Day of Blood is nigh in Trek Talks #1!

Welcome to the first official Trek Talks, a regular series reviewing the latest Star Trek comics of note!

With their new ally Sela aboard, the crew of the Defiant rushes to the Korvat colony, but arrive only to find devastation and death. Star Trek: Defiant #5 written by Christopher Cantwell, with art by Ángel Unzuetta, colors by Marissa Louise and letters by Clayton Cowles.

Meanwhile, things boil to a head, both on Cardassia Prime and on the Cardassian archive station, as Sisko’s crew fight to retrieve The Orb of Creation in Star Trek #10, written by Collin Kelly & Jackson Lanzing with art by Mike Feehan, inks by Manuel Bracchi, colors by Lee Loughridge and letters by Clayton Cowles.

And finally, in a completely different era of Star Trek, the crew of the newly overhauled USS Enterprise encounters an alternate Uhura from another universe, who is hell-bent on stopping her nemesis, her universe’s Pavel Chekov, by any means necessary, in Star Trek: The Motion Picture: Echoes issues #1-3, written by Marc Guggenheim, with art by Oleg Chudakov, colors by DC Alonso and lettered by Jeff Eckleberry. 

Mark Turetsky: It’s July, Tony! You know what that means?

Tony Thornley: It means BLOOD! And hot temperatures. You surviving in the south there Mark?

Mark: I’m traveling all over, Tony. I’m in New York State now, I was in Montreal last week, I’m going to be in a car for days at a time soon. It’s exhausting. But I hear there are some Star Trek comics to discuss, and so I’m bound by my honor oath to return and talk them out! Let’s do this thing!

Damn the Defiant!

Mark: So, first off, we have Star Trek: Defiant #5, which sees Worf finally completing his crew of villains misunderstood characters with the addition of Sela, the half-Romulan daughter of Tasha Yar from an alternate timeline, the antagonist of Mr. Spock, the first officer of the Defiant.

Tony: I had forgotten that they had an antagonistic relationship! I’m so glad the cast has expanded beyond the announced five. I think you floated some convicted Maquis, and the nature (specifically their scope) of the Red Path opens the door to other antagonists joining the crew, even just temporarily. You think the cast might be complete, but I think we might see some further cast expansion coming out of “Day of Blood.”

I put my vote in for any character played by Jeffrey Combs. Especially Brunt, FCA.

Mark: What’s Michael Eddington doing in this era, I wonder?

And the crew is spread out across a whole spectrum of trustworthiness. At one end, there’s Spock who’s on this mission for all the right reasons, but might be doubting his own logic, all the way over to Sela, who is a Romulan intelligence officer and won’t hide that fact. But in between, there are so many different questions, so many wildcards. We don’t know a lot about X, the Orion pirate. We can’t trust Lore. Even someone like Ro, who we think we have a handle on, goes to X to get a dose of the newly renamed Ketracel Red. That’s what this crew will be bringing to Day of Blood, I think: the possibility that they might surprise us.

Tony: And I think that’s what this last issue in the first arc is all about. We see Lore do something heroic, maybe even noble (recovering the black box from FCBD’s USS Santa Cruz), while Worf is struggling with the Ketracel Red and displaying some truly hard to watch rage issues. It’s the best of the grey areas of Star Trek, and I really enjoy that.

Besides the character moments, we have two big plot developments. It seems that Kahless has a sentient bomb in his possession. Given Data and Lore’s presence in these two series, I can’t imagine that’s not going to be a struggle for our favorite android brothers.

Mark: But is that sentient bomb being held captive against its will? Does it want to be out there killing millions of people? 

We also get the stunning replay of the fate of the USS Santa Cruz, with an amazing splash page of Kahless on its bridge. Usually, I find recaps in comics dull, but this is done with such visual panache that it really impresses. There’s also the matter of the actual fate of Captain Meyerson, the Klingophile Starfleet captain from the FCBD one-shot. We had assumed that he went down with his ship after being stabbed or beheaded by Kahless, but a data page in this issue strongly implies that he survived, that he might have joined the Red Path. It’s an intriguing possibility, having a Starfleet captain that’s become a true believer. He’d be an excellent foil for both Worf and Sisko in different ways.

Tony: That’s interesting that you got that from that page, because I got that it was Kahless’s handprint in Meyerson’s blood and the words were either Kahless or Alexander’s. I think it’s open to both interpretations though, at least until we get on-page confirmation. 

That Kahless splash page right before the data page is just terrifying. I think it pushes this entire line into more of a horror thriller than we’ve seen so far. The Red Path has evolved so quickly into a terrifying force to be reckoned with, which we’ll see in “Day of Blood” very shortly.

Prepare To Meet Your Makers!

Mark: Star Trek #10 continues to surprise and delight, opening with the thing I was most excited to see, T’Lir’s meeting with the Prophets. First off, it’s really cool to see someone bringing cool Vulcan logic to the Prophets. Whereas we’re used to seeing Sisko appealing to them emotionally, T’Lir goes straight for the logic-jugular. They ask why The Prophets have given weapons to children (comparatively, at least), citing the Prophets’ foreknowledge of what will happen as a result.

Tony: Yes! I think one of the biggest faults of the god-like being trope in sci-fi/fantasy storytelling is always the lack of accountability. Q is treated as a nuisance. The Prophets are treated as aloof and mostly benevolent. Seeing T’Lir taking them to task, especially given their own supernatural, possibly god-like abilities? That’s totally satisfying.

Mark: One thing I was hoping for, that we didn’t get was that, often, the Prophets will take the form of someone from one’s past or present. That hasn’t really been the case in this comic (with the possible exception of Sisko seeing Dukat in last month’s issue). It seems like a bit of a missed opportunity to tease some things about T’Lir’s secret identity, but that’s just me.

Tony: Yeah,that’s true, I didn’t think of that. I wonder if there’s a story reason for why the Prophets aren’t working like that. And it’s done so well as a segue into Sisko’s cliffhanger. This creative team is doing such a good storytelling job of juggling multiple plotlines and a large cast. To have T’Lir’s confrontation go straight into Sisko and Garak’s execution… It works perfectly well.

Mark: And it seems like Garak was right: Barada Damar is a reformer. And while Damar’s executioners don’t kill Sisko and Garak (why kill Garak, though?) and instead kill all those who bore witness against Sisko, it is the most double-edged of swords. It’s something of a relief that Sisko and Garak aren’t dead, but the trial being a trap set out for all those who still cling to old Cardassia, in order to execute them en masse, is absolutely brutal. In a comic that has dealt so much with fascism and totalitarianism, a mass execution of the old guard comes right out of the Stalin playbook.

Tony: Oh definitely, it was kind of a terrifying moment. Another example of the horror is coming through more and more within the line. Even a somewhat heroic moment is being twisted into something dark and scary. Given what we learn throughout the issue, I think Damar is generally a noble character, but the capacity for violence that he shows makes him scary. If the Kahless story wraps up sooner than we expect, I can absolutely see him becoming a major antagonist for the series.

Mark: Which makes his arrival as “the cavalry” something of a mixed blessing: yes, he’s rescuing the heroes, but it’s in the same way we were fortunate to have Stalin siding with the Allies in World War II. Just because he’s on the right side of this conflict doesn’t make him a hero.

And while we’re meant to be dubious about Zero and Yeor’s allegiance, the moment aboard the Cardassian station where they unleash the final, hidden Changeling is a great beat. It… might not altogether make sense (why would a Changeling put themselves at the mercy of the Cardassians, effectively imprisoning themselves until some Vorta released them or the Federation captured or blew up the space station?), but it makes for a great moment of rededication from our new Vorta and Jem’Hadar characters. Of course, it ties into the whole question put forth in this series: what is the meaning of a God in the Star Trek universe?

Tony: Exactly. I loved that here. We’ve floated at some point that we may see the Changelings or not. I was glad to see that question get answered at least in part here. Yeor doesn’t even proclaim that he doesn’t believe the Founders are gods. He says that they aren’t worthy of us, worthy to be worshiped. It’s a fantastic moment!

What a great action beat to have Sisko, Zero and Damar show up on Terok Beak Nor as well. The Theseus crew had truly reached a desperate point, both on and off the station. Here Damar and Sisko save the day in a moment that’s very comic-booky but also serves as a thrilling plot resolution. A running firefight, ending in the assassination of a Changeling who is essentially being treated as a war criminal, it’s great. We just don’t really get resolution to the Red Path fleet.

Mark: And the next sequence… you know how much I like Downtime Trek. To have a few pages of the crew safely back on DS9, plus we have a visual callback to the first issue of this series: a montage of scenes of the Orb of Creation centered, being analyzed in different ways, in different contexts, with Sisko eying it distrustfully in each panel. Back in issue #1, it was Sisko centered in each panel and being alternately worshiped and prodded. 

Tony: You and I discussed this when we first read the issue. I like the visual callback, but I also love that Ben isn’t frozen in a state of… shock? He’s regaining his humanity. He’s reconnecting. I love that.

The next page shows how the crew has grown too — the Sisko family reconnecting, Crusher treating Sato, Paris introducing the crew to Captain Proton! It’s a great moment to take a breath before Day of Blood starts.

Mark: All of the good times are interrupted by the missive Worf sends at the end of Defiant #5, after Spock convinces him to reach out to Sisko for help. Once again, we have a recap of something that’s happened in another comic, but executed with great visual panache. I love the way Worf’s centered in his panel on the final page, with Sisko’s face occupying the same space ¾ of the way down the page. Really well told.

Tony: Yes, absolutely. Which leaves us in a good place to head into “Day of Blood” (after stopping to set up a hologram colony).

But also, before we get to “Day of Blood,” we wanted to chat about another recent series with a very cool connection to these!

Backstroke of the West

Mark: I had been sleeping on Marc Guggenheim and Oleg Chudakov’s Star Trek:The Motion Picture: Echoes miniseries. Not because I didn’t want to read it or anything, but just because of demands on my time. But I checked these out and asked you to look at them, because I think there’s some good stuff to talk about here. First of all: the alternate universe that Uhura and Evil Chekov comes from is a Star Wars pastiche, right?

Tony: I felt it was a little Battlestar Galactica, but that might have just been Chudakov’s designs for the ships. Echoes is just good old fashioned high science fiction though. Two ships burst through a spatial anomaly. They turn out to have a space-solider Uhura and galactic despot Chekov, and a terrifying weapon aboard. The story turns into an arms race, trying to prevent evil Chekov from giving the weapon to the Romulans.

And what is said weapon? It’s a Bajoran Orb!

Mark: See, for me it’s got: a world-killing weapon, powered by a crystal of spiritual significance, in a universe where starfighters don’t seem to have shields, where Uhura flies a ship with x-shaped wings. They get captured in a shuttle and brought aboard a space station where members of the crew hide out in a secret compartment of their ship so they aren’t found, so they can retrieve a prisoner. It’s as if Uhura and Chekov Akris have brought the plot of Star Wars along with them. 

Tony: Oh geez, yeah, you’re right!

Mark: And there’s a weird metanarrative aspect to this as well: it’s set during the Motion Picture era because Star Wars is what brought Star Trek to the big screen. Prior to Star Wars, Star Trek: The Motion Picture was going to be a spin-off show called Phase II, but Star Wars proved that sci-fi could do well at the movies.

And yes, there’s also a splash of Battlestar, because that was also created in response to Star Wars, trying to ride the success of that movie in the other direction (from big screen to small). The bigger issue, why The Motion Picture is considered a failure by many, is that it doesn’t go for the fast-paced action of Star Wars. Instead, it aims to the high ideals of exploration and humanism that Trek does at its best. 

Tony: Yeah, Trek did a thoughtful Trek story, not something like…a fist fight on top of a moving ship zooming through San Francisco. (Am I remembering Into Darkness right? I refuse to rewatch it.)

This is an action-forward story, because that is just generally what works better in comics, but it does pose some great philosophical questions. Uhura in particular is battling what she’s seeing with her double, and vice versa. It’s a heck of a lot of fun while it’s doing it.

Mark: And while Uhura is battling it out, Star Trek is… I don’t want to say that this comic is Star Trek vs. Star Wars, but the two franchises are in conversation here. The movies that came after The Motion Picture certainly upped the action quotient, never really to the degree that Star Wars does, but this moment in the franchise’s history, the late-70s and early 80s, are definitely an inflection point in the kinds of stories being told in the Star Trek universe. 

Ultimately, this is a fun zap-em-up comic, but just a little beneath the surface there’s a tension being explored between what I’ll refer to as “Gene’s Vision” and commercial viability. Without going too deep into the real-world history, Roddenberry lost control over the Trek movie franchise after TMP and, for better or worse, that had a profound impact on the rest of the film franchise as well as on the development of The Next Generation a few years later. 

Tony: And whether that’s for the better or not could be debated, absolutely.

Overall though, I really enjoy this story. It captures a very specific point in Trek continuity that hasn’t been explored much. There’s a gap in time between TMP and Khan that could make for some interesting stories, without a doubt.

And that Orb… I’m glad that it’s the MacGuffin here. It may provide a continuity basis for why the Romulans are willing to join the Red Path, but also it gives the Orbs further context outside their setting. These are items, even weapons, of enormous power, and the Prophets just threw them into the universe. What does that mean for every citizen of the galaxy?

Mark: Next up, the recently-released Day of Blood #1!

Tony Thornley

Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.

Mark Turetsky

Mark Turetsky is an audiobook narrator and voice actor who sometimes writes about comic books. Originally from Montreal, Canada, he now lives in Northern Louisiana.