Alien Bugs, God-like Beings, and Data’s Head in the Latest Trek Talks!

Trek Talks returns with a fistful of Trek comics! Star Trek #21-22, written by Collin Kelly & Jackson Lanzing with art by Megan Levens, colors by Lee Loughridge and letters by Clayton Cowles. Star Trek: Defiant #16, written by Christopher Cantwell, with art by Ángel Unzueta, colors by Marissa Louise and letters by Clayton Cowles. Star Trek: Annual 2024, written by Collin Kelly & Jackson Lanzing with art by Rachael Stott, colors by Charlie Kirchoff and letters by Clayton Cowles.

Mark Turetsky: Tony! The stars have aligned, the release calendars are in sync and… we have four comics to discuss!

Tony Thornley: So much to discuss and look at. These are LOADED issues.

The Needs of the Few

Mark: Let’s start off with Defiant #16, the end of the “Hell Is Only A Word” arc. At the start of the issue, things seem about as bad for our heroes as they’ve ever been: Starbase 99 has been just about completely taken over by the Conspiracy bugs, the great big portal is open and getting bigger, big ugly brain bugs are coming through, Ro and Worf are fighting a losing battle, Torres has been assimilated into both the bug and Borg collectives and Spock has become catatonic. Oh, and Nymira has fucked off back to the Defiant without even saying goodbye. And also their last, best, hope is Sela.

Tony: This is a hell of a setup. For a story arc intended to resolve a cliffhanger from a 30+ year old episode, Cantwell wrote a story with a surprising emotional core. The parasites are largely incredibly unnerving, with some serious body horror elements, yes. But this is a story about B’Lanna Torres losing control. Worf facing yet another sacrifice. Sela growing beyond the empire. And Nymira becoming better than what the Orion expected her to be.

Now, that is a lot all at once. Hugh doesn’t get much in this issue. Spock is largely catatonic. He is going to be facing some interesting points from this story arc, but the parasites are fighting for his mind as the issue opens.

Mark: The thing I love about this sequence is that I take Spock’s catatonia to not just be that he’s fighting off a psychic attack, but rather that he’s stuck in a psychological impasse. He repeats “the many… the many… the many…” and of course we’re meant to hear the echo to his logical conclusion in The Wrath of Khan, “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

Here, he’s confronted with a very big “many” and I’m sure he knows in his heart of hearts that he should not side with them. But they’re using his logic against him. They’re presenting him with such a multitude of beings to weigh on his scales of logic that he can’t see a way through this logical gordian knot. Sela, on the other hand, sees right through it: she appeals not to his logic, but to his underlying confidence — one might even call it vanity. That he’s got a massive ego. That his ambitions aren’t entirely about making the galaxy a better place, but rather “deep down you believe you’re a god.” Does she appeal to some inner vanity of Spock’s? Does Spock actually deep down believe Kirk’s rebuttal in The Search For Spock, that the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many, as long as it’s Spock we’re talking about?

Tony: Kelly and Lanzing confronted this quite a bit in Star Trek Year Five, doing a bit of retconning prior to Search for Spock, and I think this is a character point that Spock needs to confront. At this point, he’s a legend. It’s time for the character to start grappling with that prior to the Romulus Supernova.

Mark: Sela and Spock go way back in the grand scheme of things. But there’s also a connection between them that I don’t think was ever explored: they’re both half human. And depending on what day of the week it is, Romulans and Vulcans are genetically identical: two possible cultures fed by the same innate qualities (I’ve got a whole thesis on Romulans and Vulcans that is much too long to put down here, so I’ll leave it at that). As such Sela, has insight into Spock that nobody in the Star Trek galaxy might otherwise have: she’s the only other one (okay, maybe besides Simon Tarses’ half-Romulan father). 

On The Next Generation, we never saw Sela struggle with questions about her mixed-heritage identity in the same way we did with Spock. I’m glad that Defiant has begun to raise these issues, making her a much more nuanced character.

Tony: Before this line of comics got the action balance just right, character development was exactly what Trek comics were best at. Sela absolutely was just a standard Romulan with a familiar face. Now we’re getting more and more of that nuance that a character like her needs. It also points to the growth and change that Romulans as a whole will go through between this point on the timeline and Picard.

Mark: The way Spock fights back against the mind bugs is first to argue against them, which of course doesn’t work. Instead, he entreats the crew to fight back against the bugs, to unify as Starfleet officers. They reject the parasites, if we’re to believe in Sela’s line of thinking, because he’s Spock. He’s a walking legend, not just in Star Trek, but in real life. Maybe they don’t win because they’re Starfleet and Starfleet is good; maybe it’s because they idolize Spock.

Tony: I like that you read it that way. I did read it a bit more literal in that Spock inspired some oo-rah confidence, but making it faith in the iconic hero of the fleet… it adds layers that will be much more interesting to explore.

Mark: Finally we have Nymira, who ultimately saves the day, sacrificing herself for the rest of her crew. Our flashbacks throughout this arc were all leading us here, filling in her backstory and giving the character some real depth. It also neatly deals with the continuing presence of the Defiant having a hold full of trilithium explosives. She also does it from the other side of the portal, so she doesn’t destroy the starbase full of recently de-wormed crew.

We’ll miss you, Nymira. You weren’t Tendi, but you were great.

Tony: I like this, because it shows the series had stakes. Of course, the other characters have a bit of plot armor, so it probably had to be Nymira if anyone made this sacrifice, but that doesn’t take all the emotion out of the moment.

After that big bang of a conclusion, I liked the quiet reflection of the crew recovering from everything. I truly hope B’Elanna has to grapple with these events for a bit, because what a whirlwind she’s been through. I am extremely disappointed to see Hugh go. I know he needed to, but it would have been nice to give him another arc with the crew. And heck, given the cliffhanger, it could have connected some dots.

Mark: And the big cliffhanger sees the arrival of Sela’s dad, General Revo. Sela doesn’t have much choice but to turn the Defiant and its crew over to Revo, since Revo threatens to kill them all if she doesn’t. I think what we’re building to here is a redemption for Sela. We saw her as a child turning on her mother during their escape in the annual. I think we’re going to see that situation repeating itself, only this time she’ll do the right thing and help the Defiant crew (and possibly herself) escape.

A Walk In The Clouds

Mark: Star Trek #21 starts out in a similarly perilous place: Kore Soong, now a Traveler, a member of AEGIS, is threatening to wipe the Theseus and her crew from existence for infiltrating the Pleroma, the home of the gods. 

Tony: AEGIS is entirely a Hivemind creation, but I like them a ton. They make sense for an agency that runs counter to the Office for Temporal Affairs, and uniting all the random non-Federation time & dimension travelers into one agency makes sense. It also adds a layer to Trek we don’t see often — a benevolent (or at least non-antagonistic) agency potentially running cross purposes to the Federation itself.

Mark: There’s a moment early on that I’m not sure the writers intended, and that’s when Kore Soong calls T’Lir “Tandela.” In effect, she deadnames T’Lir. I get that she’s acknowledging T’Lir’s former identity as an Organian, as it’s their Organian heritage that T’Lir cites as their justification for being in the Pleroma. Also, it’s there to remind readers of T’Lir’s secret identity. But at no point does T’Lir refer to themselves as Tandela. In fact, in their “coming out” scene at the end of Star Trek #18, even when they reveal, they are, “the only living thing left to call Organia home,” their very next line is that they’re, “T’Lir. A Vulcan of Starfleet.”

And it’s not like this should be an alien thing for Kore: she’s a young person from 2020s Los Angeles. She should be all over this stuff. The Guardian of Forever also deadnames T’Lir later on, though that might be more in character as a cosmic being who can see all of time and has taken the form of a middle-aged man from the mid-20th Century named Carl.

Tony: You raise an excellent point, especially with T’Lir being non-binary as well. It definitely seemed like there was a bit of “timeless beings not understanding a linear progression,” but cosmic entities should also understand that they should use appropriate names.

Mark: Sisko gets through the door by identifying himself as the Emissary of The Prophets (though in this case, “emissary” might be more accurate), and we get to meet the entities inhabiting the Pleroma. As we predicted last time, there’s The Caretaker, Trelane, Apollo and the Guardian of Forever. They’re joined by Bright Eyes, a Tholian from the Star Trek: Year Five comics series, Rukiya M’Benga from Strange New Worlds, Kevin Uxbridge from TNG’s “The Survivors,” a Metron from TOS’ “Arena” (where Kirk fights the Gorn captain) and finally a more mature Charles Evans from TOS’ “Charlie X.”

Tony: Not present? Q. That really kind of surprised me. But each character’s presence was welcome. It shows how much of a tapestry Trek is, and what it all offers. 

Mark: Kore also gives Dr. Crusher access to AEGIS headquarters to go and find Wesley, and that’s another thing I can’t quite wrap my head around regarding Kore: isn’t it against the rules to do that? Wasn’t she about to erase them from existence for the sake of those rules? Is it because she feels beholden to Wesley for recruiting her in the first place?

Tony: Yeah, I think it was meant to show Kore’s humanity is still firmly in place. It was a nice little touch.

Mark: The first order of business for the committee of gods is T’Lir’s plea to bring back the Organian race, destroyed in the past through Kahless’ attacks on reality itself. During the speech and debate portion, artisti Megan Levens really knocks the acting in this scene out of the park, like T’Lir’s anguish on “My people are not a statistic!”

Tony: Oh agreed. Levens has been on the fringe of IDW’s Trek comics for a while, and I really hope she sticks around with this series for a bit.

Mark: I can’t help but read this scene, where nine powerful beings (the Guardian of Forever abstains) who consider themselves “beyond judgment” make profound, life altering decisions for selfish, pompous reasons, condemning an entire civilization to death, inside the context of the current US Supreme court. I know this comic was written and published prior to their latest round of legal atrocities, but they were already heading in that direction. Their reasoning runs the gamut from the overtly cruel (Apollo and Trelane), to professedly powerless (Charlie, Rukiya, Metron), to the most heartbreaking of faux-kindness callousness (the Caretaker’s, “No. But we wish you well, in this and all things”) and the Boomer callousness of Kevin Uxbridge’s “atrocities build character!” 

Not everyone on the council votes against T’Lir. Bright Eyes (Kirk taught them well, it turns out!) and AEGIS vote “yea,” but they’re far outnumbered. There follows a heated scene between T’Lir and the Guardian, who abstains. The Guardian reveals that should the council act, “the entire universe will burn,” and that, “at the end of all thing, [T’Lir] will find [their] way home.” 

Tony: Bright Eyes had the most fascinating journey in Year 5, from hostile Tholian to benevolent ally of the Federation. I would be fascinated to see what brought their journey from there to here. It’s also incredibly interesting to note that the ones to vote in favor are a completely inhuman ascended being, and an agency as a whole. Not even Charlie or Rukiya took the time to really express empathy.

Mark: Star Trek #21 ends with the arrival of Sarah Sisko, a Prophet of Bajor and Captain Sisko’s mother, demanding he return to the Celestial Temple. When we return to the scene in Star Trek #22, Sarah tells the assembly, “We are of Bajor. You are of others, long forgotten.” In T’Lir’s Organian diary, they make reference to the Organians once being mortal humanoids, and several members of the council are clearly ascended humanoids (in the cases of Rukiya and Charlie Evans, we saw it happen onscreen). Is Sarah implying that the Prophets are in fact Bajorans from the far future who have stepped outside of time, as a popular fan theory would have it? This is about as close to a confirmation as we’ve ever gotten. We’ve always heard that they’re “of Bajor,” but never in relation to other ascended beings being “of others.” Something to think about.

Tony: Probably not a reveal we’ll get in tie-in media, but it’s a great hint that Lanzing and Kelly drop.

Sarah Sisko continues to be one of the most confounding characters in Trek history, too. The Prophets really are kind of horrifying in their aloofness, and Sarah just doubles down on it.

Mark: In response to Sarah’s insistence that Benjamin return with her to the Celestial Temple, Benjamin agrees to “walk with” her. It’s an interesting choice of phrasing, bringing to mind the Biblical Enoch, who “walked with God, and was no more.” Some traditions have it that this phrasing means that Enoch never died, but rather ascended to Heaven alive, which certainly should ring some bells in this story. It also calls to mind The Preacher from the sublime “Far Beyond The Stars,” who calls upon Sisko to, “Walk with the Prophets, Brother Benny. Show us the way.” The Preacher is of course portrayed by Sisko’s father, Joseph, and the vision itself was sent by the prophets, and I’m certain this callback is intentional. 

Tony: It’s also Ben’s way of making Sarah take a step down to his level. As an ascended human, he still is holding close to his humanity. Asking a deity to take a walk is almost forcing them to be human, just a little bit, to do what is being asked.

Mark: On their walk, Sarah shows Sisko many wonders of the universe, including a distributed consciousness annihilating itself in a black hole, a diamond planet, a version of Earth covered by massive grid lines. At the end of their discussion, she tells him, “All that matters is the Temple. All that matters is The Sisko. When all else is gone, the Sisko must remain.” And, well, she’s a Prophet. To her, there is no if about it: if she says the universe is going to be wiped out, to her it’s already happened. My prediction is that Lore will succeed, but Sisko will be in the Celestial Temple when it happens, and Sisko’s presence there will be used to bring back the rest of existence. That’s my guess, anyway.

Tony: Yeah, Ben’s importance to the conclusion of this series is incredibly obvious, and it’ll be a lot of fun to see where it goes.

Also, I’m real interested in that evolved Earth. Is it one we’ve seen before?

Mark: Not from what I can recall. Not even in later seasons of Discovery, whose 32nd Century is the farthest we’ve been in the Trek timeline (with a few exceptions).

The other major plot of the issue is Dr. Crusher’s reunion with Wesley in his office at AEGIS headquarters. It’s a bittersweet reunion, where Wesley appears old — older than Beverly. He reveals to her that he’s lost track of his age, that his age is on the order of thousands of years. You can’t help but feel a sense of heartbreak, maybe even some disappointment on Dr. Crusher’s part that Wesley’s never found love in his millennia of existence. And the meeting is cut brutally short with the approach of AEGIS agents. He hands her a note which “will help with what comes next.” Before he clicks her out of (or back to?) existence. 

He ends the scene saying, “hope I see you at the wedding,” which is a reference to Troi and Riker’s wedding in Nemesis. As a Traveler, he should know if he’ll be seeing her there, right? But that’s where the complicated production of Nemesis comes into play: Wesley only appears in one shot, and he’s wearing a Starfleet uniform in that scene. He does have some dialogue, where he mentions that he’s been assigned to the Titan, but it’s in a deleted scene. And his presence makes no sense in the greater context of things: if he’s a Traveler, why is he in Starfleet? And as a Lieutenant, no less? As with all such things in the convoluted continuity of Star Trek, it was probably Romulan Time Agents messing with reality.

That, and apparently Wesley’s all over season 2 of Prodigy, so that might also clarify some things.

Tony: Yeah, this was a really sweet moment. I was glad to see Bev get this moment of closure. It was an unresolved plot that hung over Star Trek for so long — until Picard season 2, of course — that I felt like it needed to happen. 

Mark: The running subplot of this arc has been Lily’s disaffection with Starfleet, her lack of faith in being able to live up to her legacy and Section 31 taking advantage of this vulnerability to recruit her. We see her leave the Theseus and venture into the Pleroma to plant a device supplied by Section 31. She’s got a great little scene with T’Lir where they try to warn her away from what she’s about to do, but she’s bought in too much into Starfleet’s mission that she’s blind to see that she’s been manipulated. And the person who’s ultimately been manipulating her behind the scenes shows up. It’s Lore. And he’s on Kahless’ ship. And he’s got Data’s head!  

Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

Mark: Data’s head, you say? How and when did that happen, you ask? Well, there’s just the comic to answer that question, and it’s this year’s Star Trek Annual. 

Tony: Oh this annual was such a delight that I wish it was a three issue arc. It was so much fun but it also needed more room to breathe.

Mark: So much of this comic is about Data’s psychological state, which is funny, because he has expressly turned off his emotion chip in order to seek out his brother. It reminds me of an excellent scene from Star Trek: Picard’s “Broken Pieces” between Picard and Soji, one of Data’s daughters, where Picard tells her about her absent father:

Picard: He made us all laugh… except when he was trying to make us laugh.

Soji: And you loved him.

Picard: I, uh… Yes. In my way.

Soji: Did he love you?

Picard: Data’s capacity for expressing and processing emotion was limited. I suppose we had that in common.

Mark: It seems like this is the sort of reading that Kelly and Lanzing have taken with the character. When he describes his malfunction over Tzenketh, it sounds like he’s had a panic attack. When he describes shutting off his emotion chip, it sounds like he’s entered a kind of trauma-induced emotional detachment. He talks about it in terms of protecting his friends from the results of his emotions, but what he does immediately afterward, in this issue, is to take his friends O’Brien and Geordi and also his cat, Spot, to Farius Prime, a place that can only be reasonably described as Planet Crimes. Data, buddy: think things through.

Tony: The writing team described this as a Sherlock Holmes story, and it fits that so well. Taking his friends out of their depth into such dangerous situations, misreading things, becoming dangerously driven. This is a Holmes story, but it is also deeply a Data story. He needs this moment, to redeem himself and find Lore. It’s one of the things Trek is best at — the human core at a deeply alien story.

Mark: I also love the way Rachael Stott hides Data’s face for so much of the opening pages, saving a full reveal for his conversation with O’Brien in O’Brien’s office at Starfleet Academy, giving Data a suit that reads like a modern day update of his Sherlock Holmes outfit (sans deerstalker hat). His tie is the same shade of gold as his eyes, his shirt a dark cream color, his jacket an olive brown. If Data’s not going to be wearing his Starfleet uniform for this automagical mystery tour, this suit looks great on him.

It’s also great to see O’Brien again post-DS9. His utility to Data is pretty limited, since all of his Farius Prime contacts (from DS9’s “Honor Among Thieves”) are either dead or missing. He mostly exists to be an everyman for Data, and later Geordi, to bounce off of. Not that that’s a bad thing: O’Brien is one of my favorite characters and he’s at his best when he’s allowed to be an everyman who also happens to be an engineering genius.

Tony: Also, love Miles’ casual professor garb. It does seem wrong that he never really rolls his sleeves up though.

Mark: And speaking of engineering geniuses, Miles and Data get rescued by Geordi, Data’s closest friend, who’s managed to write off this rescue mission as a shakedown voyage of the Vulcan Science Directorate’s Sailfish vessel, a precursor to the Jellyfish ship that Spock pilots in Star Trek (2009). It’s funny: Data chose O’Brien to accompany him due to his familiarity with Farius Prime and Geordi shows up unexpectedly to rescue them, but that makes two of Starfleet’s best engineering minds (Scotty is currently busy confronting the very gods themselves) accompanying Data. It’s almost like Data is subconsciously (if he can be said to have a subconscious) reaching out to engineers because he knows, but won’t acknowledge, that there is something deeply wrong with him. 

Tony: I agree and it was great to see Geordi. Unfortunately, the moment he shows up, Miles takes a back seat, which is a little bit of a bummer.

Mark: The gang travels to Orion, where they confront Lore’s accomplice, Madam Vivo, which leads to an unexpected emotional outburst from Data: when Vivo won’t tell them where Lore is, Data grabs her by the neck and threatens her life. It’s interesting that this is the exact same reaction as when he first got emotions in “Descent, Part I,” where he lifts a Borg drone by the neck and ultimately kills them. 

Tony: It was a very scary and tense moment, for sure. Data doesn’t even seem to fully recognize the outburst and the line he crossed in that moment.

Also, it’s great to continue to get some much development of Orion culture. They’re quickly becoming a favorite part of the tapestry of the Trek universe.

Mark: Back on the Sailfish, Geordi confronts Data about his clearly emotional reaction, and Stott once again does a remarkable bit of illustrative acting. Data’s face remains impassive, but his body language, his inability to meet Geordi’s eyes, confesses a deep and abiding guilt that he may have caused Lore’s turn away from reform due to his own lack of trust. That that lapse of brotherly love might have put the galaxy, the very universe, at risk. 

But that’s the case with familial abuse: Lore’s reform isn’t real, otherwise it wouldn’t depend on Data’s trust. Data does what so many abuse survivors do: he blames himself for the actions of his loved one, his brother who killed their father, who conspired to kill hundreds of colonists whose memories are implanted in Data. How many ways can Lore ruin Data’s life before Data realizes it’s not his fault?

Of course, that doesn’t mean he’s without his own culpability for his actions. He feels guilt for assaulting and threatening Madam Vivo’s life (though she was threatening to murder him and his friends, possibly after sexually assaulting him, so there’s a pretty good case to be made that he acted in self-defense to a certain extent). 

Tony: Exactly. And it’s a dynamic that Data should recognize and acknowledge. The fact that he doesn’t shows how human Data truly is, and how much he still has left to grow. It’s a beautifully written moment, even if it comes at the pain of one of our protagonists.

Mark: They arrive at Lore’s experimental space station on the edge of the event horizon of a black hole. While exploring the station, they encounter the Klingon scientist Korath, last seen in “Day of Blood.” Kelly and Lanzing use this opportunity to do a rather amazing thing here: Korath has explored his own timeline, seeing his own death as well as the alternate future with Admiral Janeway stealing his time machine to get her crew home sooner (as in Voyager’s finale, “Endgame”). Of course, this creates a paradox: if Janeway gets her crew home earlier, she has no reason to steal a time machine from Korath, which means that her crew won’t get home early, right? Kelly and Lanzing solve this temporal puzzle here by having Lore murder Korath, as Data puts it, in a room that’s outside of causal space-time. Yes, they’ve violated causality and undone a paradox, and all it took was bombarding a black hole with tachyons and “subspace ripples.”

Tony: Treknobabble wins again!

Mark: And Stott does a bravura job introducing Lore, with him emerging from the darkness, moving like a dancer and being every bit Data’s Mummudrai. He lives for the drama, announcing that he intended for Data to find him, that the whole mystery was a setup to lead Data to this moment, because Data is the only other being in the galaxy who might possibly figure out Lore’s plan.

Lore kidnaps Data, rips off his head, Geordi and Miles escape (with Miles heading off to be in the Defiant series) and we leave the issue right where Star Trek #22 ends. Only not quite: here, we can see that Data’s head is still conscious, and Lore’s Klingon ship is crewed not just by regular-old Klingons, but by Borgified Klingons, ones that he might be controlling through the thick cable attached to his positronic brain.

Oh dear. Reality is fucked.

Prepare Yourself for Warp 10 Excitement!

• Charles Evans is listed as “wanted for questioning regarding the destruction of the Magellan II circa 2252.” This is, as far as I can tell, the first time Charles’ transport has gotten a name.
• Kevin Uxbridge’s “there is no law to fit my crime” in “The Survivors,” along with his immense guilt and grief at killing 15 billion Husnocks, now seems positively disingenuous, considering there’s a panel of godlike beings to judge him. Now it reads more like, “you can’t touch me, I’m a god.”
• The human-appearing Traveler talking about life in post-WWIII mentions visiting a bar in Bozeman, meaning there was a member of AEGIS lurking nearby during Star Trek: First Contact. 
• Dr. Crusher uses “Mizorian death enzymes” to hide herself from detection. Could she mean “Mizarian?” They’re a species who are so pacifistic that they don’t resist any kind of violence and have been conquered many times. They’d probably have some pretty good “death enzymes.”
• In Wesley’s office, we have Klingon Helmets from the Kelvin timeline that appeared in Star Trek Into Darkness, as well as deleted scenes from Star Trek (2009), which helps to cement Wesley’s relationship with deleted content. There’s also a pyramid game (in reality a Bandai electronic Pair Match game) and glassware from Ten Forward. I can’t identify the sword or the ID card (a UHC card from “Past Tense” would make sense, considering it’s now 2024 and Sanctuary Districts don’t exist in real life).
• Data’s James Joyce quote is from the hauntingly beautiful short story The Dead. 
• The presence of the Orion Civil War in Defiant and Lore siding with the Orions in the annual really nod toward a bigger Orion story unfolding.
• There appears to be real, actual Kirby Krackle at the edges of the black hole.
• Will we see Badgey or Lieutenant J.G. O’Connor from Lower Decks? I realize they haven’t ascended yet in this timeline, but the Pleroma is outside of space and time, isn’t it? What about the Koala? Why is he smiling? What does he know?