Star Trek 1154: Hearts of Old

1154. Hearts of Old / War Games

PUBLICATION: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine #18, Malibu Comics, January 1995

CREATORS: Laurie S. Sutton / Mark Altman (writers), Leonard Kirk, Jack Snider, Richard Emond and Larry Welch / Rob Davis and Terry Pallot (artists)

STARDATE: Unknown (between Second Skin and Defiant) / Unknown (before Caretaker)

PLOT: Jadzia gets a visit from the man she almost married if it weren't for the fact he was against joining. She is distracted, but her old boyfriend also attracts the attention of Odo by hanging out with a female Klingon and asking about mercenaries. Soon, there's a firefight on the station and it is revealed he is a bounty hunter, one of the good guys. Dax makes her peace with him and he leaves. In War Games, neither Starfleet nor Cardassian personnel can find the Maquis names Chakotay, so a call is put in to Janeway.

CONTINUITY: War Games features the Maquis, Gul Evek and Admiral Nechayev (The Maquis) and serves as a prologue to the Voyager TV series (with mentions for both Chakotay and Janeway).

DIVERGENCES: Instead of "unjoined", Dax refers to being "single".

PANEL OF THE DAY - Spicy is the variety of life.
REVIEW: Laurie Sutton delivers another good script, which is once again too short. She writes a Dax story that could have been the comics equivalent of Rejoined, but the story quickly moves to an action set piece, leaving no time for the emotional stuff. The flirtatious relationship between the Klingon and Odo, and Quark's obvious longing for Dax are all played up in a way that they could have served as fun subplots to the main story had it gone longer. Nice humor too, and attractive, detailed art. The back-up is an oddity, being a few pages of prologue for Voyager - not the comic, but the tv series. It's fine, but there's not much meat to it.