“Season 1 Federation. SF Debris warned us about you.”
Star Trek: The Next Generation #6
FINAL ISSUE
DC Comics (July, 1988)
“Here today”
WRITER: Mike Carlin
PENCILER: Pablo Marcos
INKERS: Carlos Garzon & Arne Starr
COLORIST: Carl Gafford
LETTERER: Bob Pinaha
EDITOR: Robert Greenberger
The Enterprise is sent to find the legendary planet Faltos, but when they reach the sector to start looking in Data’s program compels him to enter alternate coordinates, which takes them right to Faltos. They meet with the leading counsel, led by a Klingon, one of those aliens from “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” (which means one of their people did survive after all and ended up on Faltos), and a being named Bensley that seems somehow similar to the crystalline entity that the crew met in “Datalore”. They tell the crew that nobody can leave the plane of existence that Faltos exists in. Data realizes that Soong or someone in the colony that created Data must have. So they go through his files and find a way to leave Faltos, but Bensley somehow enters Data’s mind and removes all information about Faltos so they can’t return.
What they got right: The art’s good. The character voices match–for season one at least.
What they got wrong: I can hardly wait for Linkara to tear this issue apart because it does so much wrong, but I’ll give you big ones. The concept of a region of space nobody can leave was done better in the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode “The Time Trap”, since it required people to work together to escape rather than just having the right coordinates. The ties to the crystalline entity seem forced and there’s no interesting threat to the crew. I’m pretty sure the writer just wanted to replay the “poking around a shut-down Data” moment from “Datalore”, and I’m pretty sure the artists didn’t get the off switch in the right location.
Recommendation: The story’s not garbage, but it has been done better elsewhere. It’s not really worth looking for unless you want the entire run.
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