1445. Assimilation2 Part 6
PUBLICATION: Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who: Assimilation2 #6, IDW Comics, October 2012
CREATORS: Scott and David Tipton (writers), Gordon Purcell and J.K. Woodward (artists)
STARDATE: Unknown (follows previous issue).
PLOT: The captain of the Potemkin is turned into Conduit, a Borg voice-box who helps the Enterprise figure out how to stop the Cybermen who have shut down, and will soon absorb, the Collective. They first go get gold (poisonous to Cybermen) from Naia VII (issue 2), then the Doctor and his companions go back in time to the Battle of Wolf 359 to get a copy of the Borg executive library wiped by the Cybermen.
CONTINUITY: See previous issues (Borg, Cybermen, Delta IV, USS Potemkin, Wolf 359). Wolf 359 reminds the Doctor of "Bad Wolf" (Doctor Who Series 1). Rory believes you can cross your own timeline based on the events of The Christmas Carol. The Doctor comes face to face with Locutus right in the middle of The Best of Both Worlds.
DIVERGENCES: None, except the anomalies from the Whoniverse that have appeared in the Star Trek universe.
PANEL OF THE DAY - Paying tribute to the studio.
REVIEW: Oh (Time) Lord, more talking. The protagonists meet up with a Borg enclave and they talk. They bring Conduit to their ship, and they talk some more. They go to Naia VII to get gold, and the Doctor talks the natives into giving up the very thing their currency is based on... Wait a minute, can't they just REPLICATE some gold? Gold is, after all, completely worthless in the Federation for just that reason. They're jumping through hoops just to extend the talking, looks like. Worse, the Doctor doesn't talk like the Doctor. His arguments to the Naians are good ones, but they have none of his eccentricity. They sound like Picard's words. It's only when the Doctor walks back into the TARDIS that he starts talking anything like how he does on his own program. It's also where things get a little more exciting. We're using time travel to go to one of TNG's most memorable events, and the Doctor comes face to face with Locutus' laser pointer. And there aren't a ton of speech bubbles obscuring the lackluster painted art. So it looks a little like TNG is the problem here, and its tone is dragging Doctor Who down. Are we DONE with exposition now? I mean, I'm accepting this never previously mentioned executive library MacGuffin just so we can move ON.
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