1443. Assimilation2 Part 5PUBLICATION: Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who: Assimilation2 #5, IDW Comics, September 2012
CREATORS: Scott and David Tipton (writers), Gordon Purcell and J.K. Woodward (artist)
STARDATE: Unknown (follows previous issue).
PLOT: There's a lot of talking, and then the Doctor takes Picard on a TARDIS trip to the future where the Cybermen have taken over everything.
CONTINUITY: See previous issues (Guinan, Borg, Cybermen). The events of The Best of Both Worlds and The Eleventh Hour are recounted. In the future, the Cybermen will convert the Klingons, the Vulcans, Starfleet Academy, the Slitheen and the Judoon.
DIVERGENCES: None, except the anomalies from the Whoniverse that have appeared in the Star Trek universe.
PANEL OF THE DAY - Cyber-Judoon. 'nuff said.
REVIEW: This series has really run aground. After a full issue of mission briefings, here's another that just people talking in rooms. We're at issue 5 and the characters are still explaining who they are (most heinously, there's a three page recap of The Best of Both Worlds) and who their enemies (not actually seen in the, so-to-speak, flesh) are. Haven't we covered this already? And if the writers think it wasn't done sufficiently yet, why hasn't it? This isn't your usual decompression (by which the action is slowed down), it's a diversion (in which the action is delayed). I thought they might have something early on when the Doctor suggested they talk to the Borg, which is a perfectly Doctorish thing to do, with Picard in the role of those bureaucratic types who never listen to reason (except this time we understand his reasons), but it goes nowhere once they start explaining things the target audience for this comic would undoubtedly know already. Even the trip in the TARDIS fails to evoke any original reactions or dialog, so we're left with the Doctor TELLING (bla bla bla) Picard about the worlds the Cybermen will assimilate, because I can't believe they're looking at Cyber-Slitheen etc. from the TARDIS doors. Kind of funky to see some Trek and Who races in Cyber-drag, but it's too little too late. The art, in any case, continues to lack luster, with its soft and awkward photo referencing, in which, for example, Beverly Crusher and Amy Pond could be interchangeable (whose idea was it to dress Amy in blue?). By the end, Picard has decided to follow the Doctor's recommendation and speak to the Borg, but did he really need the Doctor to do the right thing? How many more issues of this can there be?
Comments
Ode to the Troughton/Pertwee era of overlong padded stories, perhaps?
This book had the unfortunate aspects of both shows; the talky, talky, no action of season five of Next Gen, and the far-too-quirky-and-ever-so-satisfied-with-Moffatts-storytelling of Nu-Who.
If this had been done with, say, classic Trek and Tom Baker's Who, they wouldve been up and at 'em by now!!!!!!
Or I would have gone with the multiple iterations aspect all along (not just the 4th/TOS aside).
6th and Voyager, 7th and DS9, 10 and TNG, 8th and movie era, 2nd and Enterprise, Cushing and Mirror Universe, 11th and Abrams Trek... One to an issue in some kind of connected tale.