1360. InevitabilityPUBLICATION: Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Last Generation #4, IDW Comics, February 2009
CREATORS: Andrew Steven Harris (writer), Gordon Purcell, Bob Almond and Terry Pallot (artists)
STARDATE: Unknown (follows the last issue)
PLOT: Picard's mission was a bust, and furthermore, Data was left behind. Now the Resistance has no ship, and no way to compute the slingshot back in time. Sulu's Excelsior to the rescue! They arrive just in time and head for the sun. They are waylaid by Klingon forces led by Worf. To retrieve Data, Sulu goes out in a shuttle and goads Worf into beaming him in for a duel. As he's beamed aboard, the Excelsior beams Data out. Worf and Sulu fight until Sulu plants his rapier into Worf's only good eye and Worf plunges his bat'leth into Sulu. His dying act is to use to remotely ram his shuttle into Worf's ship, destroying it. Picard takes command of Excelsior and takes it on its journey through time...
CONTINUITY: See previous issues. Also in Picard's cell are Shelby (The Best of Both Worlds), Barclay, Alyssa Ogawa, Hugh whose chances aren't good without prosthetics (I, Borg) and a Samantha (Wildman?) who was just killed. Cells are mentioned to be led by Elias Vaughn (Deep Space Nine II novels), Janeway (M.I.A., of course), Jellico (Chain of Command) and Red Squad. People who died for the cause include Nechayev, Ross (both recurring admirals in the standard continuity), Hansen (either "Seven" or one of her parents), and Paris (either Tom or his father). Deanna Troi is Worf's concubine, secretly working for the Resistance (Worf kills her).
DIVERGENCES: Barclay's hair is colored too dark. A Negh'Var-class ship is mistakenly called a bird-of-prey.
PANEL OF THE DAY - As a stupid question...
REVIEW: Though the name-dropping gets a bit much in the first few pages, it's fun. Now, just who is that black-haired guy that keeps getting lines but looks like no one I can identify?! Good to see Troi, finally (though I admit to not noticing her absence until now), and her role as a perverted Imzadi to Worf is an interesting if criminally brief one. She dies defiant and on her feet at least. The big star of the show, however, is Sulu. Always one of my favorite Trek characters, he goes out with a bang. Brave and clever, at what must be 100+ years old, he fights a Klingon warrior to a standstill, with shocking consequences. Now it's all about going back and undoing this nifty little parallel universe. I'll kinda miss it.
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