Star Trek 1412: Captain's Log: Pike

1412. Captain's Log: Pike

PUBLICATION: Star Trek - Captain's Log: Pike, IDW Comics, September 2010

CREATORS: Stuart Moore (writer), J.K. Woodward (artist)

STARDATE: Unknown (just after The Cage, then 12 years later)

PLOT: After the Talos IV mission, Pike's Enterprise returns to Earth, but is attacked near Jupiter by unknown aliens. Pike, still at crossroads after the Rigellian massacre and the latest events on Talos, beams over to the enemy ship with Yeoman Colt and a small security complement. They head for the engine room and cause a warp core breach, but only he and Colt are beamed off alive. He is left wondering if it's all worth it, while Colt walks away with a promotion. Twelve years later, Fleet Captain Pike visits Captain Colt's training ship, the USS Exeter. The same aliens as before are found to be trying to spark Jupiter into a new sun as revenge for being rejected for Federation membership. The Exeter takes damage and Pike runs down to engineering to see the cadets safe. He is caught in an explosion that severely maims him. He is then on confined to a wheelchair and unable to speak. Colt kisses him and asks if he thought it was all worth it, because she believe that for her, it was. After she has left the room, a single beep is heard.

CONTINUITY: The Enterprise crew from The Cage all appear (except the doctor). Starfleet want to debrief them after the events of that episode. 12 years later, Pike is Fleet Captain and gets maimed here as per The Menagerie. Colt captains the USS Exeter (The Omega Glory).

DIVERGENCES: The letterer duplicated one of Spock's speech bubbles so that he says the same long speech twice in a row. 12 years on, Colt's captaincy puts the lie to the idea that women can't be starship captains (Turnabout Intruder). The first half of this comic would appear to occur at the same time as some stories in the Early Voyages comics series.

PANEL OF THE DAY - That fateful moment
REVIEW: I can't believe no one had done Pike's accident yet! While the aliens are bizarre and their plan interesting, the heart of this story is actually Pike's relationship with Colt. Now, I was a fan of Marvel/Paramount's Early Voyages series, and of its version of Colt especially. It appears that Moore is actually writing the same character here, taken with Pike, yet with far more ambition than The Cage would give her credit for. The two parts of this tale, though 12 years apart, are strongly linked by both the threat and the regrets that Pike has had throughout his career. It's true that all we've seen of him has been failure. In The Cage, he was responsible for a massacre and fails to save Vina from her fate. In The Menagerie, we learn of the terrible accident that has befallen him. His is a life of sacrifice, his own as well as others, and sometimes the result of his errors. Those final pages are incredibly touching even if we know about his eventual happy ending, and Woodward's watercolors make the issue even more special.

As I wait for more Star Trek comics to be released, I here end my almost four-year-long daily Star Trek reviews. It ends where it began, with Pike in the captain's chair. Not that it's truly over. It never is. I'll continue the series, albeit irregularly. There are still a lot of Star Trek books I never got to touch (and there's no way for me to do one a day and keep a job/hold on sanity), and IDW will continue to publish comics, of course. Look to Sundays to sometimes feed your Star Trek hunger.

Though it's strange to leave the regularity of such a long project, I'll be honest with you: I won't really miss it. And perhaps you won't either. While television episodes and films are seen by many, comics and novels are more of a niche and assuredly failed to interest as many readers. At certain times, they became a chore for me as well, especially back when I was doing one novel a week in addition to some of the more disappointing comics stuff. On the whole though, it's been a fun ride that I think I've taken as far as I can - from TOS to TAS to TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise, and then through Gold Key, Marvel, DC, Malibu, Wildstorm and IDW.

I won't be doing Trek as often, which may make it more fun for me when I do, and I'll be replacing it with something that's as close to this blog's roots as the monster franchise was. See another post this very day for the announcement. If that ends your association with this space, I'll say Live long and prosper. If it isn't, then let's prosper together. The voyage continues...