Star Trek 1274: Splashdown, Part Two

1274. Splashdown, Part Two

PUBLICATION: Star Trek: Voyager - Splashdown #2, Marvel Comics, May 1998

CREATORS: Laurie S. Sutton (writer), Terry Pallot and Al Milgrom (artists)

STARDATE: Unknown (follows the last issue)

PLOT: Voyager is still sinking and taking in water (and nasty seafood). An injured Seven reaches sickbay while B'Elanna attempts to section off the flooded parts of the ship and restore the shields. From the bridge, Janeway tries everything to slow the ship's descent, from reversing the environmental systems, to beaming out the water, to powering up the anti-gravs, to the thrusters. Eventually, the ship stabilizes and stops going down. They detect where the drones' commands were coming from and send the ship's aerowing to investigate. The underwater ruins still have atmosphere, and Tuvok thinks the script on the walls inside looks familiar. But before he has time to translate them, the power systems come online...

CONTINUITY: Joe Carey and Vorik appear. They make use of the aerowing shuttle, which appears on Voyager's design as its own captain's yacht.
DIVERGENCES: The aeroshuttle was never used on the show, but that's a problem with the show. A Commander Sherwood appears, which seems too high a rank for us not to know who she is.

PANEL OF THE DAY - Will they have any air LEFT?
REVIEW: This issue uses technobabble right. We know Starfleet ships have all these systems, and Janeway uses as many of them as possible in order to address the sinking problem. I'm sure some crew members will be unhappy that their furniture got beamed out with the bathwater, so to speak, but hey, it's a crisis. And that's very well conveyed here. The situation is dire, and every new solution brings its own set of problems. It's really the kind of thing that could never be filmed for television (flooded decks, anti-gravity, oh my) but remains grounded in the show's reality. Character moments aren't forgotten, especially the tense relationship between Seven and B'Elanna. The appearance of the aerowing is an unexpected and very cool surprise. It always irked me that the Enterprise never used the Captain's Yacht (from the Technical Manual), and with the Delta Flyer, Voyager ignored its own design even more. The visit to the alien ruins is more standard fare then the disaster movie elements, so we'll see how that goes.