I’m pretty big on Star Trek: The Next Generation, in fact it’s really the only Star Trek series I genuinely enjoy watching. The others just don’t hold my interest, not even Classic Trek. I know that will spurn me in the negative as a reviewer for this series for some people. Bear with me; I think I’m fairly objective overall. I’ve also been a fairly long time comic collector, but it’s been more of an off and on interest for me with a ten year gap between when I stopped collecting and got back into it. When I got back into collecting I discovered they had made a vast amount of Star Trek: The Next Generation comic books and having really enjoyed the television series, I decided to try this out as well as the novels.
For those of you out there who have read the novels you’ll know what I mean when I say that the inaccuracies plagued in the first novel “Ghost Ship” are also apparently in this comic book series. However, if you read the commentary in the back of the first issue you’ll see they were writing and making the comics before the first episode even aired! This is just an insane thing to do in my opinion because it allowed for so many grotesque character flaws that it just ruined the comic book for me. Maybe if I was reading this in the late 1980’s when it was released then I might have a different outlook (I doubt it), but this really doesn’t stand the test of time at all.
Basically this is suffering from the exact same problem “Ghost Ship” had. The stories are pretty good, but the characters are all wrong. If we had been put in a different universe with a different cast of characters then maybe I could enjoy this a bit more, but alas, I cannot. The main flaw people just can’t seem to write correctly is concerning Data. He’s far too human, in fact in issue five he gets angry and beats up Q! This is just an absolutely ridiculous notion! To top that off, Picard and Worf actually physically hold off Data from attacking Q in a couple scenes. At this point I don’t know what’s more ridiculous. Seriously, Picard and Worf wouldn’t be able to do anything if Data wanted to attack Q. Either way getting angry… that’s just not Data. By issue five I would think the show was airing so they would seek to fix the current story-board for this mini-series to cast Data’s character in a much more realistic light. What seems to have happened is that they wrote a story and then were unwilling to deviate from it once they had cast all their characters wrong. There is even one instance where they show Data mention he is praying to Geordi’s God. I honestly can’t think of anything more ridiculous than this. How can Data pray? Regardless of the fact that the human religions never show up in Star Trek: The Next Generation, it just doesn’t make sense. Not to mention in the Judeo-Christian world view how could an androids prayers be answered, I’ve seen serious commentary saying such beings wouldn’t have a soul. No soul means God won’t be listening. Based on the fact that “Ghost Ship” made the same error concerning Geordi, maybe he was originally supposed to be cast as a deeply religious person. This isn’t really what we have appearing in the show; again the developing company was way too ambitious in releasing this material.
On that point, there is far too much religion in these comic books. Say what you want about these freedoms and I will fully agree with people, but it’s just not in “The Next Generation” universe in the same capacity it is today. It’s a very twentieth century perspective and issue two caters to a Christmas episode. This is, once again, absolutely preposterous. I haven’t once seen anything that had to do with a “holiday” celebration in the Star Trek universe. Not to mention the being pestering the ship is actually Santa Claus, but you can only see that through Geordi’s visor. When called on this the writers just said the person was being a Scrooge. Well I’m definitely the biggest Scrooge because I have to say this isn’t present at all in the actual show! Apparently when the show’s writers were giving these other outlets a synopsis detail they left this fact out altogether.
The other thing that was wrong, but also very inventive was the story with Q. They present the Q as being of all the same image, because multiple Q show up and they all look like the same person. In a later season we would see this isn’t true. However, I must forgive the comic of this detail because they would not have known. I submit that they should have known, but it probably wasn’t their fault. This really isn’t the part they got wrong; the part they got wrong was Q’s character. He was overly mean to the crew and from reading the comic it was pretty clear that it was taking place after the episode where Commander Riker was given the option of joining the Q. Now there’s nothing wrong with drawing off of that, but at the end of that episode you get the feeling that Q had a little more respect for the human race, but in this comic series he’s incredibly vindictive, this just felt out of character given what I knew about Q. I don’t know what else to say, it all just felt wrong. However, during this story line Q’s powers were taken away and he became “mortal”. I think the comic was the first to touch upon that idea and we see it later show up in a later season of Star Trek. Again, I think the show did it better, but it appears the idea originated here.
One of the other really annoying aspects was Counselor Troi. Her empathic ability was far superior than it is in the show. She even knew what people were thinking at times, not just feelings. Like in the issue with Q and Tasha’s old enemy, she knew who he was going to go after! She also has this new ability that when she touches people she can read their thoughts and feelings more deeply… listen, she’s not a Vulcan here she’s a Betazoid. And an ability far beyond all comprehension, she can even read Data’s feelings! I mean, this is phenomenal. Data doesn’t even have feelings in the first place. At least not according to the show…
Adding on to the multitude of errors the Enterprise is rife with odd differences that just don’t belong. For example whenever they are transporting down to a planet the ensign commanding the transporter is some strange alien. There are alien creatures on this starship that are just really bizarre and there are clearly a lot of them. Strangely we’re not led to believe this in the show. Apparently there aren’t a huge amount of different species on the Starship, it primarily represents humanity, but in the comic it seems there are far more aliens than anything else! Also in issue six there is an alien admiral that contacts the Enterprise and the Captain refers to him as Admiral Thivov, but on the next page Commander Riker refers to him as Admiral Purcell. It seems the writers cannot make up their minds at times! There’s also a couple that spends all their time arguing on the Starship named the Binckley’s. They are there for comic relief, naturally, but this didn’t bother me at all. I thought it was very good for a comic additive, however, as the issues go on they stop showing up. Why remove them from the scenes and not fix anything else?
I realize I’ve picked apart the story/characters, but let’s talk about art, since that’s a major part of the comic medium. Being published by DC we can expect fairly decent art overall. However, my one complaint is that it’s pretty clear they’ve spent too much time in the super hero business because all the characters look like super heroes. Yes, I’m aware this is a comic book. But seriously, in the Christmas issue they picture Data wearing a sleeveless shirt and he’s absolutely jacked. His biceps are absolutely chiseled! This just seems outrageous for an android. Not to mention I think Riker could give Superman a run for his money, he was that muscular (okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a tad, but it was pretty bad). Even Geordi was pretty built, he reminded me of Batman on some occasions! I don’t think I need to go on. The scenery was a little out of place too, like in Picard’s ready room there’s this gigantic fish tank, that’s just not in the show. Other than that, artistically everything else was fine. At the very least all the women were presented reasonably well. I mean Yar looked fine to me, same with the others, looked like they were taken from the show.
There are just far too many times when I have to suspend the reality of the Star Trek universe to get into this comic and that really ruined it for me. I don’t even think “Ghost Ship” had this many character flaws. I realize this was the late 80’s and that the developers probably didn’t have much detail of the ship, hell I read in one comment they didn’t know where the shuttle bays were, but in retrospect it was just too far off course. The writers definitely had some really good story line ideas that showed up in episodes later in the season, so we really have to praise them on that level! Ultimately, I’m not sure it’s so much the comic writers fault as it is Paramount’s fault for not giving them the information they needed to write a good series. Frankly most Star Trek fans are ultra detail oriented and I’m shocked to see how much praise the comics are getting in the letters at the back of the issue when compared to the show. I personally thought the show was much better and the comics should be based ON the show, not vice versa.
Overall Rating: 1.75 / 5