These Were the Voyages, pt. 3

I mentioned this story in the first of these posts. For years I had a vague memory of a Saavik origin story I read someplace but could never find mention of it anywhere. I re-read the novelizations of TWOK and TSFS, thinking what I half-remembered reading would be in there, but no luck. I looked through a few of the Saavik-appearing Pocket Books, but nothing rang a bell in there either. It was tough because the only details I could remember were “Saavik origin story” and (if pressed) “something about Xon, maybe? I don’t know.” (For many years, even knowing who Xon was marked you as a certain "belt" of Trekkie. Alas, no more.) I remembered her being half-Romulan, and that is mentioned, if memory serves, in the novelizations, but that was it.

Well, whaddya know? Here it is in Star Trek #7 and 8, published August and November, 1984. I love when that happens.

The two-parter opens with Enterprise's science officer trying to hide the symptoms of her Vulcan blood fever. 

Pon Farr! It's not just for dudes.

Kirk and Bones, having some small experience in this aspect of Vulcan biology, assure Saavik she can count on them, and divert course for Vulcan. Saavik tells them about her childhood as a Romulan street urchin, orphaned and left to die in an abandoned colony, her half-Vulcan nature making her unwanted. She was found by Starfleet, more specifically Spock, who brought her home to Vulcan and adopted her into his family. Sarek and Amanda raised her and in her time of joining she was betrothed to Xon, the Vulcan created for the aborted Phase II project.

Unfortunately, Xon – whose Pon Farr is tempered by Saavik being his second bonding and is therefore not as intense – is in deep space on a secret assignment for the Vulcan Science Council: creating super-soldiers!

This whole part is a little hazy, but yeah, Vulcan and Romulus are working together on some kind of super-soldier project, but it’s gotten out of hand. When Xon objects, the Romulans turn on him and torture him.

Xon's pretty ripped!
And the Romulans have apparently joined Marvel's Serpent Society. 

Luckily, Saavik – “out of her mind with the blood fever!” as Kirk recounts helpfully; he knows it's called Plak Tow, why's he pretending? While we're here, the scene in Free Enterprise where Mark gets caught up in summarizing "Amok Time" and an exasperated Robert cuts him off ("I am perfectly aware of the events in "Amok Time...!") forever cracks me up – steals a ship and goes after Xon, saving him from death and the galaxy from the super soldiers. The Enterprise pursues and saves everyone. The pursuing Romulans are destroyed in a nebula that Kirk uses to his advantage, as he often does.

Saavik and Xon are left to get on with it, then. 

And then it’s back to Vulcan for Xon.

Well! Not bad. It’s interesting how elements of this origin were lifted or altered for other characters in the franchise (Ensign Ro, Sybok, Discovery, etc. although it’s well known that Sarek is the Kevin Bacon of Vulcan degrees of separation, Discovery or no Discovery). 

Pon Farr was of course returned to in Voyager, twice. So far in eight issues we've revisited "Amok Time," "The Savage Curtain," "Errand of Mercy," "A Taste of Armageddon," and "The Omega Glory."

LEFTOVER PICTURES

"Out of her mind with the BLOOD FEVER!" is worth the price of admission right there. 

"I am PERFECTLY AWARE of the plot of "Amok Time"...!"

Oh David - so eager to die. 

NEXT:

The adaptation of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

These Were the Voyages, pt. 2

Last time we looked at the first four issues of DC’s 1st go at a Star Trek series. This time: issues 5 and 6, two standalone stories that serve as a coda to the Excalibans/ Organians story.

In issue 5 ("Mortal Gods," written by Mike W. Barr, illustrated by Tom Sutton and Sal Amendola) the Enterprise is dispatched to look for the USS Valor, believed to have been destroyed in the recent hostilities with the Klingons. They follow the trail of clues to a world of feudal rat-people, where the Valor’s former Captain, Hodges, rules as a god. 

But the Prime Directive! (And didn't this just happen, like, last week?) His arrival planetside was taken as an omen and avoided a devastating civil war. He married the daughter of one general (Lorac) and made the other (Ballor) his top man. Rat-man. Whatever. Ballor, however, is biding his time and awaiting for more visitors from beyond so he can arm his side with phasers and renew the war. The ruse is discovered, but not before Hodges’ wife, Lylla, gets the old intercepted dagger through the chest.

Arm, excuse me. She loses a lot of blood either way.

McCoy saves Lylla by taking her back to the ship, and Konom – with some help from the Enterprise – pretends to be a god calling his child home, and Hodges (along with Lyla) leave.

The end. It’s okay, not bad, nothing to write home about. Some of the illustration felt a little rushed, or that the colors (by Michele Wolfman) were covering for unfinished breakdowns. 

Issue 6 ("Who is... Enigma?" written by Mike W. Barr, illustrated by Tom Sutton and Ricardo Vilagran) starts off interesting, as the Enterprise is ferrying none other than Robert Fox (that popinjay, you remember him) to the peace conference on the planet Babel with the Klingons. Complications quickly arise: (1) the ambassador’s estranged daughter is some kind of revolutionary for one of the factions, and (2) Enigma, a shape-shifting assassin working for the Orion Victory League, (a Rigellian decapod, according to McCoy, but it's unclear if that's just one of the forms taken or the original one. Either way he learned his cellular metamorphosis from the natives of Antos IV, just like Garth of Izar) has infiltrated first the Enterprise and then the site of the negotiations. Mission? Kill Robert Fox. Problem? See title. It could be anyone!

Kirk employ some Magnum P.I. style logic here...

Well, it was the 80s.
(Thanks to David Deeble for the image.)

Oh, uh, never mind. "Carry on, Mr. Saavik."
Also: foreshadowing...!

We know there's only one real way to suss out alien imposters on Kirk's watch. 
(Incidentally, the fold of the comic makes this look like some kind of slurpee collector's cup or something. Alas.)

Ultimately, after obligatory Kirk vs. Kirk fisticuffs, the accords are signed, and father are daughter are reunited to try and work things out.

Like issue #5, it’s okay. The renegade Starfleet captain who marries the general’s daughter trope is made somewhat more interesting by her being a rat princess, I suppose, but neither Hodges’ story nor Robert Fox’s last (perhaps) diplomatic triumph is anything to really write him about. On the last page Kirk pushes for a reconciliation between Hanoi Fox and her father, which is nice, I guess, but it's all fairly underdeveloped/ too crammed.

That said, both would have been better than average TOS Season Three episodes, perhaps.

LEFTOVER SCREENCAPS

Konom continues to be used pretty well.

That awkward moment in any marriage.
I like McCoy looking on, too, rocking that crazy collar.

Can't recall if I brought up Sherwood or not; she's another of the new cast members. They seem to keep bringing her up, so I'd better mention her. You'd figure I'd do so with a screencap of her and not Saavik. Nope!

I can completely hear this screencap. #TOS4EVA

NEXT TIME: 

The Origin of Saavik!

Technical Ecstasy (1976) and Never Say Die! (1978)

I’ve been spending a post per album in this series, but from here on out we’ll be combining multiple albums in one post. This doesn’t mean everything heretofore is superior to or more deserving of comment than everything else, just there’s only so much I have to say about some things. Another way of putting it: just because I gave every song a deep dive doesn’t mean that you have to. 

(1976)

The idea behind the cover is robots having a quickie on an escalator and then moving on, sort of a commentary on 70s Looking for Mr. Goodbar culture. Pretty self-explanatory, I guess. This is as close as need Sabbath to come to exploring sex of any kind. 

As Geezer said later about this and the next record: "Back then, you had to at least try to be modern and keep up. Punk was massive then and we felt that our time had come and gone." And you can hear that self-consciousness on both records. But I'm sympathetic. No one forms a band to just play the same songs the same way over and over again or to stop evolving with whatever scene produced them in the first place. I imagine, too, when you're Black Sabbath or Alice Cooper or any onetime-shock-to-the-status-quo/bold-new-direction, those new zeitgeist warriors are felt even more keenly.

My favorite bits of TE happen on side two: “All Moving Parts (Stand Still)” (what a cool groove) and “Rock and Roll Doctor,” which came on random shuffle once really loud and I had no idea it was Sabbath and was like “What the hell is this, this is great.” I recommend this approach with Technical Ecstasy (and Never Say Die! As well)  - pretty much every song sounds better if isolated from the rest of the album. Anyway I'm an easy mark for any such sentiments. The kid in me thinks they're really talking about rock and roll and not cocaine. Either way, though, whatever works.

Broad overtures to “rock and roll” were popular in the 70s, too, of course, and possibly this was the band pitching their efforts in such a direction. (Possibly Kiss?) I hear Greg Lake (“It’s Alright” sung by Bill Ward) later-era-sad-Ozzy (“She’s Gone”), or more prog-type arrangements (“You Won’t Change Me”) in the mix. 

(1978)

Titles with an exclamation point always crack me up. I used to use examples of how adding one changes the effect completely (“imagine if it was Forrest Gump!” was my go-to example) but literally any example will do and they're all perfect. 

The cover is… cool? Dumb? I can’t tell which. In such circumstances I default to cool.

The back cover works for me just fine, either way. Just like the composition.

They continue their experimenting with 70s sounds on this one. The title track is fine, but Ozzy’s vocals aren’t great and there’s really noting to the riff or arrangement, it’s just kind of an unembellished chord progression. “Johnny Blade” and “Shock Wave” and “Air Dance” all bounce between sort of sounding like other contemporary bands, from Kansas to Thin Lizzy, singalong bro-rock (“A Hard Road,” would’ve been perfect for a certain era of Oasis), and “Over to You” starts promising but doesn't really go anywhere.

Standout tracks:

“Junior’s Eyes” This one really gets in your head. Ozzy’s vocals aren’t great; I guess he was kinda out-to-lunch in the mid-to-late 70s. Anyway I get a mental image of a strangled muppet on Ozzy's vocals in some spots. Cool production, though, and perfectly valid track. I like that Sabbath expanded their comfort zone. 

“Breakout” This is just their filler-instrumental/ ambience track, but it’s pretty cool. Definitely would’ve been great mix-tape fodder had I known it existed back in the day.

And probably my favorite, the album closer, sung by Bill Ward, “Swinging the Chain.” At first I kind of loved this one ironically. Bill’s vocals are enthusiastic but strained, the riff and production are kind of a mess, and there’s the whole Fabulous T-Birds swagger of the ending (“You better be-liiieeeve it!”) which is fantastically ill-considered. And I still think all that, but then I just kind of grew to love the song and don’t want them to fix or change anything. 

I appreciate that the Ozzy era comes to a close with everyone in the band but Ozzy singing “You better believe it!”

~

And that’s a wrap on Sabbath mk1. Here’s how the first Ozzy era breaks down for me, pointswise * least to most favorite:

Technical Ecstasy

Never Say Die!

Vol. 4

Master of Reality

Black Sabbath

Sabotage

Sabbath, Bloody, Sabbath

Paranoid

* How the sausage is made: I assign each track a zero to five rating and add ‘em up, average ‘em out.

The above is just song points total. That can sometimes give a misleading score, as some albums just have more songs than others. (Typically this only becomes a problem when comparing albums from the CD era with those before it, as bands had more space to fill.) The above break down the same by average and total, except Sabotage and Black Sabbath are flipped.

My personal favorite, points or no points, will always be Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath.

I’ll take a break from Sabbath for a few posts before jumping back in with their 80s and beyond stuff. Behind the scenes I’ve already completed the big listenthrough, so now it’s the typing-up-and-sorting-out of the notes and bookmarks and revisiting a few things.

These Were the Voyages, pt. 1

I've been lugging these around for years: 

but have never read them. Since I'll be moving sometime - somewhere - in the hopefully not too distant future, I decided the time was right to finally take the plunge. 

I read the first dozen or so issues on my friend Liz's suggestion back in the day. She was shocked that I was into Star Trek and comics but for some reason wasn't reading the comics. Which was kind of weird, I guess, except I took all cues from my older brother, and he never liked the Trek comics (Marvel/ Gold Key.) Liz has come up before in my Trek McReverie; outside my parents, she was the person primarily responsible for my subsequent Trek fandom. 

For years I've had a memory of reading some kind of Saavik origin-story that I'd convinced myself must've been in the novelization of either Star Trek II or III. I do remember a romance between Saavik and David Marcus, for example, that was cut out of TSFS but left in the novelization. But years back when I was doing the original Captain's Log series I re-read both and nope, no origin story. It took until the far future of 2021 to realize what I've been half-remembering all this time is "The Origin of Saavik" arc in these DC Trek comics (issues 7 and 8.) Long-time mystery solved. Ain't worth a thimbleful of Sehlat spit for anyone else, but that's the kind of "mystery solved" I personally live for with these blogging projects.

Anyway, it's time to read these damn things and determine their ongoing presence in the McMolo Archives. I don't know how often these'll come together and apologize in advance for any screencaps-blurriness. These are all 'caps I'll be taking from my phone, sending to myself, and editing in Paint.

Okay let's jump in.

DC's Trek, vol 1, came out after The Wrath of Khan and took off from there. I'm always intrigued by that sort of thing, which goes back to leafing through my brother's Star Wars comics sometime after The Empire Strikes Back came out, when they had a storyline that picked up right where the last frame of that movie ended. It's such a unique angle, sideways-specific to a time and place that no longer matters i.e. whatever you imagine happening after The Empire Strikes Back or The Wrath of Khan has been rendered moot by the appearance of The Return of the Jedi and The Search for Spock. 

It began pre-Crisis and continued post-Crisis, making it one of a handful of DC titles to survive the 80s without getting caught up in any of that. All the odder considering DC's Trek editor was Marv Wolfman, Crisis co-author, whose edict to writer Mike W. Barr (author of the Trek book Gemini and others) think comic books, not television. Comic book pacing, comic book logic, etc. The balance to strike is important. Characters based on actors have to have their likeness approved over and over again which always handicaps the illustrator, I think, but both Tom Sutton (as inked by Ricardo Villagran) and Mike Barr do a good job of wedding the Trek-verse to the logic of the comics page. (Without going full-on Gold Key about it.)

David and Carol Marcus have returned to Regula One, the Enterprise has returned to Earth, and Admiral Kirk has convinced the brass to let him take over the ship permanently. This is all established effectively within the first couple of pages. Saavik is Science Officer, and the regular crew (minus Spock of course) is joined by Ensigns Bryce and Bearclaw (I know), who both had relatives on the Gallant. 

They seemed to be setting up a deeper dynamic, here, than they ever get back to. But we shall see where all of this goes. 

This slap leads to a big officer's brawl reminiscent and a dressing down from the Admiral. I keep waiting for the series to return to it, but so far (I'm in the upper teens, at press time) nada.

The first four issues serve as sequels to both “Errand of Mercy” and “The Savage Curtain.” Klingon ships are appearing out of nowhere and attacking Federation vessels, including the USS Gallant, whose destruction at the hands of Koloth (yes, that Koloth) opens the issue. Koloth (along with Kor, who appears soon after) yearns to redress TOS-era grievances but is prevented from doing so by the Organian Peace Treaty. 

The Klingons have gotten around the treaty by placing their station in a wormhole, which Kirk and Bryce discover in TMP-style good old fashioned personal-space-exploration. 

They destroy the station but are confused: why would this scheme work? Surely beings such as the Organians wouldn't be tricked? 

When they emerge, they discover Admiral Turner (of the Federation) and Kahless IV (emperor of the Klingon Empire) have declared war on one another. Kirk's suspicions of what he's seeing and hearing deepen when he sees a Federation propaganda reel detailing atrocities.

Against regulations, (of course) Kirk sets course for Organia to see what the devil is going on. Upon arrival they discover the planet has been encased in some kind of energy-absorbent black field. The Klingons appear and attack. The Enterprise successfully fends them off and beams over the survivors of their destroyed ship. It's Kor! 

Replete with lobster-head re-design. Oh, I forgot to mention what happened to Koloth.

K'plagh.

Also joining the crew is Komon, the sensitive, anti-war Klingon, whom Bryce takes a shine to. Kor banishes him to stay on the Enterprise for his abnormal aversion to slaughter. It used to be a cliche among anti-Wolfman readers (and there were plenty of them in the comic-nerd circles in which I ran in the late 80s) that he introduced an annoyingly "sensitive" (think Phil Donahue, dropped into the Justice League, or moving next door to Spider-Man, etc.) character in every book he worked on, Terry Long being the pertinent example from New Teen Titans. (Who even marries Donna Troy!) Konom has the feel of such a set-up, but I kind of like the idea of a peacenik Klingon. Anyway: he'll be around for awhile; I forgot to get a screencap (well, "screencap") of him this time. 

The Klingons and Enterprise crew go back and forth until Kor and Kirk can team up, "Day of the Dove" style to fight their common enemy, manipulating their civilizations into apocalyptic war. They penetrate the black field and discover: the Excalbians! Specifically, Yarmek, Kirk's old friend from "The Savage Curtain."

Kirk tries to warn him about the whole bare-knuckled punch against a creature of molten rock.

To no avail.

Unsatisfied with the results of the good vs. evil contest of "TSC" (and apparently distrustful of the results of fellow season-3-testtakers the Vians, who surely published the results of their findings somewhere) the Excalbians decided first to imprison the Organians, then to pit the Federation and Klingon Empire against each other, for a better study. Kirk tricks the normally passive Organians into action by stressing the violence of the Excalbians actions, against themselves and the galaxy itself. The Organians remove their sanctions against Klingon/ Federation war-making, which has the ironic effect of ending the present conflict and lock themselves in extra-dimensional combat with the Excalbians. As they grow to planet-sized stature and then gradually disappear, the Enterprise escapes, and it's Mister Sulu, ahead Warp Factor One. The End.

Not a bad beginning! Mike W. Barr and Marv Wolfman are both first-gen TOS watchers, and it shows. The crew acts as you think they would if the cameras kept rolling after Spock's death. Kirk gets the traditional “you’re pushing too hard” speech from Bones, and Bones at least wonders what it was Spock wanted him to remember at the end of Wrath of Khan. Tom Sutton's art is at times hampered by tracing a face or posture from TWOK stills or elsewhere, but for the most part this feels and flows like a comic book and not screencaps transcribed awkwardly from another medium.

LEFTOVER SCREENCAPS

I don't feel like saying "screencaps" in air quotes everytime I use the term. You know what I mean. 

Not too many this time:

I love this panel.

Did anyone ever have this? I remember the ads but never the figures.

Trekkies of Future Past.

We'll be back with a look at Star Trek #s 5 and 6 at some time in the near-ish future.