1328. Past ImperfectPUBLICATION: Alien Spotlight: Borg, IDW Comics, January 2008
CREATORS: Andrew Steven Harris (writer), Sean Murphy (artist)
STARDATE: 56344.5 / 41903.2 (after Insurrection / between Conspiracy and The Neutral Zone)
PLOT: In the far future, the Borg have finally achieved perfection. They cause a tachyon wave that changes the past so that all DNA everywhere is assimilated. People are retroactively born as Borg. Echoes of that change hit the present as aimless implants. Geordi survives the implants and imparts the Collective's plan to Data. Admiral Janeway's plan is to detonate a transwarp core in a star, nullifying the wave and possibly wiping the Borg from the timeline. Picard proposes using time travel to send the Enterprise-E back to a critical point, preventing the the Borg from starting the wave in the first place, but maintaining the timeline. They return to the assimilation of a Federation colony where a little girl is meant to become the Queen that thinks up the plan. Picard convinces the Borg that this is all a big paradox and that it can't work in the end. They agree and predict that he will one day join them as Locutus. The girl and her flawed future plan is not assimilated, preventing the wave from occurring.
CONTINUITY: The planet assimilated in the past was the colony the Enterprise visited in The Neutral Zone. Kathryn Janeway was shown to be promoted to Admiral in Star Trek: Nemesis (one of its many sins). Species 8472 was a thorn in the Borg Collective's side in Scorpion, but have been assimilated by the perfect Borg. Picard remembers conversations he has had with Guinan and the Borg Queen. The Borg's tachyon wave was initiated by the Omega molecule (The Omega Directive). Captain Amasov appears; he was mentioned as having been at Wolf-359 by Janeway in Scorpion.
DIVERGENCES: If that colony is really the one that's just a gaping hole in The Neutral Zone, how can the little girl be saved? (Presumably, Picard brought her to the present with him.)
PANEL OF THE DAY - Plug and play
REVIEW: Janeway?! Well, if a Borg story is going to include massive amounts of technobabble and paradoxes that will give you a splitting headache if you spend any time on them at all, Janeway's the girl to get. Oh, and make her plan a dangerous and borderline genocidal one. So yeah, the story's logic probably doesn't hold water and unnecessarily padded with the death of a couple Starfleet ships. HOWEVER! Sean Murphy's art more than makes up for the story's weaknesses. We've been enjoying his work on Joe the Barbarian lately and it's just as gorgeous here even if the subject matter is totally different. And the comic does have a lot of cool ideas... Geordi back in a VISOR, a time traveling Borg hypercube, assimilated Species 8472, and Picard's flashback with Guinan, to name only the most memorable. The Borg don't have a culture worth investigating, so Harris does well to make their agenda the threat and focusing on Starfleet characters instead. Overall, it's a good comic even if the story doesn't really work.
Comments