1322. Year Four, Issue 5PUBLICATION: Star Trek: Year Four #5, IDW Comics, December 2007
CREATORS: David Tischman (writer), Steve Conley (artist)
STARDATE: 5930.5 (during The Animated Series)
PLOT: Spock is aboard station Gemini to help run an experiment to create quark gluon plasma. It works, but creates a black hole-like singularity cloud that destroys half the station, kills everyone aboard but Spock, and threatens the Enterprise. As Kirk worries, Spock fires the station phasers at the system's star, creating a solar flare. This gives the Enterprise its cue to do the same, as the flare created a small window in which Spock could have beamed out. However, the station is destroyed by the singularity without Spock beaming out. It's Chekov who figures it out: Because of the time dilation around the anomaly, Spock may beam back at a later time. Kirk rushes to the transporter room to see his friend beam back as promised.
CONTINUITY: See previous issues (Arex).
DIVERGENCES: None.
PANEL OF THE DAY - Kirk's pick-up lines...
REVIEW: I've always found "space anomaly" stories in comics rather thin. There's a technobabble thing and it has a technobabble solution. On tv, these have usually been supplemented by a character-driven A-story, putting the anomaly in the background. In these comics, there's no room for a second story, so we're left with the technobabble thing. At least Tischman draws on proper science this time. The resolution makes sense, and the characters are written well. Arex gets a line, and Chekov's evolution as a science officer is explored. This is technically the best constructed story of the series, but it just happens to be the most boring as well. There's a comics-writing lesson in that.
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