DC Comics's Star Trek Overview Part 4: Star Trek: The Next Generation (1988)

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I've got a double feature for you today. First up is part 4 of my overview of DC Comics's Star Trek comic book line where we'll take a trip back to 1988 to talk about their six issue Star Trek: The Next Generation mini-series. Then, I'll have a review of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline later today as well. Also, before I get into this post, I had intended on starting to watch Mighty Morphin Power Rangers season 1 this afternoon, after I post my Ready Player One review. But, there are a few movies that I want to watch and review before I can focus on watching the show, because this is a long journey I have ahead of me, and if I don't get to these movies now, I'm not gonna get to them until next year. First up will be Ready Player One directed by Steven Spielberg. So with all that out of the way, let's slingshot around the sun in our Galaxy-class starship and journey back to 1988. Let's get into it.

When Star Trek: The Next Generation was announced by Paramount Pictures in 1986, DC Comics got the comic book license for the show, as they already had the license for Star Trek (1966-1969) and the Star Trek movies from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) onward. However, because even though the comic wouldn't start being published until February 1988, Mike Carlin, who is well known for being the editor of the Superman comics during The Death of Superman, needed to start writing the comic about six months before the first issue would be published. So, "Encounter at Farpoint" hadn't even aired yet, and all he had to go on were character descriptions and some early scripts. Which is why all of the characters are not who they are on the TV show. In fact, this comic is probably where people got the idea that Wesley is obnoxious and can do the crew's jobs better than they can from, because wow, he is unbearable in this series. Particularly in this first issue. Which is where he has the most screentime.

Aside from the Enterprise-D, which is sometimes based on an earlier design that Andrew Probert drew, the artwork is pretty spot on. Unlike with the first Star Trek ongoing monthly series that DC published, which I covered in a previous post, all of the main sections of the ship, including the Bridge, the Battle Bridge, Sickbay and the corridors look like they do on the show, though the Transporter Room is a bit off, but that's mostly because the comics never got that right, even in the ongoing monthly TNG comic that DC published from 1989 until 1996. The only sections of the ship we don't see are Engineering, the shuttlebay, the cargo bay, and the Observation Lounge, though we do see Picard's ready room. Issue #2 is unique because it's the only Christmas themed Star Trek anything we've ever had. Of course the aliens in this issue are Grinches and are after Santa Claus's celestial spirit or whatever it's supposed to be.

Issue #3 is the first in a three issue Q story that has story elements similar to later episodes of TNG, particularly the season 3 episode, "Deja Q". And because the show hadn't aired when this issue was put together, the artist has Q wearing all of the outfits he wore in "Encounter at Farpoint" and then a Klingon uniform from the TOS movies, despite the fact that we wouldn't see Klingons, besides Worf, on TNG until near the end of the first season in early 1988.

One thing they tried to do with this series is give more for Tasha Yar to do, including adding to her backstory, which the early novels published by Pocket Books also tried to do around this same time. It kind of worked, but the focus wasn't on Yar as much as it could've been, so Carlin didn't add much to the character at all in these six issues. In an interview he did for Star Trek Magazine in 2007, Carlin did state that the two things he regrets most about this mini-series is their emphasis on Captain Picard being French, as he began writing the comics even before Patrick Stewart had been cast as the captain, and the lighter, almost silly, tone that the comic had in comparison to the TV show. Particularly when it came to the married couple he created, the Bickleys, whose race bicker all the time, especially when they're married to each other. That's always been the worst part of this mini-series for me.

You may have noticed that I haven't actually talked about each individual issue, aside from issue #2, due to the Grinch/Christmas thing. That's because all six issues form one continuous story as each issue leads into the other, resulting in the Enterprise-D arriving at the almost mythical planet of Faltos, which I'll talk about more with the next issue. Issue #5 is the only issue of this mini-series that I didn't have in single issue form. I got the other five issues at Ottawa Comiccon a number of years ago though I got rid of the single issues once I got the trade paperback edition that DC Comics published in 1996, shortly before the comic book license moved from DC back to Marvel.

Issue #6 has a story similar to "The Time Trap", which is an episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973-1974), where the Enterprise-D finds itself in an alternate dimension, where people such as the Klingons, and Bele from the TOS episode, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" where Frank Gorshin played that character, live together in peace, because the planet of Faltos only enters the main dimension every 64 years, and time moves much slower in that dimension.

I'm not sure why this series was only six issues. Carlin doesn't mention it in his 2007 interview with Star Trek Magazine, but I suspect it has to do with DC's revamping of both Star Trek comic book series, since the first issue of the ongoing monthly series was published at the same time as the first issue of the second TOS comic book series. Another possibility is that this mini-series was meant as testing ground to see if a TNG comic book series would sell as well as the TOS comic had been since 1984.

The mini-series was collected in trade paperback format in 1996, near the end of DC's Star Trek line. I remember seeing an ad for it in Star Trek: The Next Generation #72, which had the cover for issue #1 instead of the trade paperback cover that you see above. It's an interesting cover because only Picard, Riker, and Crusher are in their season 1 looks and neither Wesley nor Tasha are on the cover. Like most DC trade paperbacks from the '90s, the colours were touched up for the trade paperback release since it's printed on different paper from the old newsprint paper that the original issues were printed on. None of the colours were changed. They were just touched up a bit.

1988 was a major year for Star Trek comics as the original series that began in 1984 ended, and this first TNG volume happened. But more was to come as DC began implementing plans for two new series based on the movies and TNG that would start in 1989. So that's where we'll start next week.

Alright my friends, that's it for me for now. I'll be back soon with my review of Ready Player One. Later.