Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today I'm going to be talking about Star Trek: The Next Generation, published by DC Comics from 1988 until 1996 for a total of 96 issues across two volumes including Annuals and Specials and how they were able to tell stories that weren't possible on the TV show due to the limitations of a late '80s and early '90s TV budget. So let's get into it.
Star Trek: The Next Generation began as a comic book series in early 1988, around the time that the show's first season was beginning to wrap up. Written by Mike Carlin, who would go on to edit DC's entire line of Superman titles, this series was a six issue mini-series set between the episodes "Encounter at Farpoint" and "The Naked Now". It also has some...unique additions to the TNG mythos that aren't explored anywhere else in the franchise. I might review this series issue by issue at some point since I have the entire trade paperback collection. Speaking of which, the first time I ever found out about this six issue mini-series was in an ad for the trade paperback collection that appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation #72 (1995). Even though the collected edition has a different cover, the ad used the cover of the first issue of the series (shown above).
In 1989 DC Comics commissioned an ongoing monthly series for TNG. The first issue of this series took place sometime during the second season as Riker has a beard, Geordi and Worf are in Operations Gold rather than Command Red, Wesley is at the helm, and Doctor Pulaski is present while Doctor Crusher isn't. I've never read the early issues of this series before. In fact, I hardly ever come across any issue from before #31 whenever I come across DC's TNG comics at comic book sales. If I do it's an issue from somewhere in the 20s. I've actually come across the early issues of both TOS comic book series that DC published in conjunction with the TNG books more often than the early TNG issues. Which is crazy.
As you may know if you've followed my blog for any period of time, my first introduction to Star Trek TNG comics was Star Trek: The Next Generation #31, which was the second part of a two-part semi-follow up to the second season episode, "The Outrageous Okona". I say semi-follow up because the only element from that episode who appears in this issue is Captain Okona himself. But it was the first time I realized that the comic would follow up with characters and situations that appeared on the show, but never returned. However, the scope of what the comic was doing got bigger.
From issues 39 to 44, the series did a six-part story arc where the Enterprise encounters the Death Star, gets attacked by a race of Crickets, with the saucer section getting transported to a far off sector of the galaxy and have to find a way home while the stardrive section is attacked by the Crickets. Okay, so it's not actually the Death Star, it's just a transportation device that's the size of Earth's moon, and the Crickets are actually known as the Sztazzan, who had previously destroyed the USS Grissom (not the ship from Star Trek III), with the loss of all hands except for Lieutenant Terry Oliver, who now happens to be serving on the Enterprise as backup Operations Officer. Picard chooses to separate the saucer and during the battle with the Sztazzan, both a Sztazzan ship and the saucer section are transported across the galaxy.
We actually get appearances from several people who showed up on the show. Alexander, Mot the Barber, Chief O'Brien and Keiko, Lieutenant Burke from "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II" in season 4, Jenna D'Sora from "In Theory", also in season 4, Lieutenant Solis from "The Arsenal of Freedom" in season 1, and Robin Lefler from "Darmok" and "The Game" in season 5. And obviously the saucer separation sequence is a bonus since we only ever saw it on the show three times due to budget restrictions, which made it unfeasible to use the sequence more often. That's why the comic book medium is so ideal for Star Trek, because you can do things that you can't do in a movie or on TV. Especially back in the '90s when they were stretching the budget for the massive space battles on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I'm also wondering if the producers took inspiration from this story arc for Star Trek: Voyager when they came up with the premise of the show.
The reason being is that in numerous interview Rick Berman, Michael Piller, and Jeri Taylor have all said the concept for Voyager came about because they thought of all the episodes of TNG where the Enterprise got flung into the far reaches of the galaxy and had to find a way to get home by the end of the episode. Except, I can only think of three episodes where that actually happens. The first is "Where No One Has Gone Before" from season 1, where the ship gets hurled into different galaxies and the Traveler helps them get home again. The second is "Q Who?" from season 2, where Q sends the ship 7,000 light years from Federation space, and into the path of the Borg, and the third is the season 6 finale, "Descent, Part I" where the Enterprise uses a Borg transwarp conduit to follow a corrupted Data and a Borg drone to a planet 65 light years from Federation space, though interestingly enough the Star Trek Chronology places the planet in the Delta Quadrant, which isn't mentioned at all in the episode, or in any other sources, not even Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki. Anyway, that doesn't matter. What matters is that those are the only three episodes where the Enterprise-D has been thrown across the galaxy due to external forces.
"The Worst of Both Worlds" which is the name of the story arc in issues 47-50, is probably the most interesting follow up to a TNG episode. It's a sequel to the season 3 finale/season 4 premiere, "The Best of Both Worlds" but it also serves as a "What If?" scenario with the Enterprise arriving in an alternate universe where the crew failed to retrieve Locutus from the Borg Cube in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II" and it cost them the entire Federation, including the entire crew complement of the saucer section. Simply because Riker chose not to implement Commander Shelby's plan to fire an antimatter spread at the Borg to mask the movement of Worf and Data's shuttlecraft during their mission to recover Locutus. Other little differences occurred too, but this was the major divergence that characterized this version of events in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II".
This is exactly the sort of thing that they would not have been able to do on the TV show, with the budget it had. It could be done now since TV shows seem to have movie level budgets these days, but back in the '90s it couldn't be done in live action, even with a movie level budget. At least not without breaking the bank and making a movie so expensive that the box office returns wouldn't even have the film break even. Which is where I feel that the comic books and novels should come in on things like Star Trek or Star Wars. Do the things that can't be done in a movie or on TV. Like the scene in issue #49 where the two Worfs are having a conversation in the corridors of the alternate Enterprise. The same thing goes for Animation too. It allows the creators to come up with some really cool stuff that would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to pull off without REALLY heavy CGI effects, and at that point it might as well be an animated movie or show.
I'll show off my Star Trek comic book collection at another time. Right now I just wanted to talk about these two story arcs a little bit, because they were two of the three big story arcs that the TNG comics did in the '90s. There have been others done by other publishers, but these were the two I had the complete stories for when I was a kid and my first realization just what the comic medium was capable of in regards to Star Trek. Especially since the DC Comics Star Trek titles were my introduction to comic books in general. That's going to be it for me for today. Tomorrow I'll be talking about the books by Gordon Korman that I've read over the years, including the entirety of the Bruno & Boots/Macdonald Hall series and showing off which editions I read. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you later. Take care.
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