Star Trek 803: Tomorrow or Yesterday

803. Tomorrow or Yesterday

PUBLICATION: Star Trek #7, Marvel Comics, October 1980

CREATORS: Tom DeFalco (writer), Mike Nasser and Klaus Janson (artists)

STARDATE: 3708.2 (follows the last issue)

PLOT: As a lethal "Vega cloud" bears down on a planet with a small alien settlement, Kirk and crew try to evacuate them. Strangely, they seem to have been expected as thousand-year old statues of them testify. Because the atmosphere is hard to beam through, the ship tries to destroy the cloud at the risk of all lives aboard. Meanwhile, McCoy notices that the aliens are in evolutionary flux, and one of them becomes temporally transcendental and heads into a tunnel. The landing party follows and finds super-advanced technology Spock can use to disperse the cloud... just as the time-seeing aliens had once foretold.

CONTINUITY: Scotty is still haunted by the loss of two crew members in the transporter in The Motion Picture.

DIVERGENCES: The stardate is off-era.

PANEL OF THE DAY - Spock likes his Atari 2600
REVIEW: Tom DeFalco's one-off isn't a bad paradox story, and you might see proto-Prophets in the Andreans. Mike Nasser's uneven anatomy and frequently shocked expressions is balanced by heavy Neal Adams influence in the panel layouts, and held together by Janson's always vibrant inking.