1095. SuspectPUBLICATION: Star Trek: The Next Generation #76, DC Comics, October 1995
CREATORS: Michael Jan Friedman (writer), Ken Save and Shephard Hendrix (artists)
STARDATE: 48319.4 (follows the last issue)
PLOT: Riker's old roommate, Investigator Campisi, shows up on the Enterprise after the murderer of a several of the ship's former chief engineers. She accuses the eminently likable Lt. Farrell who was on each engineer's ship and may be targeting Geordi. The real killer turns out to be Campisi, or rather someone posing as her. Her father was the Utopia Planetia engineer who was meant to run the ship on her maiden voyage when MacDougal got it instead. It destroyed him, and now his daughter is on a rampage. Riker clued in that it wasn't his friend and ambushes her just as she's about to kill Geordi.
CONTINUITY: Charles H. Logan was the jerk chief engineer at odds with Geordi in The Arsenal of Freedom. Other chief engineers killed include Sarah MacDougal (The Naked Now) and Argyle (first seen in Where No One Has Gone Before). Lt. Farrell appeared in Phantasms and later in Generations. Barclay makes an appearance, as does Captain Rixx of the USS Thomas Paine (Conspiracy).
DIVERGENCES: Farrell also appears in Generations. According to the books, Argyle's name was Michael, not Terence, and he was killed under different circumstances (NF: Making a Difference).
PANEL OF THE DAY - His neck is broken, but what's HER excuse for being so misshapen?
REVIEW: A highly unlikely mystery with pretty ugly art. Among the stuff that was hard to swallow, we have... A lieutenant who transfers to each of the target engineers' ships. A human villain who can 1) emulate a person she can't have known too well enough to fool even a close personal friend (laughably, Riker's only clue is that she mentions colors but is supposed to be color-blind), 2) is resistant to Troi's Betazoid powers, and 3) knows a surgeon who can change her face multiple times a year. She's also pretty crazy, and reveals her entire plan without prompting so that the good guys have a "confession". It's drivel, and an especially sad way for various characters with potential (in the extracanonical sense) to be killed off (mostly off-panel). One for other writers to ignore.
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