Star Trek 1418: Infestation

1418. Infestation

PUBLICATION: Star Trek: Infestation #1, IDW Comics, February 2011

CREATORS: Scott and David Tipton (writers), Casey Maloney and Gary Erskine (artists)

STARDATE: 7493.5 (TMP era)

PLOT: Prior to this issue, a zombie hive-mind from another dimension used a portal to get to this one. Kirk, Spock, McCoy and a shuttleload of redshirts arrive at Calibus VII where McCoy is to be honored. They find a deserted colony until the zombies come out to get them. One by one, the security team members are killed and turned into mindless undead. The three officers destroy the shuttle so the infestation can't get off the planet and send a subspace message to the Enterprise, which is due in 5 days. They head to a facility that still has power, where they make their last stand...

CONTINUITY: McCoy is being awarded a medal for work he's done with Frontier Medics Program (Leonard McCoy: Frontier Doctor mini-series). Kirk calls a General Order 7 on the infected planet (The Cage).

DIVERGENCES: None.

PANEL OF THE DAY - No he's not!!!
REVIEW: Well, this is an odd project. A crossover event that runs through four of IDW's licenses, the others being Transformers, G.I. Joe and Ghostbusters. And it seems to tap into a fad that's come and gone twice in the last decade already. While there is potential in a Star Trek zombie apocalypse, the issue fails to deliver on that promise. For example, I was overjoyed to see McCoy wielding a shovel through part of the comic, and was all set to show a battle shovel moment, but no, he never gets to use it (maybe in #2). Similarly, there's a creepy zombie deer in there, but it doesn't attack the landing party, just gets jumped by other zombies. Every time it seems to head for a cool sequence, it shies away from it. Now, I don't mean to come down too harshly on Infestation. The characters are written well. The Tiptons get the chemistry right, not surprisingly. And the tension you expect in a zombie story works for the most part. Still, an odd duck, if not quite of the same magnitude as the X-Men crossovers.