1005. Shadows in the GardenPUBLICATION: Star Trek: The Next Generation #6, DC Comics, March 1990
CREATORS: Michael Jan Friedman (writer), Pablo Marcos (artist)
STARDATE: 43201.8 (follows the last issue)
PLOT: Troi's fears are vindicated when Dahlia confesses to Geordi that the planet's radiation didn't just heal them, it also turned them into psychic vampires. The colonists that didn't survive weren't killed by the planet's upheaval, but by the ones that did. No longer able to resist her own hunger, she attacks and kills a crew woman. When Geordi and Worf get to her, she has been assaulted by the other vampires, who Worf shoots, and soon dies from her loss of energy.
CONTINUITY: None.
DIVERGENCES: None, but the stardate seems very close to Booby Trap, another episode dealing with Geordi's love life, which obviously isn't informed by this story at all.
PANEL OF THE DAY - Geordi, you pathetic sucker.
REVIEW: Not the resolution I was expecting, but not one that surprises me either. Bit fantastical, really. There's always a danger in comics to make the action too superheroic compared to the source material, and shots of buxom babes shooting energy beams out of their hands might just cross the line. A touch high on the melodrama level, which is as much the fault of the art as it is of the writing, Geordi's anguished face pretty extreme at the end there. The art feels a bit rushed throughout, in fact, with characters often stricken with giant head syndrome. The kid I pictured pointing yesterday turns out to be more than an extra, as Data becomes a kind of big brother to him. It's a good Data vehicle in the style of Hero Worship without the trauma (and perhaps featuring a romance with the mom?), though I wonder how long it can last before Friedman is once again forced to skip ahead through time.
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