him. He was drunk with power, and behaving irrationally even to his own officers. Then Plasus challenged Kirk to a duel with cavern mortaes, and Kirk obliged. So the two were now rolling on the mine driftway floor, struggling with might and main--and Kirk's communicator tumbled within Vanna's reach. She took it, actuated it, then called the Enterprise. She got Spock's attention. Then she said all she could think to say: They'll kill each other! Help us! Help us! Spock obliged. He transported the three of them to the Enterprise. Then he rushed in to separate Kirk and Plasus before they could harm one another. Captain, the zenite gas has affected you! he was saying. Evidently it took awhile for that to sink in.The result was almost anticlimactic. Vanna accepted Kirk's offer of a full supply of filter masks. In return she released the zenite shipment.The other bonuses came later. For Droxine, wearing a mask and dressed for mining and not for a formal ball (or whatever it was they did all day on Stratos), came to visit the mines. Vanna did not take her hostage. Instead, they talked. And talked. And talked.The dialog was a beginning. Changes came little by little. And eventually Droxine took over as High Adviser--and sent a team of engineers to recruit and train a workforce to build another levitated city. A large one--larger than Stratos had ever been. This was the crowning achievement of the Droxine-Vanna Compact that keeps the peace on Ardana to this day. Vanna became the mayor of this brand-new city, and for the first time appreciated the responsibilities Plasus had had, and that Droxine had taken on.In time, Vanna and Droxine each had children. Droxine's son married Vanna's daughter in what was almost a marriage of state. Another son of Droxine became Ardana's Ambassador to the Federation and even served a rotating term on the Federation Council. But Droxine and Vanna's grandson had the best achievement of all, when he matriculated at the Star Fleet Academy. Show less «