An ongoing discussion of how the comics provide prequels, sequels, and tie-ins to the Star Trek episodes and films, soon to be a book from BearManor Media. Click here to view an archive of this article series.
68: WildStorm Comics, 2000–2001
WildStorm’s Star Trek comic line spanned each television show from The Original Series through Voyager with only one exception—The Animated Series—but the bulk of its output was related to Star Trek: The Next Generation. This made sense marketing-wise, as Jean-Luc Picard’s crew had breathed new life into the TV franchise and were at the time the stars of the Star Trek theatrical films.
This week, we’ll look back at WildStorm’s four-part The Next Generation miniseries Perchance to Dream, from writer Keith R.A. DeCandido, illustrators Peter Pachoumis and Lucian Rizzo, and cover artist Tim Bradstreet, as well as the hardcover graphic novel The Gorn Crisis, written by the husband-wife team of Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta, with eye-popping interior and cover art by Igor Kordey. The miniseries offered tie-ins aplenty to episodes of The Next Generation, while the graphic novel presented a direct sequel to one of the 1960s show’s most beloved tales.
Perchance to Dream was excerpted in a black-and-white advance called the WildStorm Star Trek Sampler, along with Star Trek: All of Me (discussed last week) and Star Trek: Voyager—False Colors (to be discussed in the coming weeks). In addition, an exclusive three-page preview of both Perchance to Dream and False Colors was packaged with a limited-edition release of Activision’s Star Trek: Hidden Evil computer game.
In the miniseries, set between “All Good Things…” and Star Trek: Generations, the Enterprise-D attends a presidential inauguration on Damiano, where bigoted radicals plot to assassinate the new governor due to her sexual orientation—because (gasp!) she has only one romantic partner! The Damiani have three genders, which go by the pronouns “he,” “she,” and “it,” and most couplings are in fact triplings. It’s fitting to reread this miniseries in the 2020s, when the Star Trek franchise is strongly embracing queer characters, and with the push for LGBTQ rights making headlines worldwide, particularly in the United States due to the GOP’s inhumanly homophobic policies.
Worf is assigned to protect the incumbent ruler from the terrorists, who view her as a pervert for embracing monogamy and have targeted her for assassination. He discovers explosives similar to those used during a recent Subytt-Kressari war, drawing connections to two episodes of Deep Space Nine. In “The Homecoming,” the Subytts were involved in smuggling defective isolinear rods to Bajor, while the Kressari were said in “The Circle” to be commercial traders of botanical DNA.
Worf’s investigation brings numerous other TV tie-ins as well, for after he thwarts multiple murder attempts, the radicals punish the Enterprise crew for interfering. The terrorists launch a telepathic weapon called a Choya, designed to drive the Starfleet officers insane by triggering bad dreams and hallucinations causing them to relive negative past experiences. It begins when Data activates his dream program (“Birthright” and “Phantasms”) and experiences a nightmare of the Enterprise-D crashing, and of feeling alone and terrified.
Data likens his dream anxiety to his experiences in multiple episodes, including his possession by Ira Graves in “The Schizoid Man” and an Ux-Mal criminal in “Power Play,” as well as Q making him laugh uncontrollably in “Déjà Q” and Lore’s Borg cult forcing him to feel anger in “Descent.” He shouldn’t be able to have anxiety, he points out, since he hasn’t yet installed the emotion chip he’d retrieved from Lore in “Descent,” so it’s clear that something peculiar is going on. In fact, his concerns delay his installing the chip, foreshadowing his eventual decision to do so in Generations.
Worf, meanwhile, has problems of his own. The Choya gives him disturbing visions of Mikel, a youth who’d died of a broken neck after he and the Klingon had bumped heads during a soccer game on Gault, according to Deep Space Nine‘s “Let He Who Is Without Sin….” He also sees the “ghost” of Marla Aster, who’d perished under his command in The Next Generation‘s “The Bonding”; hallucinates K’Ehleyr dying in his arms and then his vengeful slaying of Duras, from “Reunion”; and feels the pain of the large cannister that fell on him and broke his spine in “Ethics.”
As a result, Worf does the unthinkable: he declares himself unfit for duty and asks for help, collapsing in sickbay. (When your alien telepathic dream weapon can even break Worf, you know it’s working well.) Others in the crew fare just as badly, each revisiting their own traumas. Deanna Troi, for instance, dreams of her son Ian dying in “The Child” and of losing her empathic abilities in “The Loss,” two of her most emotionally vulnerable moments on The Next Generation.
Meanwhile, Will Riker sees his father Kyle (“The Icarus Factor”) denouncing him for being a “total failure as a son,” whereas Geordi La Forge envisions failing to save his mother Silva, who went missing in “Interface” and was never seen again. In short, the Choya incapacitates the crew by playing a double-length greatest-hits album of their deep-seated fears, regrets, and anxieties as established on TV. From a tie-in perspective, it’s a treasure trove. But it’s Picard’s dreams that provide the most powerful tie-ins.
Picard endures his father Maurice (“Tapestry”) calling him a “terrible disappointment” and Meribor (“The Inner Light”) berating him for failing to save her planet, Kataan. Plus, thanks to the mind-meld he’d shared with a certain Vulcan (“Sarek”), he relives the ambassador’s many regrets. Specifically, the weapon causes Jean-Luc to recall Sarek and Amanda Grayson being informed of Spock’s death following the battle with Khan in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Under normal circumstances, these memories alone would be enough to crush a person’s spirit, but the circumstances in this tale are hardly normal. The situation just gets worse from there.
In an astute commentary about how often Picard has had his mind violated, Beverly Crusher observes, given his mind-meld with Sarek, his having received a lifetime’s worth of memories as Kamin of Kataan, and his assimilation by the Borg as Locutus (“The Best of Both Worlds”), that the captain would qualify as having a multiple personality disorder. Why? Because the memories of Sarek, Locutus, and Kamin remain submerged in his mind, potentially waiting to reassert themselves. He is, in essence, four individuals combined.
It’s a fascinating observation on Crusher’s (and DeCandido’s) part, and it provides a path to nullifying the Choya’s effects and thwarting the radicals, for it just so happens that the weapon is vulnerable to those with MPDs. That means Picard, with help from his three alter-egos, is the only one who can save the day. Therefore, he mind-melds with Doctor Selar—who, despite being featured only in a single episode, “The Schizoid Man,” tends to show up in a lot of comics—to access the trio’s memories and deactivate the Choya.
Incidentally, Data contains the memories of 411 Omicron Theta colonists, per “Silicon Avatar,” and thus would seemingly qualify as well, yet no one mentions it. That persona combination has since increased with the creation of Android M-5-10 (Star Trek: Picard‘s “The Bounty”), who now contains the memories and personalities of not only Data and presumably the 411 colonists, but also Lore, B-4, Lal, and Altan Soong. No wonder he requires so much therapy. That is one messed-up automaton.
When it comes to Sarek and Kamin, that proposition poses little problem. One’s a respected diplomat, the other a flute-playing optimist. Neither is a threat (well, other than to Sarek’s own children), but for Locutus it’s another matter. That aspect of his personality was created specifically to oversee the assimilation of humanity, so letting Locutus loose is more than a little foolhardy. As shown in “Family,” Star Trek: First Contact, and Picard‘s first season, the Locutus experience profoundly changed Jean-Luc, and those memories remain at the forefront of his mind. So if you predicted Locutus would try to seize control and subjugate the others, you guessed correctly.
In fact, the Borg aspect metaphorically murders the Kamin aspect, erasing all memories of Kataan, but Jean-Luc gets the drone persona under control by channeling the same inner strength that allowed him to endure Gul Madred’s torture without breaking in “Chain of Command.” (There is a lot of compartmentalized trauma-baggage in this guy’s grey matter.) Thankfully, the Sarek aspect revives Kamin’s memories, enabling Picard to keep the planet’s legacy—his inner light, if you will—alive. With the Choya deactivated and the radicals arrested, the inauguration takes place without further incident.
Radicals are also at the core of The Gorn Crisis. As one might expect from the title, the graphic novel served as a sequel to The Original Series‘ “Arena,” which introduced the reptilian warriors of the Gorn Hegemony—here identified as the Gorn Empire, which could constitute a continuity error or it could simply be that the government has changed in the century since the era of James T. Kirk. Either way, it’s fast-paced and lavishly illustrated, and it’s one of Anderson’s and Moesta’s better licensed works.
Marketing for The Gorn Crisis had claimed the book to be the couple’s first Star Trek project, but that was an error since they’d previously written the novel Highest Score (in which the Gorn had also appeared) under the pseudonym Kem Antilles, referencing their popular Star Wars work. Despite the stardate provided in the graphic novel, the story appears to take place simultaneous with the Deep Space Nine episodes “Call to Arms” and “Sacrifice of Angels,” due to the status of the Dominion War.
With the war going badly, Starfleet seeks an alliance with the Gorns, but a violent sect called the Black Crests, led by Warlord Slessshh, mounts a coup and tries to retake Cestus III, the planet around which the Gorn-Federation conflict centered in “Arena.” Riker works with a disgraced Klingon crew to reinforce another base under siege, offering compelling and amusing scenes reminiscent of his onscreen team-up with the Klingons in “A Matter of Honor,” while Data bests Slessshh in hand-to-hand combat, after which the defeated warlord gives the alliance a chance.
In the century that has passed since Kirk battled the Gorn captain, the Hegemony/Empire has ceased its expansionist aggression. Not all Gorns accept this change, though, and some wish to see their civilization become more warlike. Now that the Dominion War has left the Federation weakened, the Black Crests seize the distraction as an opportunity to strike. Showing just how formidable Gorns can be, Slessshh slaughters the current rulers and even, gruesomely, their unhatched heirs.
One might be tempted to accuse The Gorn Crisis of portraying the reptilians as more brutal and bloodthirsty than they were in “Arena,” in which the true villains were not the Gorns but rather the humans who’d encroached on their territory and were thus perceived as invaders. There are three things to keep in mind, though: First, Slessshh’s followers are a radical sect. Second, he proves himself capable of honor when he leads his people into a new unified front against the Dominion. Third, and most importantly, the substantial changes made to the Gorns’ nature on Strange New Worlds retroactively validate this story’s depiction of their animalistic brutality.
The Gorn Crisis is a solid episode sequel and one of WildStorm’s better Trek titles. Next week, we’ll continue to explore the publisher’s The Next Generation line, after which we’ll move on to its Deep Space Nine and Voyager lore, followed by Tokyopop’s Star Trek mangas. Then, at last, this column will reach current license-holder IDW. From the standpoint of prequels, sequels, and tie-ins, there will be a lot to talk about.
Looking for more information about Star Trek comics? Check out these resources:
- My ongoing column for Titan Books’ Star Trek Explorer magazine
- The Complete Star Trek Comics Index, curated by yours truly
- The Star Trek Comics Checklist, by Mark Martinez
- The Wixiban Star Trek Collectables Portal, by Colin Merry
- New Life and New Civilizations: Exploring Star Trek Comics, by Joseph F. Berenato (Sequart, 2014)
- Star Trek: A Comics History, by Alan J. Porter (Hermes Press, 2009)
- The Star Trek Comics Weekly page on Facebook
Rich Handley has written, co-written, co-edited, or contributed to dozens of books, both fiction and non-fiction, about Planet of the Apes, Watchmen, Back to the Future, Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Hellblazer, Swamp Thing, Stargate, Dark Shadows, The X-Files, Twin Peaks, Red Dwarf, Blade Runner, Doctor Who, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Batman, the Joker, classic monsters, and more. He has also been a magazine writer and editor for nearly three decades. Rich edited Eaglemoss’s Star Trek Graphic Novel Collection, and he currently writes articles for Titan’s Star Trek Explorer magazine, as well as books for an as-yet-unannounced role-playing game. Learn more about Rich and his work at richhandley.com.
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