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Star Trek: The Next Generation (DC Comics, 1989) #1-2 – Return to Raimon/Murder, Most Foul (Review)

This January and February, we’ll be finishing up our look at the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and moving on to the third year of the show, both recently and lovingly remastered for high definition. Check back daily for the latest review.

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

DC Comics’ limited six-issue tie-in to the launch of Star Trek: The Next Generation might have made an interesting read, but it was a success for the company. It was such a success that the company decided to launch an on-going monthly series tying into Star Trek: The Next Generation. It launched in October 1989, just as the show’s third season was starting on television. It continued throughout the show’s run, wrapping up eighty issues later in February 1996, when Marvel bought the license.

For the bulk of its run, The Next Generation was written by Michael Jan Friedman. Barring a couple of fill-ins scattered across the six-and-a-half year run, Friedman churned out monthly stories with remarkable consistency. Indeed, DC’s second volume of Next Generation would be the most consistent comic book tie-in published during any of the spin-off shows, with the licence for the franchise bouncing around Marvel, Malibu, Wildstorm and IDW in the late nineties and early years of the twenty-first century.

There’s something strangely appropriate about publishing Return to Raimon in tandem with the launch of The Next Generation‘s third season. The third season of The Next Generation is generally regarded as the point where the show really came of age, and the season that laid the foundation for that entire generation of Star Trek spin-offs. It was the point at which the vision of Star Trek proposed by The Next Generation finally came into its own, so it seems fitting that it’s also the point at which one of the franchise’s most consistent and long-running tie-ins begins.

New worlds...

New worlds…

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Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who – Assimilation² (Review)

This January and February, we’ll be finishing up our look at the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and moving on to the third year of the show, both recently and lovingly remastered for high definition. Check back daily for the latest review.

We’ll be supplementing our coverage of the episodes with some additional materials – mainly novels and comics and films. This is one such entry.

It’s amazing that Assimilation² represents the first official crossover between Star Trek and Doctor Who. After all, the nineties saw a trilogy of comics and novels in which Star Trek crossed over with Marvel’s X-Men. At the same time, though, the miniseries’ combination does seem a little odd. Pairing the Cybermen and the Borg is a bit of a no-brainer, but the Eleventh Doctor feels like a bit of a strange fit on board Picard’s Enterprise.

The Ninth or Tenth would arguably offer more of a contrast with Picard’s restrained and dignified command style. The Tenth Doctor and Donna arriving on the luxury Enterprise practically writes itself. (“Now that’s what I call a spaceship. You’ve got a box, they’ve got a Stella Liner.”) Picard and the Eleventh Doctor feels like a particularly bland pairing, if only because there’s no way they’d try each other’s patience. The Eleventh Doctor would probably work better in the context of Sisko’s Deep Space Nine or either Kirk’s Enterprise.

Still, although Assimilation² never quite takes full advantage of its central hook, it’s a diverting enough mish-mash of two science-fiction staples.

Cue Who?

Cue Who?

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The Best of Both Worlds: A Retrospective

I am Locutus – of Borg. Resistance – is futile. Your life, as it has been – is over. From this time forward, you will service – us.

– Locutus introduces himself

I only found out last week that The Best of Both Worlds is twenty years old this June. For those unfamiliar with the title, it’s the two-part episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which represented both the franchise’s first real cliffhanger (there was a two-part episode of the original series, but that was simply to incorporate a framing device around the original unaired pilot, The Cage – which featured an (almost) completely different cast) and the first real showcase of perhaps the franchise’s most iconic antagonists, the Borg. It’s also a damn good two hours of television.

Picard could always spot a square...

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Non-Review Review: Star Trek – First Contact

I love it when the movie channels have an unexpected treat for me. Like coming home from work on Saturday and finding Star Trek: First Contact playing in high definition on Sky movies. Also known as “the only good Next Generation movie”, the film stands the test of time well and is – thus far – the only movie in the franchise that all my family can agree on. It is awesome.

"You're all astronauts... on some kind of... Star Trek?"

"You're all astronauts... on some kind of... Star Trek?"

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Is Star Trek on Television Dead?

I saw Star Trek last night and was quite impressed – it is one of the best movies in the franchise (albeit not the best). It riproared effectively and gave us a brilliant look at the Kirk/Spock relationship, which is one of the oddities of the show – how such an impulsive, womanising and irrational man would develop a lifelong friendship with such a stoic and logic individual was always a slight mystery to Star trek fans. Still, there is a world of difference between the television shows and the movies, and I wonder if we’ll ever see another Star Trek show back on the airwaves?
The original original crew...

The original original crew...

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