873. Aspiring to be AngelsPUBLICATION: Star Trek #49, DC Comics, April 1988
CREATORS: Peter David (writer), Tom Sutton and Ricardo Villagran (artists)
STARDATE: 8988.9 (follows the last issue)
PLOT: As Kirk deals with the events of last issue's bachelor party - including "drying out" McCoy, Chekov and Scotty for a month, and informing Bearclaw that he is to be transferred - the crew of the "USS Renegade" is finishing off its massacre of a Klingon scientific outpost. The Enterprise arrives in time to save the last survivor, an albino simpleton who believes his name is Moron (he's been called that enough). The renegades, intent on causing friction between the Federation and the Klingons with their activities, kidnap Kirk and his party, at which point the two ships do battle. But the Enterprise has its hands tied when Kirk and his people are put out on the hull. A Klingon warship enters the system, the Renegade cloaks leaving its prisoners floating in space. The Klingons pick them up, but is content to return them to the Enterprise to go after the Renegade. Before they leave, the Klingon captain takes an moment to spit on the pacifist traitor Konom and what he assumes is Konom and Bryce's moronic deviant of a child...
CONTINUITY: Konom has heard rumors about The Enterprise Incident.
DIVERGENCES: That Klingon weapons research is conducted deep in Romulan territory is an odd assertion. The "USS Renegade", a Reliant-class ship, activates its cloaking device.
PANEL OF THE DAY - And then there was the time Sam Beckett leaped into Sulu and Al tried to convince him to have sex with a cat girl.
REVIEW: I'm not sure who to blame, but there are some odd pacing problems in this book. An elevator scene turned on its side so it would fit in an otherwise normal page. A dilated full-page moment of Moron sliding down a hole. That sort of thing. There's also a weird and obvious paste job on whatever "Captain Zair" used to be called. And Moron the Albino wasn't colored white in the previous issue, creating a continuity mistake. Otherwise, a good enough second chapter. Zair is a worthy foe with some interesting tricks up his sleeve. Bearclaw's arc is coming to a head (is he now dramatically obligated to die heroically?). It definitely seems like character development is being more tightly woven into the plot under David's direction.
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