Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Wednesday. Today we'll be talking about the Annuals for DC Comics's Star Trek: The Next Generation comic book series. I've only read half of these issues so I won't be able to provide much detail for three out of the six issues. In other words this could possibly be a short post. Let's get into it.
All of these annuals came out in conjunction with the annuals for the TOS comic book series that was running concurrently with this series, so publication details are exactly the same as the TOS annuals. Based on the cover I can tell that TNG Annual #1 is a Q story, written by Q himself, John De Lancie, which makes sense since George Takei (Sulu) wrote the TOS Annual #1 that came out at the same time as this issue. I actually don't mind it when an actor from the Star Trek shows and movies writes a Star Trek novel or comic since they know the characters pretty well. Especially when they were playing the characters.
Annual #2 is a Riker story and has something to do with him meeting an old childhood friend according to Memory Alpha. This is another one that I've never owned or have found anywhere. If I do find it and end up picking it up then I'll do a full review on it.
Up next is Annual #3 and this is the first TNG Annual I ever got. In it Geordi goes to a planet that he'd been to as a young ensign as a friend of Geordi's from that world, reports that his mother is acting strange for some reason and so are many people on his world's ruling council. It turns out they've been infested by the Yeerks....excuse me, I mean the alien parasites from the TNG season 1 episode, "Conspiracy". These parasites were never seen on any of the shows after that one episode and I don't think they've appeared in any novels or any other comic book series. I don't have this issue anymore so I haven't read it in years. I remember liking it.
Annual #4 is my favourite of the six annuals. It has Trills, Romulans, Andorians, a saucer separation, Picard being forced to be host to a Trill criminal's symbiont, and Riker once again trying to outmaneuver Picard as he did in "The Best of Both Worlds Part II" when Picard was assimilated and operating as Locutus. It also sees the return of Ambassador Odan, the Trill we met in the season 4 episode, "The Host". Now this issue came out in 1993, before too much of Trill society had been developed and fleshed out on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. So there are some discrepancies in this issue that would be ignored once the Trill took a more active role on DS9. I still have this issue in my collection.
Annual #5 is the last issue I got when I was a kid. I don't have it in my collection anymore but I did enjoy it. After the Enterprise-D investigates an abandoned space station near an unstable natural phenomenon, Data is killed when the phenomenon strikes the unshielded station and the Enterprise. The rest of the issue is Geordi trying to repair Data and the ship since most of the Enterprise's systems were knocked offline during the blast that disrupted Data.
Annual #6 is the final issue of the annuals. It's also one I didn't have when I was a kid. The story is a direct continuation of the Convergence storyline started in Star Trek Annual #6. Of all the Star Trek annuals I haven't read this one and TOS Annual #6 are probably the ones I want to read the most. Just because it's a TOS/TNG crossover that doesn't happen all that often in Star Trek in general.
That's all for the TNG annuals. Next week I'll be talking about the three TNG Specials and the following week I'll be wrapping up this overview with miscellaneous Star Trek comic book series that DC published between 1984 and 1996 and don't fit into either of the main series, TOS or TNG. I'll also be back with a comic book review. So until then have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you later. Take care.
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