Star Trek Comics Weekly #147

An ongoing discussion of how comics provide prequels, sequels, and tie-ins to Star Trek episodes and films. Read the past installments.

147: IDW Publishing, 2020

This column is belatedly catching up with the Star Trek comics published at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. As 2020 progressed and the world became a bleaker place in which to live, the types of stories that IDW was telling noticeably shifted, with Star Trek: Year Five mining real-world politics to protest the rise of the fascistic and bigoted MAGA movement. Last week’s installment, for instance, discussed a sharply satirical Harry Mudd take on Donald Trump.

While socially relevant stories have always been Star Trek’s bread and butter, it was nonetheless a pleasant reprieve when IDW invited the prolific Scott and David Tipton (Klingons: Blood Will Tell, Alien Spotlight, Intelligence Gathering, Mirror Images, Spock: Reflections, Fool’s Gold, Captain’s Log, Burden of Knowledge, Star Trek/Doctor Who, The City on the Edge of Forever, and Mirror Broken and its sequels) back to the Trek bullpen for a tale set in Deep Space Nine’s sixth season. The result was Too Long a Sacrifice, a well-crafted noir-type detective yarn that steered away from the real world to focus on a murder spree during the Dominion War.

Edited by Chase Marotz, the miniseries was beautifully illustrated by Greg Scott, with stellar covers by Ricardo Drumond and James Kenneth Woodward. Despite bearing stardates between those of the episodes “One Little Ship” and “Honor Among Thieves,” flashbacks to the Battle of Betazed firmly set Too Long a Sacrifice later in the sixth season, after the events of “In the Pale Moonlight.” As stardate snafus go, though, this one’s quite minor compared to DC’s inaugural The Next Generation miniseries, which (through no fault of the comic creators) featured the wrong season’s stardates.

Garak and Julian Bashir nearly die when the Bajoran-owned coffee shop Lavin’s Eatery is bombed. The explosive device is packed with darts made of rodinium, an element introduced in The Original Series’ “Balance of Terror.” Several Bajoran, Ferengi, Benzite, and Nausicaan customers die in the blast, creating a diplomatic crisis for Ben Sisko. After shop owner Lavin Meryn accuses her rival Quark of the crime, Odo and Worf find components of the explosives among the Ferengi’s cargo, seemingly confirming his guilt.

The security officers investigate the murder of Bajoran bureaucrat Keidan Nri, who had been a collaborator during the Cardassian occupation. After more Ferengi are murdered as well, Betazoid security expert Retlaw assists Odo in identifying the killer. The two detectives clash over their progress, until Retlaw sees images in Lavin’s mind of her brother’s execution during the occupation. He realizes the cook had blown up her own shop to kill Ferengi customers and Garak, that she had assassinated Keidan and his Ferengi associates, and that she had meant to frame Quark for the crimes. Once exposed, Lavin tries to murder the bartender before the detectives apprehend her.

Too Long a Sacrifice has a lot going for it and is well worth picking up from both a writing and art standpoint. It spotlights Odo’s detective expertise, effectively contrasts his methodical fact-finding approach with Worf’s aggressive style, and introduces a truly memorable guest character in Retlaw. It gives Garak and Bashir a lunch date, four years before Lower Decks would finally make them a romantic couple in the episode “Fissure Quest.” And it’s all wrapped up in a set of eye-catching covers. Still, there’s not much else to say about it from the standpoint of this column’s focus on prequels, sequels, and tie-ins. Even though it’s set during the Dominion War, the miniseries is a standalone tale only peripherally connected to that conflict.

Retlaw laments that his world suffers occupation like Bajor once did. Betazed’s dilemma is not an integral plot point, yet it leads to a savvy tie-in to Pocket Books’ Star Trek continuity. Retlaw discusses Sentok Nor, a newly built Cardassian station orbiting Betazed, featured in the Next Generation novel The Battle of Betazed, by Susan Kearney and Charlotte Douglas. There was a time, back when DC Comics (and later WildStorm) had the Trek license, that Pocket’s novels and the comics enjoyed a closer connection than they tend to these days. The Sentok Nor callback recalled that earlier time, making one wish the publishers were still closely aligning their storytelling.

There’s a clever connection to “The Infinite Vulcan,” an episode of The Animated Series rarely referenced outside of Lower Decks, yet it’s a connection easy to overlook if you’re not overly familiar with the 1970s cartoon. Specifically, Retlaw shares his name with that of the retlaw plant, native to Phylos. As obscure as that might sound, the homage may well have been intentional, for the retlaw is poisonous, just as Retlaw is investigating poisonings. Incidentally, the word “retlaw” is “Walter” spelled backwards, a sly self-reference by episode writer Walter Koenig.

It may also have been intentional with regard to Too Long a Sacrifice, since Retlaw is drawn to resemble Marlon Brando. Among the Godfather actor’s most famous film roles was Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, from Francis Ford Coppola’s cinematic masterpiece Apocalypse Now (1979). Having witnessed the horrors of the Vietnam War, Kurtz committed atrocities to punish suspected double-agents—which, in Too Long a Sacrifice, is mirrored in Lavin’s actions and driving motivation. Coincidence? Possibly. A stretch? Maybe. Even so, it adds some extra subtext to this satisfyingly noir-y story, so if it’s all mere coincidence, it’s certainly a happy one.

This column admittedly took too long a hiatus, and for that I apologize. But with audacious comics like Too Long a Sacrifice among the offerings, I’ve continued to add to what has become too long a comic shelf. Next time, we’ll step away from IDW to examine the unlicensed Star Trek: Audacious, which provided several prequels, sequels, and tie-ins. Hopefully, it won’t be too long a wait.

Looking for more information about Star Trek comics? Check out these resources:

• 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 authored numerous books and essays for IDW, BOOM, DC Comics, Topps, Dark Horse, Sequart, Lucasfilm, Paramount/CBS, Titan, and more. His anthology Musings on Monsters: Observations on the World of Classic Horror (with Lou Tambone) was nominated for a Rondo Award for Book of the Year; his prose anthology Planet of the Apes: Tales from the Forbidden Zone (with Jim Beard) received multiple Scribe Award nods; and he co-edited (with Dean Mullaney) IDW’s Eisner Award-winning Star Wars: The Classic Newspaper Strips collections. Rich edited Eaglemoss’s Star Trek Graphic Novel Collection; cowrote Magnetic Press’s Planet of the Apes Role-Playing Game; and has penned licensed Star Trek, Star Wars, and Planet of the Apes fiction. He has written about other pop-culture franchises as well, including Swamp Thing, Hellblazer, Watchmen, Stargate, Red Dwarf, Batman, Godzilla, and more. He has 25 years’ experience as a magazine editor and currently works in academia.