He was going to buy it…but then remembered he lives on a planet that hates money.
Star Trek: The Next Generation Special #3
DC Comics (Winter, 1995)
COLORIST: Pamela Rambo
EDITOR: Margaret Clark
“Pandora’s Prodigy”
WRITER: Michael DeMeritt
ARTIST: Ricardo Villagran
LETTERER: Willie Schubert
“Old Debts”
WRITER: Kevin J. Ryan
PENCILER: Ken Save
INKER: Shephard Hendrix
LETTERER: Ken Lopez
The main story involves Picard attempting to settle a trade dispute between former war adversaries. Meanwhile a friend of Gerodi’s visits to see to the refit of the transporters, who lets him in on a top secret more advance version…but he’s afraid of one particular ability of that transporter. When assassins who disagree with one of the negotiators politically decides to rub him out Geordi’s friend ends up getting vaporized instead. Geordi uses the experiment to restore his friend, who is horrified at the potential cloning device he made and with his argument Picard erases all the data, which inspires the negotiators to come up with a proper solution. (It makes more sense in the story.) The few who know of this incident agree to never speak of it again.
I found this one hard to follow. First you have all the technobabble surrounding the experimental transporter and the device planned to kill the negotiator, a Senator with political enemies. Then you have all the political discussions, which okay for Star Trek but still hard to really follow in comic form. It’s not all that interesting. It also feels like you have three different stories going on and while they link together well enough I still get the impression that they crammed three ideas together. I did like the art though as well as the ethical discussions.
In the backup story Scotty visits a rebuilt Enterprise-A and meets Lieutenant Lefler, who now works at the museum. (And yes, she’s still making laws.) However, Koloth takes over the ship and tries to kill Scotty for the times he sent tribbles into his engine room. (Yes, I count the animated series, so that’s two.) When his plans fail Koloth ends up in a one-on-one fight with Scotty and while he loses his honor is satisfied. The story ends with Koloth going off to hunt down the Albino, which really screws up the order in my collection.
This one I enjoyed a bit more. Not only do we get to see what Mr. Scott has been up to since his appearance in “Relics” but we get to see Lefler again, and learn she still has a crush on Wesley but has heard of him heading off with the Traveler. Fans with a more encyclopedic knowledge of the timeline can tell you if the chronology doesn’t work in this story but I found myself enjoying this story more than the main one.
Overall this was a good issue and one fans should look into getting. For all the babble the main story is classic Trek while the latter is a nice connection to the series. Get it if you find it.
