1374. Mission's End, Issue 4PUBLICATION: Star Trek: Mission's End #4, IDW Comics, June 2009
CREATORS: Ty Templeton (writer), Steve Molnar (artist)
STARDATE: 5958.4 (follows the last issue)
PLOT: Kirk taken out by a skull fracture forces Cassady to take command, though she feels ill-equipped to make the big decisions Spock requires of her. With the crawlers shown to be sentient, the situation on Archernar IV has turned political and the Prime Directive applies. The crawlers who took a piece of the planetary generator return to their hive as that generator starts to go critical, and while McCoy's team tends to their wounds, they activate the piece of technology, creating a strange null singularity they worship as the "Eye of God". Aboard the Enterprise, Moore is captured, but he's called in his Orion friends which soon surround the starship with a fleet. Kirk wakes up and immediately jumps into action, defying the Prime Directive and boarding a shuttle to go rescue McCoy. Spock knows the thing to do is to follow his captain's orders...
CONTINUITY: See previous issues (Section 31). Arex (TAS) is still a member of the crew.
DIVERGENCES: See previous issue (stardate).
PANEL OF THE DAY - He finally got her into bed.
REVIEW: The penultimate issue is where you get all your pieces into place for the finale, and that often means not all that much happens. And while that's true here, Templeton makes the issue breathe with strong character moments. McCoy forces a crewman to abandon plans of escape so that he can fulfill his Hippocratic oath. Cassady reflects on her career and why she isn't cut out to command a starship. Spock is ready to do the logical but not heroic thing, until Kirk wakes up and changes everything for him. Moore continues to defy analysis - was the "section" he mentioned in issue 2 NOT Section 31, or is he manipulating events on a greater scale than is fathomable? And do the spider-people really not know their crawlers are intelligent beings? Many questions and cliffhangers are to be resolved in the next issue, so even without huge happenings, issue 4 turns out to be pretty exciting.
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