These Were the Voyages, Pt. 6

Well, it’s DC Trek time again. Today's post covers Annuals 1 and 2, and issues 17 through 25.

Last time we looked at that stretch of stories coinciding with Mike W. Barr’s exit off the title. There’s a couple of his stories in this batch too. The idea was for Tony Isabella to take over, which he did, but he didn’t stick around too long, or too consistently. 

The order of approach tomorrow reflects how I read them not necessarily order of appearance.

Let’s start with Annual #1. In a flashback to the Enterprise under Pike’s command, he makes a decision where he thinks he is helping an alien civilization but turns out he is hurting them. There’s an awkward farewell, and they decline to join the Federation. Flash forward to the Enterprise under Kirk’s command, and the crew reverses the damage and apologizes. The aliens join the Federation. The end. 

Didn’t care for this one – must have been a scheduling crisis or something, as everything (art by David Ross, - not that David Ross - story, editing) isn't up to any member of the creative team's usual standard. It's badly paced - the resolution happens in the same panel as the "The Adventure Continues..." ending caption, and there's a lot of wasted pages getting to it. This is a double-sized annual that could have been told more engagingly in two to five pages. Or in a newspaper a la Wednesday Comics. Ah well.  Barr notes in the afterword how much the story meant to him, so I don’t know – something went off track, at least for me

They introduce a character from Uhura's past, Kubaka, the “one that got away”, who returns in:

Issue 17: Intercepting a smuggling ship leads to Cestus Five, where Uhura runs into an old flame, who has set himself up as the smuggling king. After rekindling their romance, she realizes the same conflict (her career with Starfleet) exists, as she has to bust him for illegalities.

Uh-oh.

Issue 18 is Scotty’s side adventure. Not much to say – a fun enough time, I guess. It’s good to see these solo adventures.

Issue 19 takes it to a new level by handing the writing reins for a Chekov solo adventure (a flashback to an episode aboard the Enterprise) to Walter Koenig himself, with art by Dan Spiegle. Spiegle’s style was slightly out of step in the 80s, but he was a superb craftsman. 

From the mail in subsequent issues, it wasn’t well-received by the fans at the time.

The story shows Chekov struggling with PTSD after the Enterprise is unable to halt the destruction of an alien ship, leaving no survivors. An alien uses his grief and pain to feed him hallucinations. He leads a revolt (of sorts) against Kirk, as the alien’s illusions grow stronger with the heightened emotions. The game is aborted when Spock manages to convince Chekov that “Yeoman Marjorie Hamilton” is not real (above).

A very Trek-by-numbers tale, which is by no means a bad thing. It’s amazing how many of these things are out there. Warp through the wrong part of space and watch out; your stray thoughts and emotions are cosmic chum to the many hallucination-causing psychic vampires of the galaxy. Good thing those things don't come to Earth itself, undetected, or near enough to do damage. Then again, who's to say they haven't?

I’m interested to read more stuff by Koenig. I say it whenever I can: Warped Factors was great. Not just to read Koenig’s story, but for the way he told it. A fine eye for detail, irony, and many a well-crafted sentence or precise emphasis for the joke. I get no kickbacks or anything at all for recommending you listen to it as an audiobook. It’s unfortunate he never released a dozen books of short stories; they’d be fun to collect.

Onto issue 20, the Sulu solo story. He returns home for a wedding that will as in days of old, bring peace between warring clans and also reunite him briefly with his one-who-got-away.  It’s a good story; TBH it may be the most interesting side-Sulu story this side of "World Enough and Time." There are, it must be said, certain Shogun and Shogun Warriors connotations going on, most notably when Sulu and his rival get in giant robot suits and fight.

Is that offensive? I have no idea. Probably, what isn't. Is it any less improbable than Sulu's other anachronistic references? Probably not. Like I say, either way, it's a pretty bad-ass story for our Mister Sulu, who sometimes lacks them. Wedding saved, he returns to the Excelsior, “duty fulfilled but (his life) a little emptied." 

Issue 21 jumps over to Spock and his new command of the Surak. They investigate a dreamworld, one of those ‘hey, anything goes’ situations. Trying to beam down to the surface sends everyone into slumber and vivid dreaming. Spock breaks free and mind melds with his doctor (an alien who evolved from flying humanoids, now flightless but not wingless) and his first officer, Commander Brinks, who harbors intense resentment towards him. 

They’ve set up an interesting dynamic, here, on the Surak. In one appearance they've already made more of an impression than any of the other original characters (Bearclaw and the rest) we’ve seen. But each of them will have a chance to shine in issues 22 and 23: the “Wolf in the Fold” sequel two-parter.

The Excelsior is diverted to make first contact with a civilization that apparently has images of Captain Kirk and crew fighting a hydra in its ancient temples. The orders, however, are faked; it’s all a ploy to get the ship into the vicinity of… Redjek! 

Dispersed among space but pulling itself together to wreak more havoc, it once again frames someone from the ship for murder (Konom, the Klingon-with-a-conscience who’s working his way up through Starfleet, is the lucky fellow) while possessing others (Nancy Bryce). The cosmic conflict ends when Kirk leads the malevolent entity into a wormhole. It's a diverting enough tale, but the original set-up (Captain Kirk and the gang fighting a hydra in some other culture's ancient art) is better than anything that follows, a tactical mistake for a story to say the least.

Issues 24 and 25 feature a guest-turn by Diane Duane featuring (I believe) characters or races from her Trek Books. Great fun, probably, if you’re a fan of those. If you're not: rather tedious, especially stretched over two issues. 

The art is pretty cool, either way. 

The insect people appear first, and Kirk plays a (looooong) hunch that they're not really bad-ass space marauders and gives them the run of the ship and lets them think they've conquered it. This goes on all issue long and we see the crew working with them in every department. Then, Kirk shows the insect guy a view of outer space, and the guy says "whooooooaaaaah..." and we marvel at the innocence of children or what not. Someone mentions their knowledge of space is local. Still, they're flying around in a spaceship, so it seems someone stood a good chance of looking out a window once or twice. Then the cat people show up, and they do the whole damn thing all over again. Two issues of this. At the end, Kirk scolds them, and everyone moves on. (shrugs) One for the “Anachronistic Child Races in Trek” file.

Cool to see a Horta, though. In theory, cool to see insect-humanoids and cat-people, too. Just not in the cutesy manner here.

Finally, Annual #2 is an improvement over the first, but they went a bit overboard with the Klingons beating up on the Talosians. I've been thinking about this, though, and I've discovered that my reaction is rooted in the Berman era’s take on the Klingons as honorable warriors. That's why it disturbs me to see them here, as essentially space thugs. This characterization is not an unreasonable take on the concept pre-TNG, though, so I can't hold it against the story, objection overruled. Taking the “strong emotions cancel out the power of their illusions” cue from “The Cage/Menagerie,” the Klingons easily conquer the Talosians and torture them, weaponizing their telepathy for their own use until Kirk comes along to stop them.

Two things: (1) The crew is joined by William Decker from TMP, son of mad commander Decker from “Court Martial.” You'd never recognize him from The Motion Picture, here, as all he does in this issue is storm off in a huff. He’s rather ridiculous. But it allows for Kirk and him to have a redeeming moment of sorts at the end. (2) There is a montage, here, when the Klingons are using the Talosian’s telepathy against Kirk, Spock, and Bones, that could be the source material of the “your deepest pain” segments of Star Trek V. I think I’m likely projecting things that aren’t there, but it made me wonder. I know from the lettercols it mentioned the studios were looking these over. Could someone have tucked away the annual somewhere and the STV writers saw it? Or did the idea percolate in Harve Bennett's or some assistant’s mind and come out in conversation? 

Anything is possible. 

Talk about the opposite of a “burning mystery!” Can you imagine trying to motivate a bunch of even diehard Trek nerds to solve this one? I can just picture throwing the dossier into the middle of the table and all these STV factoids spilling out, as eyebrows are raised over the slurping of Mega-gulp Mountain Dews. "Gentlemen...!" Who cares? Moving on.

The second annual is supposed to be the last of the original crew’s, i.e. the end of the five year mission. Nice symmetry with the Talosians (although perhaps true symmetry would be the Great Barrier that led to Gary Mitchell’s death – Star Trek Five again! – or the salt monster) and some nice goodbyes at the end.

More than the cast ever got, either on-set or off, which is too bad. If I’m remembering the details from I Am Spock correctly, there wasn’t even a wrap party when TOS went off the air. Koenig – again – treats the matter very humorously in the opening pages of Warped Factors.

So! That’s officially a wrap on the Mike Barr era, as well as the Tony Isabella era. And probably the Bob Rozakis era. With Robert Greenberger solely at the editing helm, the writing starting next time (minus a co-story credit) goes over to industry legend Len Wein.

Some leftover screencaps coming your way – see you next time!