890. Q FactorPUBLICATION: Star Trek: The Next Generation #3, DC Comics, April 1988
CREATORS: Michael Carlin (writer), Pablo Marcos (artist)
STARDATE: 42125.7 (follows the last issue)
PLOT: The Enterprise encounters an apparently empty alien ship. Boarding it, the away team is attacked by invisible men, something that sends Tasha into a catatonic state (she seems to recognize something from her homeworld). As the ships prepare to fight, Q shows up goading Picard to show his aggression. Picard turns the tables on Q and makes HIM lose it. Picard then ascertains that the ship is manned by harmless humans Q has manipulated into being there. Though the situation is resolved, the Q Continuum seems to have taken the saucer section...
CONTINUITY: Q was last seen in Hide and Q. He uses some of the same costumes (Renaissance, radiation suit) he did there. Saucer separation.
DIVERGENCES: Again, stardate puts it in the wrong season. Deanna still a precog. Q's captain uniform is yellow.
PANEL OF THE DAY - What Crusher was doing while Tasha Yar lay drooling...
REVIEW: If you're going to do magic-as-science stories, might as well use Q. It may be a good thing that TNG's only villain on record at this point was a god-like being. For Carlin, I mean. So this story's a little stronger even if it relies on yet another badly explored punchline ending. The cliffhanger draws your attention away from that. Picard is strongest against Q, the verbal sparring at least approaching what we saw on television. Certainly better than the scene where he's a hall monitor, though I don't begrudge Tasha the character development. Tasha's background was never sufficiently explored in canon, so those elements remain interesting. Generally, the characters aren't as off-model as they've been. The art, however, is still a mess. Marcos' awkward posing reaches new levels of contortionism. He also makes mistakes - when a character is called Taylor in the script, that is not your cue to make her an alien, and beaming four people aboard doesn't justify a crowd of seven appearing.
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