1341. The Enterprise Experiment, Part 2PUBLICATION: Star Trek: Year Four - The Enterprise Experiment #2, IDW Comics, May 2008
CREATORS: D.C. Fontana and Derek Chester (writers), Gordon Purcell and Terry Pallot (artists)
STARDATE: Unknown (follows the last issue; first pages at some point before)
PLOT: While Spock dephases a number of crew members with the transporter, Kirk must tangle with the female Romulan Commander who has found the phase cloaked Enterprise. She sends an armed party through the open hanger doors to get the cloak and prevent Starfleet from out-pacing the Romulan Star Empire. Kirk and crew try to hold them off in a round of weightless fighting in the ship's corridors. He then sends the phased ship through the nearby pulsar, evading the Romulan warbird before deactivating the cloak, dephasing everyone and making quick work of the boarding party. On the other side, the ship is attacked by the Cheron, a D-7 class Romulan cruiser. The Enterprise warps out very close to the pulsar, surviving its gravitic stresses, but the Cheron is not so lucky and is destroyed. Back at station K-12, a work crew gets busy removing the cloak from the ship's engine room.
CONTINUITY: See previous issue (The Enterprise Incident, Arex, phase cloaks). The first few pages show a prisoner exchange between Sarek (Journey to Babel) and the female Romulan Commander. Subcommander Tal (The Enterprise Incident) still serves under her. The Starfleet distress beacon found by the Romulans looks just like the Valiant's in Where No Man Has Gone Before. The inventor of the phase cloak is a genius who works with the Guardian of Forever (The City on the Edge of Forever). The specialized team that removes the cloak from the Enterprise comes from Section 31 (Inquisition).
DIVERGENCES: Section 31: Cloak tells a slightly different story about the Romulan Commander's release, on that does not involve Sarek.
PANEL OF THE DAY - Sulu was not the first.
REVIEW: Some fine action, in great part thanks to Purcell and Pallot, throughout the comic, both in and out of the ship, but it's the story's mysteries that will keep me reading. (Ok, ok, and the fact that I haven't given myself much of a choice with this blog and everything.) The techie main plot is taken care of in tech fashion, but with some daring-do as well. What's next for The Enterprise Experiment is more vague and more interesting. There's a link to the Guardian and a scientist working with the ol' doughnut. Possibly the Romulans will hit it next? There's also Section 31's involvement, which fits other fiction based on the covert group (they were behind both The Enterprise Incident and Pegasus, for example). Are they to stick around or was this just a continuity button on the chapter? Not a perfect issue, as the prologue is not particularly set apart from the rest of the story and confuses its timeline, but still a solid action adventure piece.
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