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.
70: WildStorm Comics, 2000–2001
In 1999, Deep Space Nine aired its series finale, “What You Leave Behind.” That two-hour tale,one of Star Trek‘s finest episodes, wrapped up a multi-season arc involving the Dominion War; the near-destruction of the Federation, Cardassians, Romulans, and Klingons; and the rise and fall of Gul Dukat and Kai Winn Adami, two of the show’s primary antagonists. It also saw the culmination of the lifelong journeys of Benjamin Sisko, the station’s human-Prophet commander, and Odo, its Changeling security chief.
Though an impressive achievement for both Deep Space Nine and the franchise, “What You Leave Behind” created something of a dilemma for those publishing licensed tales based on Sisko’s crew. Namely, how do you continue chronicling the adventures of the show’s beloved cast when the majority of its most popular characters—Sisko, Odo, Worf, and Miles O’Brien—are no longer aboard the station? For Pocket Books, that meant launching a new era of Deep Space Nine, and WildStorm soon followed suit.
The concept began with Pocket’s Avatar duology by S.D. Perry, which established a new path for the station’s inhabitants in a sweeping storyline set three months after the finale. These two books introduced the major characters who would be staples in the publisher’s Deep Space Nine line, including Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Simon Tarses (“Drumhead”) and Ro Laren (“Ensign Ro” and beyond, whose character arc recently concluded on Star Trek: Picard), as well as original characters Elias Vaughn, Prynn Tenmei, Thirishar ch’Thane, Sam Bowers, Taran’atar, and more.
WildStorm joined the relaunch with the four-part miniseries Deep Space Nine: N-Vector, written by K.W. Jeter and illustrated by Toby Cypress, Jason Martin, and Mark Irwin, as well as a four-issue mini titled Star Trek: Divided We Fall—The ST:TNG and ST:DS9 Crossover. The latter was scripted by Pocket editor John J. Ordover and novelist David Mack, with art by Andrew Currie, Michael Collins, Richard Bennett, David Roach, and John Nyberg, and it offered sequels to several episodes of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. As it happens, both titles centered around the spread of a virulent disease.
The landscape WildStorm and Pocket inherited was quite different from that depicted on TV. The Dominion War had ended and peace had been restored, while Sisko had vanished after discovering that his mother was a Prophet, as he took his place among those transcendental beings. He’d left behind wife Kasidy Yates-Sisko, their infant child—unnamed onscreen but identified as both a girl (Rebecca Jae) and a boy (Jonathan) in the books—and his adult son Jake. Meanwhile, Odo bid farewell to Kira Nerys and returned to the Great Link, with Kira succeeding Sisko as commander.
Meanwhile, O’Brien had returned to Earth to teach at Starfleet Academy, while Worf had relocated to Qo’noS as an ambassador to the Klingon Empire. Ro would replace Odo as security chief in the novels—but not right away, for Ferengi officer Nog was the acting security chief in N-Vector. Moreover, Julian Bashir and Ezri Dax became romantically involved, and Starfleet assigned the USS Defiant to Commander Vaughn. Elias would show up in Divided We Fall commanding that vessel, with Thirishar at his side, though as N-Vector would reveal, a Bolian named Tiris Jast first held his position.
In N-Vector, O’Brien is accused of having sabotaged the station and is arrested. It turns out he’s guilty, though he isn’t to blame since at the time he’d been infected with a sentient disease known as the N-Vector Viroid, which made him carry out the sabotage without his knowledge. As the story opens, Quark is the next infected, which hilariously causes him to hand out free drinks and interest-free loans galore, leaving him aghast and deep in debt. Romulan scientist Mos Senay helps Bashir contain the disease, which he’d secretly unleashed a year prior while assigned to the station.
N-Vector has few direct TV connections, other than some references to the finale. There is a notable tie-in, however, to Bashir having been genetically engineered by his parents (“Doctor Bashir, I Presume”), when Mos Senay tries to trick the viroid into entering the doctor so he can administer a serum. Since the disease is sentient, the Romulan reasons, it will find the doctor’s Augment body an effective enticement. However, he doesn’t know Julian is already infected, putting the viroid one step ahead of him. The best laid schemes of mice and Romulans, eh?
Divided We Fall is more firmly rooted in onscreen Star Trek, as it takes a deep dive into Trill society that holds up remarkably well even after recent developments in Star Trek: Discovery‘s “Forget Me Not.” Verad, an unstable Trill who’d stolen the Dax host in “Invasive Procedures,” returns as the leader of a terrorist group. Now sporting the surname Kalon, he has assembled likeminded “purists” who consider symbionts to be alien invaders insidiously controlling the population from within.
Verad pays a scientist to genetically engineer a retrovirus that will force a host’s immune system to kill its symbiont, eliminating joined Trills and rendering future joinings impossible. He then infects himself and transports from one major city to the next, resulting in a worldwide plague, and while the disease’s rapid spread offers an unsettling reading experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, the story is thoroughly engaging and one of WildStorm’s standout tales. Bashir and Beverly Crusher cure the population, of course, but a cornered Verad commits suicide—in the third issue, no less, which proves doubly effective since it’s unexpected for the primary villain to expire three-quarters of the way through the story.
The miniseries opens with Verad’s purists firing on a spacecraft containing Kareel Odan, whose love Crusher had rejected in “The Host” after Odan had taken female form. Kareel has a cure but fails to deliver it to her people before being shot down, and the host is fatally injured when her ship crashes. The symbiont is transferred to the Caves of Mak’ala (“Equilibrium” and “Forget Me Not”), where the worm heals in the cave’s pools.
In an intriguing development, Crusher briefly hosts Odan so she can learn about the cure, taking the intimacy of their prior relationship to a new level since she now has access to the worm’s lifetime of memories. She reflects on how twenty years have passed since the death of her husband Jack (as noted in “Encounter at Farpoint”), so when Odan receives a new host by story’s end—a handsome man named Kinjer who reminds her of Jack—Beverly kisses him goodbye, attaining closure for both relationships.
The situation is more uncomfortable for Deanna Troi, who communes with the symbiont and receives a flood of its memories—including, awkwardly, those of Riker (as Odan) having sex with Beverly back in “The Host.” Troi had been okay with the pairing at the time, for it was Odan whom Beverly was romancing, not her Imzadi. But Divided We Fall takes place after Star Trek: Insurrection, in which Will and Deanna rekindled their love, so experiencing Odan’s vivid memories of making love to his “Doctor Beverly” in Riker’s body leaves Troi more than a little unnerved, and understandably so.
Verad’s followers attempt to eliminate all joined Trills and all symbionts, enabling the writers to bring back Lenara Kahn, Jadzia Dax’s ex-lover from “Rejoined,” who nearly dies after the retrovirus disrupts the connection between Lenara and her symbiont. Jadzia is no longer alive by this point, but Ezri retains her predecessor’s fondness for Lenara and worries about losing her once again. Thankfully, the doctor duo save her life.
In addition to the above, the miniseries featured several minor tie-ins. After kidnapping Lenara, Verad demands five kilograms of weapons-grade protomatter (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock) as ransom. In a nod to The Next Generation‘s “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” the shuttle Garrett is named after Captain Rachel Garrett of the Enterprise-C (or possibly Harry Kim actor Garrett Wong). Meanwhile, Geordi La Forge describes a fire as igniting “faster than a twig in a Bersallis firestorm,” a callback to “Lessons.”
Ensign Kell Perim, an Enterprise-E officer from Insurrection, makes her comic book debut. Perim’s nature as a non-joined Trill, unestablished onscreen but mentioned both here and in Pocket’s Star Trek: A Time to… novels, proves beneficial since this makes her immune to Verad’s retrovirus. Unfortunately, it also means she gets little screen-time since she’s not in peril, as the writers had two full casts of characters to accommodate.
WildStorm’s forays through the wormhole were few, though enjoyable. An editorial from Jeff Mariotte in N-Vector promised additional stories would follow, but the publisher’s only other Deep Space Nine tale was Ben Raab’s “When the Stars Come A-Calling,” in the Star Trek Special. N-Vector was later collected alongside All of Me and Double Time in the graphic novel Star Trek: Other Realities, which featured a beautiful painted cover by John Van Fleet.
Next week, we’ll conclude our wild ride with a storm of comics based on Star Trek: Voyager. If you’d never thought you’d read about pirates, the Borg, Arthurian knights, and a planet-killing doomsday machine all in one place… well, you were mistaken.
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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