Star Trek: The Q Conflict (2019) Comic Book Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing very well. I know I've been doing alot of Star Trek content on the blog lately, but that is my favourite franchise of all time, and even though it's only two weeks into the series, I am really enjoying Strange New Worlds, so I'm on a bit of a Star Trek kick right now. With that out of the way, I'm going to be talking about Star Trek: The Q Conflict. It's a six issue comic book mini-series published by IDW Comics in 2019. It's also a big crossover between TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager that pits each crew against Q, Trelane (from the TOS episode "The Squire of Gothos"), the Metrons (from the TOS episode, "Arena"), and the Organians (from the TOS episode, "Errand of Mercy"). There will be minor spoilers, so if you haven't read this series then do so before you read this review. So let's dive into it.

Reading this series I began to realize that it's not really supposed to fit into continuity. The reason being is that several details are included throughout the book that don't fit in where the characters come from. For example, in the final issue, when O'Brien and Bashir are talking at the Q Conflict Peace Treaty signing O'Brien mentions Bashir's enhanced abilities. However, Q brought the DS9 crew from just before Worf joined the crew in the season 4 premiere, "The Way of the Warrior" and Bashir's enhanced abilities don't come to light until the fifth season episode, "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", which is after they change over to the TNG movie/DS9 seasons 5 through 7 uniforms that Picard and his crew wear in this storyline. So it's little things like that where the overall Star Trek continuity doesn't matter, it's just meant to be a fun little what if storyline. That might turn some fans off of this mini-series, but personally, I like that approach to it.

So the premise is that the Q Continuum has decided to put the Metrons, the Organians, and Trelane in their place in the hierarchy of god-like beings. So Q (played by John De Lancie on the TV shows) starts a war with them, which ends up spilling out into our galaxy, resulting in stars going supernova before they're supposed to and killing thousands of people. Naturally the Enterprise-E, under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, is sent to investigate AND to help evacuate as many Federation colonies in the Beta Quadrant as possible before their stars explode. When the crew discovers Q's grid barrier that hasn't been seen in Star Trek since the first season of TNG, Picard angrily calls for a meeting with Q and that results in Picard, Kirk, Sisko, and Janeway, along with their entire senior officers, except for the Doctor (played by Robert Picardo on Star Trek: Voyager), as well as Quark (for some reason), being transported to the Continuum for a tournament.

The crews are all split into teams. Trelane coaches team 1 which consists of Kirk, McCoy, Worf, Jadzia Dax, Tuvok, O'Brien, and Quark. Q coaches team 2 which consists of Picard, Spock, Crusher, Seven of Nine, Odo, La Forge, and Uhura. Team 3 is coached by Ayelborne of the Organians and consists of Sisko, Chakotay, Data, Sulu, Bashir, Troi, and Kim. And finally, team 4 is coached by the Metron and consists of Janeway, Riker, Kira, Scotty, Paris, Chekov, and Torres. Each round has particular goals, but each one gets more dangerous than the last, and the crews can't rely on Q to keep his end of the bargain if they don't play his game.

Basically this is the kind of Q story that I would've read in the novels published by Pocket Books in the '90s and early 2000s. It would never have worked on the TV shows, even today in the era of movies like Avengers: Endgame and comic book based TV crossovers like the Arrowverse's Crisis on Infinite Earths, because it's too big and would require too large of a budget, even for a movie. Which is why I love comic books and novels for things like Star Wars and Star Trek. They do the stuff that the movies and TV shows just can't afford to do. Which is awesome.

I really like that Q and the others split up the crews the way they did. It gives everyone an advantage because these crews are the best Starfleet has to offer. And it also prevents Kirk and his crew from being at a disadvantage since the original Enterprise isn't as advanced as the Enterprise-E, the Defiant, and Voyager are. Especially in the issue where they fight a Borg ship in order to capture the Borg Queen for Trelane's menagerie. Which sounds like the most bizarre thing ever, willingly boarding a Borg ship to capture the Borg Queen, but this is what happens when you try to stop highly advanced beings with delusions of godhood from destroying the universe.

There are so many cameos and easter eggs in these six issues. Trelane throws a Planet Killer from "The Doomsday Machine" into a game of Capture the Flag: Starship Edition, so that was fun to watch, Q pisses off the Prophets so Q2 (Corbin Bernsen's character from TNG's "Deja Q") and Amanda Rogers (from "True Q") have to restore the entire universe, and then Wesley and the Traveler show up to help the crews put and end to Q's games. And then Q throws every enemy creature at them. Breen, Borg, the parasites from the TNG first season episode, "Conspiracy", Mugato, Salt Vampires, Talosians, Rigellians (from "The Cage"), Excalbians, Q's Napoleonic Pig Soldiers from "Hide & Q", and Melkotians are all thrown at the crews when they enter the final battle of the mini-series. And then like I said, the Borg, the Planet Killer, the Iconian Gateway, and so many other things from Star Trek's history appear in this mini-series, it's insane.

The artwork is a bit static and unoriginal in places. There are several points where a well known character, such as Q or La Forge or even Picard, are in the same poses they were in in a particular episode or movie or they make a particular facial expression that they made in an episode, so it's like the pencilers, David Messina, and Silvia Califano traced over a still shot from whatever episode or movie they took the image from, but for the most part, the art is pretty great. The ships look screen accurate (compared to what was done in the early DC Comics runs anyway), and all of the Bridges look screen accurate too. Even the characters's faces look exactly like their actors, just a bit more cartoony than the actors would look on the shows.

Every character in this book makes sense, except for Quark, because he actually doesn't do anything on the 1701. In fact he doesn't even have that much dialogue either. Both times he speaks, he complains. The first time is to ask why he's even there since he's not in Starfleet, or the Bajoran Militia, and the second time to ask why he's joining in in the final battle since he's not a fighter. I love Odo's reply, "You're going because we're all going and if I leave you here, you'll just steal this ship blind!" as if Odo has no faith in Quark, which he shouldn't because Quark WOULD steal a starship blind if he had the opportunity. They assembled on Voyager since that's where the Iconian Gateway technology is located and most ships didn't have it's bioneural circuitry and no other Federation starship had it's Borg technology either. But, because Quark is there for some reason, he doesn't actually have anything to do through the entire book. 

I loved this book. It's everything I want in a Star Trek crossover comic that is entirely set in the Star Trek Universe. The Tiptons, who have been the lead Star Trek comic book writers since 2007, did an amazing job with this story. It was being nostalgia without forcing it, and there's enough stakes without being unrealistic about it. It's just too bad it came out too late for the franchise's 50th anniversary in 2016 and too soon for it's 55th anniversary in 2021 because this would've been a fantastic anniversary crossover series. I highly recommend that you pick this trade paperback up if you're a Star Trek fan. Because it's fantastic. I completely missed it in single issues when it was coming out in 2019. In fact, I didn't even know that it existed until sometime last year.  

Alright guys that's going to be it for me for today, but I will be back soon with more posts very soon. So until then have a wonderful rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.