A New Day Dawns In The Latest Trek Talks

The Day of Blood is over, and the crews of the Defiant and the Theseus turn their attention toward their futures in an all new Trek Talks! Star Trek: Defiant #8 and #9, written by Christopher Cantwell, with art by Mike Feehan, colors by Marissa Louise and letters by Clayton Cowles, #9 inked by Maria Keane. Star Trek #13, written by Collin Kelly & Jackson Lanzing with art by Marcus To, colors by Lee Loughridge and letters by Clayton Cowles. 

Mark Turetsky: It’s a time of new beginnings, the world is alive with rebirth and new potentials. No, I’m not talking about how we all got to sleep in an extra hour last weekend, I mean both ongoing Star Trek comics have resolved their original conflict (more or less) and are venturing into different directions.

Tony Thornley: I did not expect to be here so soon Mark! But with what we do have, I’m excited to see where these titles go until Kahless rears his ugly head all over again.

New Bosses, New Job!

Mark: It’s funny; Defiant has so far existed as something of an ad hoc comic. The storyline came out of the main Star Trek series, and together with the main title, they’ve been building toward “Day of Blood.” Now that it’s over and done with, I feel like it’s time to finally figure out what Defiant is going to be about. It’s always been about this cast of characters, the ones existing on the fringes or even entirely outside of Starfleet, but until now, we didn’t really know what their mission would be, outside of the necessities of the “Day of Blood” story. 

But maybe I’m getting ahead of ourselves here…

Tony: I was half expecting Worf to continue hunting Kahless, or maybe dealing with the human cost of the carnage he wrought. I did not expect this turn, and honestly, I like it. A ragtag, almost renegade, style crew, disavowed and acting as Starfleet black ops is a great concept. Knowing where most of the crew will end up also means that Cantwell can start foreshadowing that through the stories now as well. For example, Worf back on the Enterprise at tactical in Nemesis makes more sense.

Mark: Before we get to the meeting that makes up the heart of this issue, let’s take a look at everything that happens before it. Notably, Sela’s prolonged departure from the Defiant and Worf’s massive heart attack. First off, we learn a few new things about our renegade Orion medic. We get a name for her at long last, Nymira, though the comic is up front with us in letting us know this might not be her real name. We also get a flashback to her euthanizing an Orion soldier on a battlefield, a soldier who happens to be her commanding officer’s son. I don’t know how much more of her backstory we’ll be getting, but this is a nice little tease.

Tony: This is a great moment because it both seemingly confirms that this is indeed NOT D’Vana Tendi (and just before her big status quo change on Lower Decks!), and deepens her character. One of the forgotten elements of the Star Trek universe is the homogenous culture races – Klingons and Orions being perfect examples – needing medics and engineers. Maybe not scientists (at least not in exactly the same way the Federation has scientist) but neither race would survive without medicine or engineering. Nymira playing that role, but also showing a different morality than what we have/commonly see with the Federation has makes her more interesting.

Mark: The other major development before Worf & co.’s debriefing with Starfleet is Sela’s leaking of Romulan intelligence to Spock. She informs him that the Romulan government has been imprisoning astronomers. Her words to him about reunification with Vulcan, “Romulus won’t listen to you” comes with something of a double meaning for the reader: Romulus won’t listen to him, but Romulus won’t exist in a matter of years. And we know from Discovery that the Romulans and Vulcans do reunify, but not in the way Spock had hoped.

That’s one thing I’ve enjoyed from post-Kelvin Prime timeline Trek. JJ Abrams used a major cataclysm in the Prime timeline to kickstart his Kelvinverse. But Prime timeline Trek hasn’t just ignored the loss of Romulus, it’s used it as a major storytelling vehicle (with, let’s face it, some mixed results). 

Tony: Knowing that Spock’s fate is so tied to Romulus’ really makes his path for the rest of the series so interesting. And all we know about it – now that Star Trek Countdown has been erased from continuity – is that he fails to save them. This is why these series are so surprising despite the fact we know the fates of characters like Spcok, Data, Worf, Crusher and Ro – there’s still so much ground to cover. Just because they’re “safe” doesn’t mean they’re “safe” if you know what I mean.

Also, since we’ve already had it confirmed that we haven’t seen the last of Sela, I’m going to be fascinated by how she crosses paths with the crew again.

Mark: Worf, Spock, Torres and Ro are debriefed by a pair of admirals back at Starfleet Command, and lo and behold, it’s our old “friends” Admirals Nechayev and Jellico. Here are a couple of characters who may not be out-and-out villains, but they were definitely both antagonists on TNG, from a purely narrative perspective. In order to avoid incarceration, the Defiant crew agrees to becomes their private black ops team, signing agreements that they are not members of Starfleet, nor will they ever seek to serve in Starfleet again. Except for Spock; Spock gets to leave, because Spock is untouchable.

Tony: Didn’t Nechayev also play a role in DS9, at least until the Dominion War?

This is so completely fitting for a Starfleet that has Section 31, but is completely unable to control them. I have no doubt that if we do see Section in this series, they’ll be an antagonistic role. Regardless, the Defiant now gives Starfleet plausible deniability with several officers that generally remain loyal, even if they’re giving them a VERY long leash. And we know where three of these five characters end up, but like I said before – there’s a lot of space for each of them to have significant development between now and where we see them next.

Mark: What’s interesting about this is that Worf is very much back to being a member of Starfleet in Nemesis, though in season 3 of Picard, he’s a “subcontractor” for Starfleet Intelligence, and he’s under Ro’s command, who is a senior officer in that organization. So, something’s definitely going to happen to nullify the agreement they sign here. 

Furthermore, the whole notion of these two admirals having their own off-the-books mercenary squad is pretty terrifying. I can definitely see one or both of them getting taken down by this scheme (though, of course, Jellico is still an admiral in good standing in Star Trek: Prodigy). 

Tony: Nechayev has always been a character that I’ve expected to see get her just desserts, though. There’s just something about her that it feels like a natural end to her story.

Mark: Let’s also remember that Nechayev is the one who appointed Jellico to the Enterprise when she sent Picard off on a probable suicide mission in Chains of Command. How long have they been plotting on having their own starship to do questionable things? Did they intend for it to be the Enterprise, before Picard ruined their plans?

The list of bounties they’re going after is an interesting one, especially since Hugh got a story arc in season one of Picard. We’ll talk about him further on, but Berlinghoff Rasmussen is a fun character to revisit, played by Max Headroom himself, Matt Frewer, in the TNG episode “A Matter of Time.” If you don’t remember, he’s a time traveler from the 22nd century who got his time machine by stealing it from a time traveler from the far future. I’m interested to see what they do with this character since far future time travel has been so explored in both early seasons of Enterprise and later seasons of Voyager.  

Finally, Benny the Munch is a new character, descended from the Iotians in TOS’ “A Piece of the Action” (the Chicago mobster planet episode). Funnily enough, that storyline got revisited by writer Brandon Eastman and artist Martin Coccolo in the Kelly and Lanzing-run Star Trek: Year Five series from a few years back. So, this will be a follow-up to that previous follow-up. Here, it seems like one of those gangsters has teamed up with the Gorn. I’m very interested to see where this is going, especially with the new exploration of the Gorn in Strange New Worlds. 

Tony: I think you mentioned to me that maybe out of this era of stories we’re going to get resolution to stuff like the Conspiracy aliens. It seems like Cantwell is taking a similar sort of idea in stride. Using the series to close the loop on plot threads that aren’t completely dangling, but also are absolutely unresolved is a great path, at least until Kahless shows back up (you know he will).

Also, love the idea of a Prohibition-era gangster forging alliances with species like the Gorn. That’s such a fantastic and uniquely Trek concept.

Mark: Spock does some soul-searching, in the form of a silent page where he revisits the memorials of Captains Pike and Kirk. So, precisely why does visiting those two sites make him change his mind about rejoining the Defiant? My guess is this: Pike had his horrible accident when Spock wasn’t around. Kirk got sucked into the Nexus after Spock and he had parted ways. Does he feel some misplaced sense of responsibility?

Does he feel that he failed these two captains of his when he wasn’t there to save them, when they needed him most? Is he taking on the burden of making sure Worf survives his mission because he can’t bear to pass his perceived failures onto a new generation of Starfleet? He tells Worf that he’s coming along in order to access the Borg’s advanced astronomy data, presumably to figure out what’s going on with Romulus, but you’ve got to wonder if there are emotional stakes for him apart from that.

Tony: Did it seem to you like someone or something visited Spock at Kirk’s memorial as well? The way Spock spun and looked into the sky… it seemed significant. Like there’s no breeze and no shadow, but he was definitely looking at something.

I liked that the crew got a black budget to “buy” the Defiant and set off on their mission. There’s an intent and purpose to the series that’s a shift from what I expected, but really is an exciting development for where we’re headed next.

Mark: Yeah, someone likely met with him and contributed to his change of heart. I can’t help but think of the Roddenberry Archive short 765874 – Regeneration, which isn’t exactly canon, but is impressive in its own right and I’m sure Cantwell, et al have seen. 

Dinosaur Comics

Mark: I know that these are two interconnected series, but never has it seemed more like one is commenting on the other than with these two issues. Where the Defiant crew got called on the carpet to get yelled at and recruited into an illegal mercenary scheme, the Theseus crew gets invited to a celebration of the deeds, career and return of Ben Sisko. Of course, not all is smiles and sunshine: attendance is mandatory.

And of course the admirals who greet them aren’t the quasi-villainous Nechayev and Jellico, it’s Janeway and a new character, Admiral Sato, Lily’s grandfather.

Tony: As much as I liked seeing Kathryn, I’m a little bummed it doesn’t amount to more than a cameo. Oh well.

Hey, did you see the Kelpien admiral at the ceremony? Love the continuity here. It really makes Trek feel like a shared universe, but not in the “that’s a huge coincidence” way that the Star Wars universe has started to be. We can have elements from Discovery, next to Voyager, next to Enterprise.

Mark: And Sato’s family is really interesting, when we briefly meet them at a family dinner: there are several humans, at least two Vulcans and Andorian Lily. It seems like Hoshi’s interest in xenolinguistics has led to a truly multispecies family in the intervening centuries. The family dinner is part of a two-page montage, a layout which has been a visual motif throughout the series, bringing in a structural consistency, no matter which artist is on any particular issue. Data is losing sleep over his missing brother, Crusher is planning for a life away from Starfleet (which will happen right after Nemesis) and Scotty reflects on not setting foot on a planet for the past 70 years. 

Scotty’s little reflection does an awful lot with very little. He has no family to return to, the only people in his life who might have filled that role are mostly long dead (with the exception of Spock over in Defiant). He could retire, but to what? He’s at his happiest tinkering with starships, and the Theseus is the perfect ship for that. For all intents and purposes, this is his retirement.

Contrast it with Paris, who’s also at a transitional place in his life, drinking wine alone in a Starfleet Academy bar he used to frequent. He’s out of place. He probably should be with his family, but maybe he’s just not ready to accept that. He’s portrayed as consistently unwilling to grow up, but maybe we see him doing some growing here.

Tony: Both of these are remarkably interesting. Scotty really isn’t the only member of the original Enterprise crew that never had a family. In fact, I believe the only two that we know definitely did were Sulu and Chekov. It’s an interesting idea that of the most famous crew in Starfleet history, only two of them have a legacy outside of their exploits. Having Scotty act as the mouthpiece of that idea is heartbreaking, but I’m glad to see it.

Paris, on the other hand, he has that legacy but he’s pushed it away. I would love to see Tom and B’Lanna get a single issue spotlight in which the duo figure their lives out now post-Delta quadrant. It’s clear he has a wanderlust that’s unresolved (and maybe more, given how he’s pouring energy into combat training), but is there a better way to resolve it than putting himself in danger? And if not, can he at least find a way that isn’t driving his family apart?

Mark: Admiral Sato gives Sisko his crew’s new assignment (sans T’Lir, who’s been reassigned at their own request): the Tzenkethi have been making some troubling moves, and it’s up to the Theseus crew to prevent an all-out war. The first time we ever heard of the Tzenkethi was the DS9 season 3 ender, “The Adversary,” where a Changeling, posing as a Federation Ambassador, orders the Defiant to patrol the Tzenkethi border in order to incite a war. That should let you know just how dangerous and potentially destabilizing this mission is from the outset.

We also learn a bit about Lily Sato’s family history with the Tzenkethi: her father, her great-grandfather, and her great uncle were all killed attempting to make contact with the Tzenkethi. Presumably this is why Admiral Sato isn’t accompanying them (though he seems to have no qualms about sending his granddaughter). And of course, since it’s a mission to a planet where the Federation has yet to make contact, Lily has to go along with the away team to hopefully translate for them. Unlucky Lily.

Tony: I love what we learn about the Tzenkethi here. They’re not TRULY a warp civilization. They’re just making ships that are essentially faster-than-light missiles made of rock. They’re aggressively xenophobic. The first contact mission to them resulted in the deaths of over 100 crew members. They’re not a species to be messed with.

Which makes Paris’ reluctance to go meet them make absolute and total sense. Descheeni does tease him a little in which artist Marcus To (who we haven’t talked about enough here but is doing stellar work) captures McNeill’s body language perfectly. This is so Tom Paris.

Mark: How did you feel about the Harry Kim reveal? We knew through some cover reveals that he’d be showing up, and he’d been mentioned as being Tom and B’Elanna’s babysitter, so I wasn’t too surprised that he’s Kingsnake: a Starfleet intelligence operative operating under deep cover on Tzenketh. Personally, I’m having a lot of trouble squaring my idea of Harry Kim with this LRRP-type, behind-enemy-lines badass. 

Tony: I was definitely a little surprised but more that we don’t know how he’s both here and baby sitting. After everything he’s been through in the last seven years, the guy is primed for a big deal sorta assignment. Now, if he’s not a full Lieutenant by now, at least, then I’ll be a bit baffled.

Mark: Well, Lily’s scan shows “two life signs. One small. And one… photonic.” So… is Baby Paris there, with a holographic Harry Kim?! I dunno. 

As for the Tzenkethi themselves, they’re dinosaur people! Too bad Ryan North only did a one-shot in this era, because this is about to become some Dinosaur Comics!

Tony: And when you said dinosaur, you don’t mean like the Gorn, Xindi-Reptilian or any number of dinosaur-esque aliens in Trek. One of these soldiers attacking the away team is a Triceratops! I legitimately can’t wait for this to pay off!

Borgs of a Different Hugh

Tony: Which brings us to Defiant #9, our most recent issue in which the Defiant crew goes on a hunt for one of the most notable recurring characters in Trek history – Hugh of Borg! Honestly, there’s a lot about this issue that I did not see coming.

Mark: I’ve been wracking my brain, Tony.

I’ve been trying to figure out how the heck Hugh figured out the chemical compound in Data’s game in the, err, data page. Near as I can tell, the text clues allude to the different atoms that make up acetic acid, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. The number of finger snaps that Data does correspond to the number of atoms in the molecule: two each for carbon and oxygen, four for hydrogen. But I can’t figure out how the text clues correspond to the types of atoms. Well, I guess Hugh is smarter than I am.

Tony: There is something to that riddle we’re both missing. I’m not sure what it is, and I think it’s going to take sitting down with Cantwell to explain it to us. But as much as I’d like to see sequences like this happen on panel, I do still love flashbacks as datapages, rather than as story pages. It’s a device that I think only would work in Star Trek (as we have seen with X-Force’s flashbacks/flash-sideways over on the X-Men line).

Mark: This issue finds Worf at sea (the metaphor is repeatedly hammered home throughout), and why not? Even when he’s had crises of faith in the past – his discommendation from the Klingon empire, the many times he’s come face to face with the leaders of the empire not acting honorably (followed, usually, by Worf killing them) – no matter what the crisis, Worf has been able to fall back on his strict adherence to the concept of Klingon honor, as handed down from Kahless. Now, he’s seen that Kahless is merely a frightened man, and Klingon honor is just a violent outlet for repressed fear and anger. Good on Worf for coming to that realization, but what is there to fill his life with now? Why not become a mercenary bounty hunter? 

Tony: I like that his goal with becoming this bounty hunter and working towards these goals is still to become dis-disavowed. He’s also missing Alexander, which points me to what he’s lacking. 

He wants to belong again. He wants his family and friends back, and to fix what he’s broken. I’m honestly a little surprised that his thoughts didn’t turn to Dax – Jadzia or Ezri frankly. He’s adrift with a crew that he’s barely crewmates with, much less friendly. I kind of think that might be why this issue ends the way it does.

Mark: The other major subplot running through the issue is Spock’s continued distraction while researching the coming Romulan supernova. Spock’s distraction endangers the Defiant twice in this issue: first, when he’s nearly too late in alerting the crew about Hugh’s ship and second when he can’t figure out where he’s heard of a magnetohydodynamic pulse and leaves them unprepared for encountering a duplicate of Nomad, the corrupted Earth probe from TOS’ “The Changeling.” 

Tony: Backtracking to Spock for a second – if we didn’t know about Romulus, I’d also be a little worried that his distraction points to Bendii Syndrome, like his father had. And maybe it is symptomatic of Bendii in addition to his research and distraction with the signs of Romulus’s star destabilizing. As far as I can tell, Star Trek Beyond didn’t list an official cause of death when Kelvin-Spock learned of his passing. But that’s clearly a plot point for another day.

Mark: While we’re calling back to “I, Borg,” and “The Changeling,” there’s a more subtle callback at work here, and that’s to TNG’s “Cause and Effect.” Hugh mentions they found Nomad in the Typhon Expanse, which is the location of the temporal causality loop that trapped the Enterprise-D and the USS Bozeman, captained by Kelsey Grammer himself, Morgan Bateson. It explains where this duplicate Nomad has been all these centuries, undetected in a time vortex. 

What we end up witnessing here is the precursor for season one of Picard. Hugh refers to freeing enslaved Borg drones as “reclaiming” them, and later on this project is called “The Borg Reclamation Project” in Picard. We see Hugh’s ship engage with a Borg scout cube, and Nomad is able to overload the cube’s computers, freeing the drones aboard.

It’s a pretty touching scene (mixed with some humor in the Borg and Nomad trading their catchphrases), as we see a Borg drone emerge from their slavery as an individual. It’s enough to make Worf realize that… well, not that he’s on the wrong side, but that Hugh is on the right side, at least, and Worf recruits him into his crew. A lot is made throughout this issue that the Defiant is severely undermanned, and it makes me wonder: will Worf be recruiting Rasmussen and Bennie the Munch to join the crew throughout this arc? 

Tony: I had the same thought. And if not them, who? I have a sneaky suspicion that we’ll see a few new cast members regardless, but I couldn’t begin to guess who. Unless they run into Tuvok or Seven undercover as they’re hunting down Rasmussen or something like that.

Also, seeing continuing efforts to liberate the Borg is an exciting plot point. I don’t know about you, but by the time Voyager ended, I was ready to be done with Borg plots. Honestly, the Borg are a big reason why I really haven’t dug into Picard. This is a fresh enough twist on it though that I’m actually kind of excited to see where it leads.

Mark: The issue ends with a personal conversation between Worf and Spock, the two Star Trek characters in the series with far and away the most appearances. I’ve gotta say, I love this pairing. They’re both somewhat burdened with the same type of plot baggage: as the only Vulcan and Klingon in their shows’ casts during some pivotal worldbuilding in the universe, they end up becoming the most important members of their species, to a certain extent. Their conversation comes down to Spock questioning what exactly Worf is doing with his life. Worf stopped a civil war on Qo’noS, saved the quadrant from a madman and then went groveling back to Starfleet Command seeking forgiveness. And it’s because Worf has now lost faith in the Klingon civilization; Starfleet is all that’s left to him. 

Tony: I’m really looking forward to where that leads. This series has been fantastic at balancing character development with its plot and action scenes. This is why I prefer Trek on TV and a bit serialized. It allows for the growth we need to grow attached to the characters.

A Few More Bits of Data

• T’Lir will obviously be back, but how and when?
• Worf has a vision of Alexander while he’s on the operating table and Sisko has a vision of an alternate present where he’s an admiral alongside Janeway and Sato. Did Worf’s experience with the Orb of Creation give him and Alexander some kind of cosmic powers akin to Sisko’s?
• I haven’t been able to find any reliable information on the name “Nymira.” Search results seem to be solely from AI-generated pages that seem to all make up contradictory information on the name.
• Which is exactly why I’m not 100% sold this isn’t D’Vana. Like 99% but not 100%.
• Sisko mentions running a shipyard for three years, and he did! Between Wolf 359 and Deep Space Nine, Sisko was stationed at Utopia Planitia. His promotion to Deep Space Nine is referred to as moving to a command position, so it’s implied that he wasn’t “running” Utopia Planitia as he says here. Maybe he ran the shipbuilding operation, but not the station itself?
• Admiral Sato has a huge painting of the NX-01 from Enterprise in his office.
• Also, he mentions inheriting his office from Admiral Matthew Dougherty, who was Anthony Zerbe’s character in Star Trek: Insurrection. 
• It should be noted that the scout cube that Hugh captures here is not The Artifact from season one of Picard. 
• Spock, talking about starship captaincy re: himself and Kirk: “The profession— no matter the stakes— would become petty, driven by ego.” Is he talking about himself and Kirk or Nimoy and Shatner?
• That bit of dialogue is again a call-back to Star Trek: Year Five, a series that we still might have to do a read-through for this column.
• Lore’s activities sure seem to be a mixture of Chekov’s gun and the Sword of Damocles. Looking forward to seeing where that falls.
• Now that I [Mark], as a proud member of SAG-AFTRA, can once again talk about current Trek TV series, I must ask: What would happen if Tom Paris and Nick Locarno got Tuvixed? Who would play that character?