It’s the Day of Blood has arrived on Qo’noS, and the combined crews of the USS Theseus and the USS Defiant must join forces to prevent an all-out Klingon civil war Trek Talks #2!
Star Trek: Day of Blood #1 written by Christopher Cantwell, Collin Kelly & Jackson Lanzing with art by Ramon Rosanas, colors by Lee Loughridge and letters by Clayton Cowles.
Star Trek: Defiant #6, written by Chris Cantwell, with art by Ángel Unzueta, colors by Marissa Louise and letters by Clayton Cowles.
Star Trek #11, written by Collin Kelly & Jackson Lanzing with art by Ángel Unzueta, colors by Marissa Louise and letters by Clayton Cowles.
Mark Turetsky: And there came a day unlike any other when Starfleet’s mightiest heroes (and uneasy allies!) found themselves united against a common threat. Qo’noS is aflame, the forces of the clone of Kahless the Unforgettable burning away all those who don’t walk the Red Path.
Tony Thornley: Welcome to the Day of Blood! Or as the Red Path would say jaj ‘Iw jaj yI’ang!
Day Of Blood
Tony: Before we start talking, I have to say (thanks to real life) I had to pull the Day of Blood one-shot out for a refresher and I took a minute to admire my Shaxs variant before opening it up. Cannot wait for his September one-shot.
Mark: Shaxs is always a delight in every appearance. So, the two Trek comics have been building to this miniseries for months. We’ve heard about it since January, as the explosive climax to the current storyline, where the crews of both ships will face off against Kahless and The Red Path. We’ve known it was coming since before Defiant was even launched, so there really hasn’t been a time when the two comics were released that we haven’t known this was coming. Kahless has shown himself to be a remarkable villain for the 2020s, who’s able to whip up resentments, galactic-scale nationalism and repressed aggression, and he’s possessed of a god-killing weapon. While his attempt to take over Qo’noS is certainly a huge move for the writers to make, I get the feeling that there’s something more going on here.
Tony: Yeah, this feels like a big deal, but there’s an unsettling feeling that it’s prelude to an even bigger deal. When it comes down to it, at its most simplistic these first three issues are essentially a riot on Qo’noS and some interpersonal conflict amongst the crew. Aside from mixing the crews together, I’m not entirely sure why it’s a crossover. Something is brewing beneath the surface here that I think will justify it.
But that’s not to say what we get here isn’t good. This is a lot of fun, with the crews generally snapping at each other, everyone getting important side missions and a lot of violence.
I mean, the title is EXTREMELY accurate.
Mark: The established stakes for the series are the deaths of gods, but this is essentially Klingon January 6th. It’s a big thing: if Martok dies and Kahless assumes complete control of the empire, it’s very bad news, but it’s not quite the universe-shattering event that this series has been building to. Which is why I’m thinking the Kahless story won’t end here. But enough about what this crossover isn’t, let’s talk about what it is. A chance for unlikely team-ups!
On the surface of Qo’noS, we get T’Lir meeting Spock, Shaxs meeting Ro, Tom and B’Elanna reuniting and Data learning that Lore has been reassembled and is active. But the real plot-heavy reunion is that of Worf and Sisko, whose disagreement led to the splitting of the two series in the first place.
Tony: Rather than going issue by issue, we’re going to look at this plot by plot. However, before we go there, the combining of the crews is such a delight. I’m glad for what we did get but also I do wish we’d gotten more out of pairings such as Shaxs and Ro, and Spock and T’Lir. It shows how much there is to mine in this all-star cast. Immediately after coming together, the crews are split into duos and trios to go accomplish different tasks and missions.
By far the most exciting is Spock transporting up to the Theseus an instant before Kahless’s transport blocker goes live. One of the faults of Next Gen was bringing all the legends back — McCoy, Spock and Scotty — and then never finding a way to get them on screen together. While I’m glad they didn’t try to find a way to shoehorn in Bones, it’s such a delight to see Scotty and Spock reunited, even in such terrible circumstances. Scotty’s request for a hug in Defiant #6 was a delight and Spock’s lack of response made it better.
Mark: It’s good to see Scotty and Spock back together again. And it’s somewhat delightful that, though they’re the elder statesmen of this series, the two TOS characters, neither of them wants to be in charge. In Wrath of Khan, Spock tells Kirk that commanding a starship is Kirk’s “first, best destiny,” and there’s this pervasive notion throughout the Star Trek franchise that eventually, everyone aims to be a captain.
Here, we have the opposite: Scotty holds the rank of captain, but he doesn’t want to sit in the chair. Spock held that rank before retiring, but this is the second time that he’s turned down command in this comics franchise: remember that Worf told him to take command because he couldn’t trust himself, and Spock said no, leaving Worf in command. It all goes back to “The Cage,” the first TOS pilot, where Captain Pike says that sometimes you don’t want the responsibility to decide who lives and who dies.
Of course, Spock might also secretly have Bendii syndrome, as we’ve theorized in our reviews before.
Tony: This is also a major plot in Lanzing and Kelly’s Star Trek: Year Five, which a lot of this series draws from. At multiple points, Kirk asked Spock to take the center chair, and he continued to refuse until Kirk had to relinquish command for plot reasons. It’s a common thread in IDW’s Trek books, and it’s great to see that piece of continuity carry on.
Otherwise, I feel like the ship-board plot is extremely light. Scotty and Spock basically need to keep the ship from getting blown to pieces by the Romulan Bloodwings while more exciting things happen planetside. Which is fine — it allowed for some good character moments, and it definitely seems to point to the Theseus and Defiant doing some fighting in orbit once the latter is spaceworthy again.
Mark: The real meat is between the two captains: Worf and Sisko. Of course, Worf isn’t really a captain, more of a hijacker. And because Sisko brings it up, Worf brings up a chip he’s had on his shoulder for years: during the DS9 episode “Change of Heart,” Worf disobeyed orders and rescued Jadzia, his wife, leading to the death of a Cardassian informant and therefore the loss of an intelligence source during a war. Sisko tells him that because of that, he made a note in Worf’s service record which would ensure he’d never have a command of his own. It’s such a minor moment in the sprawling epic Deep Space Nine, but it’s a major moment for Worf, clearly.
Tony: I actually saw that episode in the last few days!
There’s a tension there between these two that I like. Sisko understands Worf. He’s on his side, he would do the same in his shoes in a lot of ways. But he’s NOT in Worf’s shoes. He’s in a position where he needs to make tough decisions that will destroy or save millions of lives. They’re the micro and macro embodied in two men who have a deep relationship.
Mark: The decision that Worf made to save his wife Jadzia mirrors the most traumatic moment in Sisko’s life: the death of his own wife, Jennifer, which we see in the opening moments of the DS9 pilot, “Emissary.” During the Borg attack at Wolf 359, Sisko searches his quarters for his family and finds Jennifer and Jake buried under rubble. He manages to rescue Jake, but has to be forcibly carried away screaming after the already dead Jennifer. He knows why Worf did what he did, and likely should have felt more sympathy for him. Maybe he resented that Worf managed to save Jadzia where he couldn’t save Jennifer.
Tony: So after that difficult chat, they end up in Worf’s old offices, which is already torn to shreds. After Worf’s aide is fridged, our heroes “steal” a dune buggy and head for the capitol. Which kind of is all that happens to them until the last page of Star Trek #11. It’s like the entirety of the last 40% of the crossover is going to be devoted to them.
Mark: They’re the main characters, after all. I also really liked the glimpses we get into Worf’s thinking from the archival logs in Defiant #6. The first is about what Kahless was getting up to during the Dominion war, where it seems as though he was treated like an oddity, a historical curiosity, by those in power. It also leads Worf to rethink the wisdom of putting him on the throne. If I were to tie it to real-world events, I’d say it’s something akin to being invited to a White House Correspondents’ Dinner and getting mocked there, and harboring a grudge that leads one to maybe, perhaps, wanting to dismantle the entirety of American democracy, such as it is.
The other log, which I absolutely adored, is the one from Colonel Worf, Worf’s grandfather played also by Michael Dorn, who appeared in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Colonel Worf is just a bit part, a little easter egg for TNG fans, but this gives us a glimpse into who he was as a man, and the politicking behind why Kirk wasn’t sentenced to death for his apparent assassination of Chancellor Gorkon. He sees Kirk plainly for what he is: a xenophobe, driven by his anger at the loss of his son, David, but also a man who’s innocent of the crime of which he’s accused.
And his alteration of the words that damned Kirk at his trial, “I never trusted Klingons, and I never will,” which he rephrases as “I have never trusted a Klingon who is afraid, and I never will” is just so insightful. I love that this Klingon lawyer could take the emotion out of Kirk’s words and find the cold truth behind them. Is Kahless being driven by fear? Fear that the Klingon Empire as we know it is becoming more open to the Federation and therefore, in his mind, weaker? Or is he afraid that he can’t live up to the legacy of the original Kahless? Or is he merely afraid that he’s not respected, that he’s the punchline to a joke told directly to his face?
Tony: I definitely feel like it’s the last of those. He’s been a symbolic figurehead with a massive legacy. He wants to make a new legacy.
The Best At What They Do
Mark: At a certain point, we know things will eventually break down between the Soong brothers, the genie will have to go back into the bottle to set up the status quo going into Picard season 3. But until then, there’s a huge opportunity to play in the space of the Datalore twins, which Cantwell, Kelly and Lanzing take full advantage of here, pairing them off on a mission to retrieve Korath, the Klingon scientist behind Kahless’ superweapon. They are, let’s just say, entirely over-tuned for every encounter they face, and so the real drama here isn’t “will they get to Korath’s lab?” but rather the interpersonal family drama between the two androids.
As I was reading this, a part of me found Lore charming, willing to accept that he’s a changed man and hoping to atone for the crimes of his past. But after all, isn’t this the toolkit of the abuser? The charm, the appeal to family bonds, the insistence that this time will be different, the appeal to Data’s expected love for Lore. Data sees through it, though. His statement that he has perfect recall of Lore’s atrocities might even be an understatement: he was loaded with the logs and journals of the colonists of Omicron Theta whom the Crystalline Entity killed, at Lore’s urging. He’s their silicon avatar, to quote a phrase.
Data, in the end, has realized that his found family, his colleagues aboard the Enterprise (and now the Theseus) are more important to him than his technological family. When Data tells Lore that he intends to deactivate him and disassemble him for study, Lore shows his true colors and escapes with an unconscious Korath. He hasn’t learned his lesson, he’s unwilling to atone or face the music for his many crimes. His goal, first and foremost, is self-preservation driven by pettiness.
Tony: This plotline is such a great encapsulation of who these two are as beings. And frankly, the fact that this interaction is entirely set after Generations adds a dimension to it. This is the first time Data and Lore have interacted with Data fully integrated with the emotion chip. And Lore’s appeal to his emotions backfires. We’ve seldom seen Data become enraged (outside of one fantastic example that I’m sure we both picture), and he tells Lore essentially, “you’re lucky the chip is off because I would absolutely murder you.”
It’s a dimension that I absolutely want to see explored. Obviously right now, no, let’s leave Lore on the Defiant (or wherever he beamed to with Korath). But the next time they meet, I want to see Data get MAD. He’s quiet angry here, I want to see enraged. That’s a fascinating position for him to be in and I want to see it pay off.
Also, where do you think Lore beamed off to? I don’t think it was the Defiant.
Mark: We’re not in the Kelvinverse, so he probably didn’t beam across the galaxy. Wherever he is, I can imagine that he’ll give Korath over to whichever side will give him a fast ship and his freedom. And right now the Red Path is the only side who can provide those things.
And speaking of family members stuck in a warzone, we have Tom and B’Elanna, who are paired together to repair the badly damaged Defiant, but of course this is an excuse to have them hash it out about what exactly they’re doing on this mission and in their marriage.
In a series that’s had parenthood as a major theme, both in Worf’s failures as Alexander’s father and in Sisko’s attempts to make up for his absence in Jake and Sarah’s lives, Tom and B’Elanna are right up there as some of the worst. They’ve both abandoned their daughter (well, left her with Harry Kim, ensign emeritus). But at least they reach a moment of clarity while trying to repair their ship in the middle of a warzone: their work/life balance is way off of where it should be.
Tony: This was the most natural and human interaction of the entire event so far. Tom and B’Lanna, despite everything that they’ve been and are going through, feel like a real couple, having real problems. You and I are both married and I think we both have had blowouts with our spouses before, and probably under unusual or difficult circumstances. It’s remarkably relatable, and my goodness Unzueta’s art makes it look so real.
Could baby Paris be anywhere better than with (I assume) Lieutenant Kim though? I mean, I can’t think of anyone else who’d take better care of her. Definitely not her grandparents!
I do love that this isn’t just a storyline of a couple battling it out to come to an agreement. While it’s happening two remarkably competent engineers-slash-mechanics (who happen to be the same people) are getting one of the most complex ships in the fleet flying again. That’s good stuff.
Mark: Complex ships fix complex ships. It seems like they’ve both realized that they’ll have to make sacrifices regarding their current lifestyle of running off to go on dangerous galaxy-saving missions.
Tony: For sure. And their plot ends with “we’re fixed except for a deflector” and here comes Shaxs who installs a stolen Klingon deflector by hand and rides the Defiant into the atmosphere reverse-Dr. Strangelove style. I seriously can’t wait for Shaxs’ Best Day.
The Specialists
Mark: It’s tempting to assert that in this big, wild capital-E Event comic, that the new characters created for this series are given the short shrift. After all, T’Lir and Lily spend two issues getting to and working in a giant antenna while Ro snarks at them, but their roles as the junior officers on the mission serve as a great counterpoint to Ro’s complete disaffection with Starfleet and the Federation as a whole.
I can’t help but feel like Lily and T’Lir’s discussion with Ro about the Kobayashi Maru (the simulated no-win situation test that Starfleet Academy cadets must take) is done with an eye toward Ro’s fate in Picard season 3, that Kelly and Lanzing are taking advantage of this opportunity to show us the beginning of Ro’s re-evaluation of Starfleet’s ideals, putting her on the path to becoming a member of Starfleet Intelligence and facing the no-win situation that will ultimately end in her death.
Tony: Yeah, I liked that. Lanzing, Kelly and Cantwell are taking the entire tapestry of Star Trek here and using it to their advantage. It’ll be great to see how they use other events that come later from Nemesis and Picard to build up the characters.
But yes their plot is definitely slight. They fairly quickly run into a roadblock doing what they’re doing. Then they get bailed out by Sela in a moment that is almost a jump the shark moment. It makes for some interesting character beats but it’s mostly disposable otherwise.
Mark: We finally have the last three members of the cast: Sela, Dr. Crusher and the mysterious Orion pirate we’re calling X. They reach High Chancellor Martok just as he’s killing off the last treasonous member of his High Council, right before he collapses from his injuries. Sela manages to extract the planetary codes from him before running off across the city to help T’Lir and Lily end the communications and transporter blackout, leaving Crusher and X with the dying Klingon leader. How long do you think it’ll be before X injects him with Ketracel Red? She’s already done it with Worf…
Tony: If Crusher doesn’t pull off miracle medicine, I think that’s exactly how it’ll be resolved.
I do have to say, Sela’s mad dash across the city… it’s the one part of this whole batch of issues I didn’t like. It’s a little too much. We know Sela doesn’t have plot armor — there’s no firm continuity appearances of her following these stories — but it felt very much like a plot armor moment. She’s an “important” character, so she’s going to be fine, let’s show how much of a bad ass she is. That sort of story moment always takes me out of it.
Now, if she’d appeared beaten up, maybe with a dagger sticking out of her shoulder? I might have rolled with it more.
Mark: Agreed. She might have done well to have a one-shot of her own about how she got through the city and met up with the folks in the tower (and how she got up the tower, considering Ro pushed the ladder away in a previous issue). But we’ll have to make do with having her running with arms behind her and speed lines in a manga style. It felt abridged, which, if I’m being honest, a bit of hand-waving for the sake of story economy is fine. She’s not just Sela, she’s Sela as played by Denise Crosby. So she gets to have some badass moments that Tasha Yar never got to have.
Bloody Bits
- Starfleet records now list preferred pronouns!
- T’Lir says they only know Spock through his official record, but they said they met Spock as a child in an earlier issue. Curiouser and curiouser.
- Ro’s “well bless your pagh!” is priceless. She’s clearly from Bajor’s southern continent.
- Meanwhile, Shaxs’ reaction to that is equally priceless.
- Worf refers to him and Sisko making the same journey that Kahless I did “more than a millennia ago.” A grammar mistake to be sure, but also a nod to Worf making the same mistake in DS9’s “Homefront:” “Our gods are dead. Ancient Klingon warriors slew them a millennia ago.”
- Data tells Lore, “you once threatened a child with the ‘death he deserved’” referring to “Datalore,” where Lore threatens Wesley’s life.
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.
