The third Peter Pan comic and record set in my collection is The Robot Masters — and it’s a hit-and-miss outing. The Romulans are hilariously wrong and Uhura finally looks more like herself, but there are also weird oversights in the artwork and the story is really predictable, even for its intended kid audience.

Unlike the first two Peter Pan sets I covered (which you can experience here and here), this one contains only one story. The audio comes on a 45-RPM record and is accompanied by a standard-sized comic.

The tale centres on missing robots. Someone has been stealing robots in this area of space for almost a year and Mr. Scott angrily informs Captain Kirk that he placed an order two months ago but his “little friends” have disappeared. Scotty is really, really fed up. Humourously so, all through the story. 

The plot follows Kirk, Spock, Chekov and a new guy named Tanka as they track down the scoundrels who have been grabbing the robots. I won’t spoil the rest of the story. Enjoy it for yourself; hit play and flip through the comic.

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This issue offers some weird lapses in illustration and storytelling. The tale opens with Kirk sitting in his captain’s chair on the bridge, and Uhura then calls Kirk from the bridge — and asks him to report to the bridge. 

Kirk is told about the robot problem and immediately says finding an answer is “Why I’ve called a meeting” — but he’s still sitting on the bridge, just continuing the conversation. In both cases, it seems Peter Pan couldn’t be bothered to come up with new settings to draw. 

Then there are two writing issues. The story is about Romulans but at one point Chekov exclaims “Only the Klingons would have the gall to make a robot attack army…” and Kirk replies “Yes, Mr. Chekov, curse those Romulans!” The mix-up is in both the audio and the comic, so it must have been in the script and no one caught it.

Similarly, at the end, Scotty brings the robot leader to the bridge to meet Spock, but the first officer was in the group that first found the robots. The leader already knows him.

Still, the artwork is fun even if the Enterprise is sometimes missing bits, the Romulans are enjoyably ridiculous, and it’s nice to see Uhura look a lot like Uhura. The rest can be forgiven. Maybe kids who got this in 1979 didn’t care about any of the odd bits.