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Tags: comics, dvds, star trek
If all goes well, tomorrow I will have Star Trek: Legacy in my hot little hands. Unless it’s delayed again. Whether it is the best Trek game remains to be seen, but it’s certainly the most ambitious–following a story that spans through every Star Trek era and featuring the voice work of William Shatner (Kirk), Patrick Stewart (Picard), Scott Bakula (Archer), Avery Brooks (Sisko), and Kate Mulgrew (Janeway). Yup, five captains and a D.C. Fontana-storyline–I haven’t been this excited about a Trek game since Secret of Vulcan Fury. Wait a minute, that was vaporware. Well then, maybe Bridge Commander … nope, I didn’t buy one of the five copies sent to South Florida and now the Ebayers want $75 for it. Damn Ferengis.
Anyway, while I’ve been eagerly awaiting Legacy, I’ve been getting my Trek on with the following items.
Star Trek: The Animated Series From 1973-4, the voyages of the original Enterprise crew (well, after Pike) continued in a series of twenty-two half hour episodes. Presumably set during the Enterprise’s fifth year, this cartoon series benefits from the original cast’s voice work (minus Chekov) and top-notch sci-fi writers. Animation allowed for greater visual effects than The Old Show: aliens aren’t just variations of forehead appliances and new worlds are truly strange, but budget limitations are apparent from reuse of stock footage. More apparent, especially after watching several episodes in a row, is the recycling of music. However, The Animated Series feels like classic Trek, regardless of the canon debates. The half-hour episodes have great pacing without losing secondary characters and the majority of the episodes aren’t dumbed down for kids.
Star Trek: The Key Collection Key stands for Gold Key, the comics company that published sixty something Star Trek comics from 1967-1979. These have been collected by Checker Books in five volumes over the last two years (with more to come). For a weird version of Star Trek check out the earlier volumes. The transporter room is a glass walled teleportation chamber. Kirk and Spock get the most face time, with Bones and a blond Scotty filling in for the rest of the bridge crew. The bridge itself is something out a submarine movie, full of knobs and radar panels, with headset-wearing crew monitoring the radio/television signals and occasionally relying on the ship’s periscope. Klingons are generic bald bad guys and proper Trek terminology and procedures fall by the wayside–an overly familiar (and surprisingly touchy) Spock is quick to call the Captain Jim and leads the crew in destroying all life on a too-alien planet.
Star Trek: Shinsei Shinsei Tokyopop brings a newer take on TOS, introducing the crew of the NCC-1701 to manga-land. Like most anthologies, it hits and misses, but a cool story connects Kirk’s crew to Picard’s most hated enemies. Other stories include an ancient gender war that engulfs the Enterprise (introducing a separating saucer) and a rather peculiar (and poignant) story which finds a robot attacking the Enterprise with a giant sword. The Next Generation will get their due in a future volume.