801. The Haunting of the Enterprise!PUBLICATION: Star Trek #5, Marvel Comics, August 1980
CREATORS: Mike W. Barr (writer), Dave Cockrum and Klaus Janson (artists)
STARDATE: 7417.4 (follows the last issue)
PLOT: Turns out the Klingons weren't trapped in that haunted house floating in space, they'd created it! It's an ambush and they capture Spock to interrogate him, beaming him back to their ship, while Kirk and crew save the young woman and bring her to theirs. The Klingons reveal everything to Spock - they captured a horror film archivist and placed him in a machine that could generate lethal illusions from his mind. The girl is a projection of his dead wife, and the alien prisoner aboard the Enterprise, loyal to the Klingons, has a transmitter implanted in his head. Spock melds with the archivist and sends a message to the ship, now under siege from monsters, to destroy the girl. McCoy does so, and the shock makes the archivist pit his monsters against the Klingons instead. He and Spock escape with the technology.
CONTINUITY: TMP-era Klingons.
DIVERGENCES: None, though the Klingons never made use of this technology again (nor Star Fleet, as far as we know).
PANEL OF THE DAY - Weapons of the Klingon Empire Part I - The chair'leth!
REVIEW: Mike Barr takes over from Marv Wolfman, which only inspires dread in those of us who remember Batman and the Outsiders. It's odd that the ending of #4 is immediately revealed to be a lie as #5 opens... Barr didn't like Wolfman's outline? In any case, the art remains the real star here, while Barr's scripting seems far less interesting than Wolfman's. There's a lot of "tell-don't-show" for one thing, the alien prisoner's role is somewhat wasted... and a horror film archivist?! Really?!? Imagine the Klingon plan with a fan of Meg Ryan's romantic comedies instead.
Comments
Will you elobarate on this at some point? Is this a universally held opinion that I have missed.
The original BATO came out when I started collecting in 6th grade and I seem to remember the series fondly. Loved the first cover with Batman telling off the JLA. Jim Aparo and (later) Alan Davis handling the art chores.
Maybe I should pull them out of storage and see how the have aged?
If the Klingons had used Meg Ryan movies, I have no doubt that the machine would have exploded from illogic a la Landru.
Just came across your blog today. Love the Trek comics reviews.
I'm in the process of reading all the Trek comics as research for my upcoming book STAR TREK: A Comics History.
Its interesting to see how close your comments reflect my own views on a lot of the stories.
Great work.
Alden: I kinda jumped the gun on Nightmare Fuel, didn't I?
Alan: Couldn't you have published it a year sooner? It would have helped a LOT! Just kidding, thanks for the kind words and good luck on the project.
If only vehicles could run on that sort of poison.
As I recall, this was about the time Marv Wolfman was fired off the book. He decided to pull all his scripts from Marvel, and Mike Barr had to wrap everything up with no outline. Wolfman soon after start The New Teen Titans.
I still am angry with Mike Barr for writing Batman out of The Outsiders after saying how proud he was to be writing a Batman book from issue #1.
Wow...read it all and....can I use the fact that I was 12 as my defense for my first post? Or that I haven't read it in 25 years?