“Yesterday’s” Comic> Star Trek Alien Spotlight: Borg

“Resisting our volleyball team is future. Prepare for humiliation.”

Star Trek Alien Spotlight: Borg

IDW Publishing (January, 2008)

WRITER: Andrew Steven Harris

ARTIST: Sean Murphy

VARIANT COVERS CO-ARTIST: Zach Howard

COLORIST: Leonard O’Grady

LETTERER: Chris Mowry

EDITOR: Chris Ryall

The Borg of the future have developed a new strategy: rewrite all of history so everyone was born Borg. To fight off the time wave Starfleet and Admiral Janeway (that still sounds wrong) plans to set off a counterwave back through time by blowing up a star with a warp core, part of what they call the Locutus Protocols. Geordi was almost assimilated earlier but the Borg implants don’t interact well with Geordi’s ocular implants, giving the Enterprise crew a look at their plan, while advice from Guinian helps Picard see a better solution. They go slightly back in time so Picard can rescue the girl who would become the Borg Queen that comes up with the idea and convinces the drone of the flaws in this plan and how in the end it will not achieve the goal of perfection they seeks. Deciding to wait until Picard gets past his imperfections to assimilate them the Borg opt not to assimilate the girl and leave both her and the Enterprise alone.

What they got right: The plot isn’t so bad. The Borg have messed with time travel before and there is at least some surface logic to the success of the plan. Picard uses his head and his history as Locutus to solve the problem where force would just make it worse. We also get an interesting idea for an assimilated version of Species 8472…

What they got wrong: …which they shouldn’t be able to identify on sight in the Alpha Quadrant unless someone on Enterprise-E is a former Voyager crew member. Speaking of which I still can’t believe that Janeway of all 24th century characters made Admiral before Picard or Sisko. I’m also against the idea of a Borg Queen but like Janeway’s promotion those aren’t the comic’s fault. The art is not that great to be honest. It isn’t terrible but I’m not a fan of the style used. The characters are too blocky in shape and facial expressions do not look good as a result. I will say that Picard agreeing to play with the girl until her mom gets back is a bit odd for Picard given his history with children, yet he doesn’t hesitate to say yes. Cute moment, though, and cute little girl the Borg almost assimiliated. Also, since the girl wanted to play princesses with her mom…let’s just not deal with that mental image. 😀

What I think overall: The story is a bit uneven in the science, which is the norm for time travel paradoxes, and the art doesn’t work for me. The ComiXology version I’m using for the review has all the variant covers, and I’m not a fan of variant covers. It’s an okay story but not a great one.