Dog Star Omnibus: May 2021

Welcome back to my blogging my way through DC's first attempt at a Star Trek series. Today let's have a look at the “New Frontiers” storyline that ran from Star Trek #9 through #16 (DEC 1984 through JUL 1985).

Boy have I had trouble getting this one going. Lately I seem to write three or four versions of whatever blog appears before scrapping it all and winging it from scratch. Which is what I opted to do here. I've reached one of those blogging points where I've got five or six things in draft mode and not enough time to finish them. I've three days off coming up, and I'd like to think I'll spend some of that time catching up, but one of those days is potential jury duty (ugh) and another is getting the second of my Wuhan Flu shots. Add in kids and chores and tasks to complete and who knows. It'll likely continue to be a sparse month as far as posts go.

Here's the story in broad strokes:

(1) The mirror universe - last seen in TOS "Mirror, Mirror" unless there's a Trek tie-in book being obliquely referenced somehow; more on that below - attacks the Trekverse Prime, first blowing up a space station, then capturing the Excelsior and their counterparts (being ferried home from Vulcan to face trial for the vents of Star Trek III) aboard her. (2) Spock-2 is dispatched to Vulcan to wrest from Spock-1's mind the secrets of Genesis.

An inter-dimensional Vulcan Ritual of Chud ensues. Spock-1 wins.

Spock-2, again, sees the logic in opposing the Empire and joins forces with Spock-1.

(3) Kirk-1 and compatriots escape the brig and, while their counterparts fuss over the captured Excelsior, plot to take over the Enterprise. Kirk-1 makes his way to the Captain's quarters and meets once more (sound cue) Marlena.

Later, they get even more re-acquainted.

She is still with Kirk-2 but has joined the underground. Kirk-2 et al. take control of the Enterprise and set most of it to self-destruct -Kirk's go-to move! - and escape in the saucer section. Scotty and Saavik interfaced the Tantalus Field from the former Captain's quarters with the ships' deflector shield and wreak havoc on the Excelsior. Everyone puts on spacesuits and blasts it out. Kirks grapple. Kirk-1 wins, of course.

Starfleet says invasion or no, you've got to come home; Kirk makes one of his "The word? Is no. I am therefore going anyway" decisions and races back to the mirror universe. (4) Meanwhile, Kirk-2 whips up support for a massive inter-dimensional invasion force and is given command of the Empire's new prototype, the, er, Excelsior. Kirk-1 tours the mirror earth and meets the leader of the resistance:

Kirk-1 patches together a coalition of various undergrounds: imprisoned scientists, downtrodden Terrans, and the star empires of the mirror-universe. (Here we learn that a brutal Romulan occupation of Earth created the resistance movement which eventually became the Terran Empire.) He uses the transtator - a gizmo that does the old push-a-button-and-turn-off-the-enemy-fleet trick - and gives the Empire's fleet to David and friends. Everyone returns to their respective homes to face the music.

As for the counterparts, they're put on a warp sled and - after a brief switcheroo with the Saaviks coinciding with the above battle - sent back into their own universe, as well. They're last seen - and apparently killed - by Captain Simons of the ISS Nosura. If that's a reference, I'm missing it. I hope it wasn't one from this very stretch of issues.

(5) The coda: they return in the ISS Excelsior and are arrested again by Captain Styles, who’s learned nothing from his earlier attitude(s). If anything he’s even worse. Now he’s commanding the USS Christopher Pike and basically acts like William Atherton. Which is certainly era-appropriate, as well as following the lead of Star Trek III. His and Admiral Garrett's plan to pin every and any disaster on Kirk's head is thwarted by Lyndra Dean, an investigative reporter on Earth with bellbottoms who – on a tip, we learn, from Kirk himself – popularizes Kirk et al's role in saving the universe.

Starfleet decides to promote everyone to get them out of the way. Kirk gets the captaincy of the Excelsior, and Spock is given command of the USS Surak.

The adventure continues. The End.

Not a bad stretch of issues! I was simultaneously reading Mike W. Barr's Guide to DC's Sci-Fi Universe and kept expecting various alien species from Adam Strange's adventures to pop up. This is, by the by, the last of Barr's story arcs for DC's Trek, though not the last time we'll see him in these pages. But yes, starting next issue the writing and editorial team switches up. Robert Greenberger, former assistant editor, takes over all editing duties.

A word on continuity and what's canon. (Still a slippery topic.)

This is the first of the DC Treks to appear after Star Trek III: TSFS, so it had to align the universe-building of the past eight issues with the events of the film. Which it accomplishes easily enough - the characters created (Konom, Bryce, Bearclaw, Maddox) continue on in supporting roles. (About as much as the secondary cast does, actually, which is too bad for Uhura, Sulu et al.)

There are a few "life on the Enterprise" scenes with Chekov and the others (Sulu's down in the botany lab again!), just not many. Scotty and Saavik develop a friendship as well. Which brings to mind the question: who's "playing" Saavik? Saavik as we all know was replaced by Robin Curtis for Star Trek III; did they alter her likeness here in any way?

Tough to tell, really.

Okay, I guess it's Kirstie.

In a response on the letter's page, Greenberger says the decision was to keep Kirstie and her “more exotic beauty.” I don’t use quotes to disparage the quote, although I know the word “exotic” is loaded in some contexts. Is it with Kirstie Alley and Robin Curtis? I don’t think so. And FWIW I think “exotic beauty” is a good way to describe Kirstie Alley’s Saavik. That’s not to take anything away from Robin Curtis. Hell, plenty of women’s beauty could be described in varying degrees of “exotic” from any norm you wish, sort of like Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method.

We interrupt this story to complain about Blogger; WTF, blogger? I just spent ten minutes trying to get those two Saavik pictures up there to sit side by side. I do this all the time. You put a caption on one pic, you make them both small, you cut one and paste it beside the other. It ABSOLUTELY will not let me do this, despite cutting and pasting every other picture, despite re-formatting this damn thing three times to clear any hanging-enters/whatever. No matter what happens, cutting that picture and then clicking DIRECTLY NEXT TO THE OTHER ONE and pasting it pastes it way up near the top of this post.

Do you know how long I've been trying to get this post finished? Do you know how often I've been interrupted JUST THIS MORNING trying to get this done before work? And then you throw this inexplicable shit at me? Blogger this is for you:

"I hope you can hear this because I am doing it as hard as I can."

Don't want to end on a middle finger, but that's about all I have to say. Here are some leftover screencaps (which, of course,I numbered in order to upload in one particular order, thus making it so I don't have to cut and paste/ arrange anything, uploaded in their own random order below.)

See you next time... maybe!

They really emphasize McCoy's borderline psychoticness.

Not every lady has to wear the midriff-exposing uniform, eh? Looking at Maddox on the conn.
Thankfully they didn't make Chekov.

One feature of the social media era that has always baffled me is the industry of fake websites about fake things. Usually these things are along the bottom of any page and feature some weird or suggestive image, or some kind of rankings, then you click over and it's one of those click-here-of-next endless slideshow thing that never gets to the image you clicked over for.

I don't know what kind of ad revenue could possibly be earned by this, particularly if you never click on anything advertised or spend any money at all, but I understand internet revenue is a whole weird thing that I'll never understand. I know clicks are revenue-generating, though, somehow.

Another aspect of these things are the weird mortgage ads that never seem to line up with anything about mortgages. These things have been around for as long as I've used the internet. I remember my first Yahoo mail account, especially, there were two recurring ones: (1) One was just this odd close-up of an old man's face and ever-so-slowly he would smile. Or would he? Sometimes the ad re-set. Very odd. The text was just the standard "Homeowners can't believe this one trick under New Bush Plan" or whatever. (2) Another was from the POV of a camera that was like, sneaking up on two teenage girls doing some kind of dance like the Cartlton, and then one of them would whirl around as if busted ordering something from the dark net. Faces were blurred, everything went quick. Text: same, just "Obama homeowner". Very weird.

I wish I had links for you, but not really: there's something really weird and The Ring-y about fake ads and things that seem to be put together by computers. Maybe it's just me.

Which leads me to today's post. My current homepage (which is just the Microsoft Edge start-up page) is, like any homepage where you simply cannot stop it from populating with narrative-framing-sites for all the usual narratives and suspects. This has been a feature of the internet age for many years, as well, and a very awful one. I try to circumvent it any way I can (hide all from this or that, constantly click "show less like this" on any "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" or "Republicans Pounce..." sort of headline, default only to entertainment/ celebrity news (usually of the "aging beauty claps back at internet troll over sexy toned abs!" variety) and cricket. It's imperfect, but it's something.

Anyway, without fail, there's this one LendGo mortgage ad that just baffles me. It seems to re-use the same roster of actors, so I'm sure it's all just stock art. But... there's just enough suggestion of a narrative and consistent set design to make your brain try to put together a story for it.

So let me put it out there, hell: what do you think?

To me, I think it's like you come home, and someone is in your house. What are they doing there? And then, to court. And then everything ends with Djokovic smashing an overhead into your face.