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Star Trek (DC Comics, 1984) #1-6 – Errand of War! (Review)

Posted on June 18, 2014 by Darren

This July, we’re taking a look at some classic Star Trek movie tie-ins. Check back daily for the latest reviews and retrospectives.

After Marvel lost the Star Trek license in 1982, there was a period where no monthly Star Trek comics were being published. One of the consequences of this was that Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan didn’t receive an official comic book adaptation, until IDW decided to go back and fill in the blanks in 2009. Eventually, DC comics managed to secure the license for Star Trek comics, and they began publishing in 1984, the year that saw the release of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. DC would maintain the license into the mid-nineties, making it one of the most stable licensing agreements ever reached about Star Trek comics.

Unlike Marvel’s 1979 agreement with Paramount, DC reached an agreement that allowed them full access to the Star Trek mythology. Marvel had been restricted to using characters and concepts from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, a rather restrictive agreement. In contrast, DC had access to the whole of the Star Trek canon. Indeed, reading Mike Barr and Tom Sutton’s run on Star Trek, it seems like their opening six issues were designed to showcase the sheer breadth of continuity available to them.

At the same time, Barr’s scripts have a pulpy charm that makes them highly enjoyable, even as trying to tell an unfolding Star Trek story set between the events of The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock seems ill-advised.

Warp speed ahead…

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Filed under: Comics, Star Trek | Tagged: dc comics, Federation, kirk, klingons, mike barr, Mike W. Barr, Saavik, star trek, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, war | 4 Comments »

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (DC Comics, 1984) (Review)

Posted on June 17, 2014 by Darren

This June, we’re taking a look at some classic Star Trek movie tie-ins. Check back daily for the latest reviews and retrospectives.

In 1984, DC secured the license to print Star Trek comics. They retained the license into the nineties, allowing the publisher to release their own comic book adaptations of each of the four remaining classic Star Trek movies. They even got to publish an adaptation of Star Trek: Generations before the rights transferred to Marvel. Mike W. Barr and Tom Sutton got to produce 64-page adaptations of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, lending some consistency to the last two instalments in the trilogy that began with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

While its impressive visuals and relaxed pacing meant that Star Trek: The Motion Picture leant itself to a comic book adaptation, The Search for Spock is not quite as nice a fit for the medium. The movie’s plot is quite complicated, with lots of things going on at different times with different characters in different locations. One of the joys of the film is the way that it tries to turn Star Trek into an ensemble piece in Spock’s absence, with each of the main characters getting a moment in the sun during the Enterprise jailbreak. The comic simply doesn’t have the space to do this, and the result is an adaptation feels a little compressed.

At the same time, though, writer Mike W. Barr does get to showcase his love of the franchise, and his deft technical skill.

Let’s see what’s out there…

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Filed under: Comics, The Original Series | Tagged: genesis, klingons, Mike W. Barr, spock, star trek, star trek iii, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, star trek: the search for spock, the search for spock, tom sutton | Leave a comment »

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock by Vonda N. McIntyre (Review)

Posted on June 16, 2014 by Darren

This June, we’re taking a look at some classic Star Trek movie tie-ins. Check back daily for the latest reviews and retrospectives.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home form a loose trilogy following the death and resurrection of the franchise’s most iconic character. The events of each leads into the next, and there’s a very clear pattern of cause and effect that brings you from Saavik’s Kobayashi Maru test through to Kirk’s assignment to the Enterprise-A. The start of each of the three films picks up from the end of the last one. It brings the characters involved on a full arc.

However, despite this, there is a bit of a disconnect between the feature films – perhaps inevitable for three movies conceived separately one-after-another. The Wrath of Khan is a story about how Kirk is perhaps broken, too old and too reckless to keep doing the stuff that he does; The Search for Spock shrugs that off by having Kirk joyride on the Enterprise. The Wrath of Khan introduces a next generation of characters in the form of Kirk’s son David Marcus and Spock’s protégé Saavik; The Search for Spock kills David and The Voyage Home dismisses Saavik.

While The Search for Spock might begin with the Enterprise limping back to Earth following the confrontation with Khan, it seems to gloss over every part of The Wrath of Khan that isn’t directly related to the death of Spock. Genesis is carried over as Spock’s final resting place, but Khan isn’t mentioned, nor is the Reliant; Carol Marcus doesn’t appear; the deaths of the cadets on the cruise and the staff of Regula I are somewhat glossed over.

The most interesting aspect of Vonda McIntyre’s adaptation of The Search for Spock is the way that it makes a point to carry over elements from The Wrath of Khan into the story. Indeed, McIntyre is almost a third of the way into the book before reaching the actual plot. The result is an interesting novel that feels more like a sequel to The Wrath of Khan than a direct rebuttal, as the film had been.

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: deconstruction, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, the search for spock, vonda mcintyre, Vonda N. McIntyre | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: Khan – Ruling in Hell (Review)

Posted on June 13, 2014 by Darren

This June, we’re taking a look at some classic Star Trek movie tie-ins and other interesting objects. Check back daily for the latest reviews and retrospectives.

Khan is a massively important figure in the grand mythology of Star Trek.

One need only look to Star Trek Into Darkness as proof of that assertion – a film that trades on how iconic the name “Khan” is, even to the most casual of fans. However, despite the fact that Khan has only appeared in a single episode and two feature films, each spaced apart by more than a decade, the character continues to exert a strong pull over the rest of the franchise. He is arguably more iconic and well-known than any lead character from a show produced after Star Trek: The Next Generation.

War of the supermen…

After all, Khan’s influence can be felt on just about every iteration of the franchise. On Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, he haunted the character of Julian Bashir. When the fourth season of Star Trek: Enterprise began its high-profile journey into the franchise’s continuity, Khan became something of a touchstone. The season’s first three-part episode (Borderland, Cold Station 12 and The Augments) was devoted to exploring the legacy of Khan Noonien Singh. Indeed, the show even tied Khan into the origin of the flat-foreheaded Klingons in Affliction and Divergence.

And yet, despite all this, there really is only so much material the character can support. Khan Noonien Singh is an iconic bad guy, but there’s a point where he ends up over-saturated.

The sands of time…

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Filed under: Comics, Star Trek | Tagged: Comics, dave tipton, idw, khan, Khan Noonien Singh, scott tipton, star trek, star trek ii, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan | 4 Comments »

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (IDW, 2009) #1-3 (Review)

Posted on June 12, 2014 by Darren

This June, we’re taking a look at some classic Star Trek movie tie-ins and other interesting objects. Check back daily for the latest reviews and retrospectives.

Due to bad timing, the Star Trek comic book license was between publishers when Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was released into cinemas in 1982. As the license transitioned between Marvel and DC, the movie adaptation got lost in the shuffle. As a result, the film was the only classic Star Trek film without a contemporary comic book adaptation. It remained that way for over a quarter of a century.

However, on the release of JJ Abrams’ rebooted Star Trek, current license holder IDW decided to release an omnibus of the classic movie adaptations as a tie-in. In doing so, they discovered a Wrath-of-Khan-sized hole in the collection, and so set about filling it with a three-issue miniseries that could be included in the omnibus for completeness’ sake.

Stationary orbit…

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Filed under: Comics, The Original Series | Tagged: Comics, idw, khan, star trek, star trek (2009), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Vengeance | 4 Comments »

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan by Vonda N. McIntyre (Review)

Posted on June 11, 2014 by Darren

This June, we’re taking a look at some classic Star Trek movie tie-ins and other interesting objects. Check back daily for the latest reviews and retrospectives.

Gene Roddenberry novelised Star Trek: The Motion Picture. While there’s some lingering discussion about whether Roddenberry actually wrote the novelisation, the book reads like the work of a screenwriter turning his hand to prose. It’s more of a manifesto than a novel – an excuse for Roddenberry to expand on his utopian vision for the franchise.

In contrast, Vonda N. McIntyre was hired to write the novelisation of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Unlike Roddenberry, McIntyre was an experienced and professional novelist. She had been writing since the mid-seventies, and had a wealth of experience in both media tie-ins and her own original work. In fact, McIntyre wrote The Entropy Effect, the book published directly after the publication of The Motion Picture, and only the second Star Trek book published by Pocket Books.

All of this is a very round-about way of explaining that The Wrath of Khan is very much an adaptation in a way that The Motion Picture simply was not.

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: joachim, khan, novelisation, Saavik, star trek, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, star trek: the wrath of khan, the wrath of khan, vonda mcintyre, Vonda N. McIntyre | 2 Comments »

Star Trek – Untold Voyages (Review)

Posted on June 10, 2014 by Darren

This June, we’re taking a look at some classic Star Trek movie tie-ins and other interesting objects. Check back daily for the latest reviews and retrospectives.

There’s something of a continuity lacuna that exists between Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Although the movies were released three years apart, more time appears to have passed for the characters themselves. Some of the changes are quite startling. After fighting so hard to get the Enterprise back in The Motion Picture, Kirk has retired to Earth once again at the start of The Wrath of Khan. After putting the Enterprise back in action in The Motion Picture, it has been converted into a cadet cruiser in The Wrath of Khan.

A lot of stuff has happened, and the gap is relatively under-explored by tie-in material. In contrast, the gap between The Turnabout Intruder (or The Counter-Clock Incident) and The Motion Picture is filled with all sorts of material designed to offer the show the type of closure that it never got on television. The same is true of the gap between The Cage and Where No Man Has Gone Before, with books and comics eager to offer accounts of Pike’s time in command and the transition to Captain James Tiberius Kirk.

Star Trek: Untold Voyages is a five-issue Marvel Comics series published in 1998 designed to bridge The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan. Although it wallows a bit in continuity and references, writer Glenn Greenberg uses the series to make some very clever and introspective points about Star Trek as a franchise – in effect, cleverly transitioning from Gene Roddenberry’s “future humans are the best” attitude toward Nicholas Meyer’s more reflective and introspective take on the characters and their world.

Shining star…

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Filed under: Comics, The Original Series | Tagged: glenn greenberg, star trek, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, star trek: the wrath of khan, star trek: untold voyages, untold voyages | 2 Comments »

Star Trek – The Entropy Effect by Vonda N. McIntyre (Review)

Posted on June 9, 2014 by Darren

This June, we’re taking a look at some classic Star Trek movie tie-ins and other interesting objects. Check back daily for the latest reviews and retrospectives.

The Pocket Books Star Trek line has to be one of the most stable and successful tie-in book ranges in the world. While the comic book license has bounced from publisher to publisher, Star Trek prose has remained firmly rooted at Pocket Books through the highs and the lows of the Star Trek franchise. This is undoubtedly because Pocket Books is a subsidiary of Simon and Schuster, which has been owned by the company that has owned Star Trek since 1975.

As such, from 1979 until the present day, Pocket Books has produced an incredible amount of tie-in material to support the Star Trek franchise. From reference material through to novels set within the fictional universe, the line has published a wealth of material across all the shows and all the time frames. Indeed, Pocket even launched their own separate spin-off brands run by authors like Peter David or Keith R.A. DeCandido.

While Gene Roddenberry’s novelisation of Star Trek: The Motion Picture was the first official Star Trek novel published by Pocket Books, and the line had published a number of reference books in the interim, Vonda N. McIntyre’s The Entropy Effect is the first original novel published by Pocket Books. In many ways, the influence of McIntyre’s work is still being felt, as she demonstrated how best to approach a Star Trek tie-in novel.

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: entropy, Hikaru Sulu, nostalgia, pocket books, star trek, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Sulu, time travel, Vonda N. McIntyre | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: The Newspaper Strips – Called Home (Review)

Posted on June 6, 2014 by Darren

This June, we’re taking a look at some classic Star Trek movie tie-ins and other interesting objects. Check back daily for the latest reviews and retrospectives.

It’s amazing how diverse and expansive the history of the Star Trek franchise is. Even odd little curiosities like the Gold Key Comics and The Newspaper Strips endure in one form or another – passed down over the years and lovingly maintained. There really are no truly forgotten pieces of Star Trek out there, and one of the great things about IDW’s management of the Star Trek license has been their willingness to dig into the annals of Star Trek history to produce some striking pieces of work.

(I am really hoping that their reprint programme extends at some point to include the British Star Trek comic strips, which were wonderfully dynamic pieces of work that were never properly reprinted outside the United Kingdom. However, given how thorough the reprint programme has been, it seems almost inevitable that those strips will see the light of day in some form or another.)

The Newspaper Strips were launched in 1979, débuting four days before the cinematic release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The strip only ran for until 1983, cancelled due to the fact that the market was crowded out with more popular science-fiction comic strips like Star Wars or Flash Gordon. Still, despite the ignominious finish for the strip, it is a fascinating piece of Star Trek history, an example of one of the many ways the franchise survived during its long hiatus from television.

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Filed under: Comics, Star Trek | Tagged: called home, comic strips, Comics, idw, kirk, moon, moon landing, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, star trek: the newspaper strips, Thomas Warkentin, v'ger | Leave a comment »

Star Trek (Marvel Comics, 1979) #1-3 – The Motion Picture (Review)

Posted on June 5, 2014 by Darren

This June, we’re taking a look at some classic Star Trek movie tie-ins and other interesting objects. Check back daily for the latest reviews and retrospectives.

What better way to announce the arrival of Star Trek at Marvel Comics than with an adaptation of Star Trek: The Motion Picture? Initially published as a giant Marvel Super-Size issue, the adaptation was subsequently split across the opening three issues of Marvel’s ill-fated Star Trek monthly.

It is worth noting that the franchise’s initial association with Marvel was relatively brief, with the Star Trek monthly series only lasting eighteen issues from 1979 through to 1982. In 1982, the Star Trek comic book franchise moved to DC Comics, where it remained until the nineties. Things became a bit more complicated at that stage, but it was a long-term relationship.

Still, in 1979, Marvel became the second company to publish monthly comics based around the Star Trek license. However, they were a substantially more impressive operation than Gold Key Comics, the previous license-holder. For example, this adaptation of The Motion Picture comes from some very talented creators, and its publication was treated as something of an event.