Star Trek: Boldly Go #8 - IDW Publishing

STAR TREK: BOLDLY GO No. 8, May 2017

Despite featuring the sort of ‘run of the mill’ plot that wouldn’t have looked out of place within the pages of a “World Distributors Limited” Seventies ‘Star Trek Annual’, Issue Eight of “Star Trek: Boldly Go” must still have pleased the majority of its readership with Mike Johnson and Ryan Parrott’s mixture of asteroid-based gunplay and Jefferies tube tribulations. In fact, the creative duo’s opening ‘salvo’, featuring James Kirk phaser-fighting his way onto the bridge of an assassin’s space shuttle is undoubtedly the highlight of this twenty-page periodical’s script.

Sadly however, this initially pulse-pounding, and subsequently engaging tale of “diplomatic disaster” is rather frustratingly ruined by the two-parter’s narrative resting upon a Starfleet cadet’s ability to mind meld with the dead body of the Romulan Ambassador. Admittedly, the Vulcan race’s ability to read the thoughts of comatose people is actually documented within the American television franchise itself. But never before has this ‘transference technique’ been shown to conjure up the thoughts and feelings of the dead before, and resultantly rather smacks of the collaborative writing team reaching out for a rather contrived plot device in order to help them lazily resolve their storytelling.

Just as bizarre is Shev’s amazingly quick, and utterly inexplicable relationship reversal with the Andorian Ambassador. In this adventure’s previous instalment it was made abundantly clear that the cadet’s father was far from happy with both his son’s “decision to attend Starfleet Academy” and the blue-skinned boy’s failure to seemingly put his family/race first. However, now his offspring has been found innocent of assassinating Joltair, the stern faced politician unaccountably states he no longer believes Shev to be a “fool” and for some unfathomable reason even begrudgingly acknowledges that perhaps there is some merit to the youngster’s chosen career; “I cannot say that I am in complete agreement… But you will always have a home on Andoria.”

Described by Group Editor Sarah Gaydos as a “guest artist” who “wraps things up with her dynamic style in a tale guaranteed to keep you guessing”, Megan Leven’s illustrations for this particular publication are certainly “cartoony”. Yet whilst such a label could well be (mis)construed as being highly ‘dismissive of the penciler’s drawing skill’, on this occasion it simply means that the action, whether it be Kirk acrobatically leaping from asteroid to asteroid on account of his "hours spent watching the women's Zero-G volleyball team at the Academy, or Spock's monotone discussions with the Romulans, is cleanly drawn and competently rendered.

The regular cover art of "STAR TREK: BOLDLY GO" No. 8 by George Caltsoudas