2008 books

Jeff Ayers has updated his Voyages of Imagination website with news of next years output from Pocket Books, new information and highlights include:

-Shards and Shadows, an anthology of Mirror Universe short stories.
-Terok Nor, the previously announced DS9 prequel miniseries, now has titles.
-These Haunted Seas, a second DS9 relaunch omnibus, this one containing the first two Mission Gamma books.
-Myriad Universe, six novels in two books telling tales from alternate Trek universes (not the mirror universe).
-Fearful Symmetry, the next DS9 relaunch title, delayed a year and has a new author.
-Greater Then the Sum, the next book in the post-Nemesis TNG series.
-Destiny, a three part crossover by David Mack, including elements of TNG, Titan, DS9 and the rest of Trek history.

Check out Voyages of Imagination for full details, including a couple of new blurbs and a tentative schedule.

New "The Motion Picture" audio commentary

StarTrek.com have added a nice exta feature, a downloadable audio commentary for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" - The Directors Edition. The new commentary is by the guys behind the new special edition effects; David C. Fenn, Michael Matessino and Daren R. Dochterman. Go download it (here) and enjoy the behind the scenes goodness.

The Space Between review

This week saw the final issue of IDW’s premier Star Trek comic miniseries Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Space Between. So here’s what I thought of the series.

Issue 1 "History Lesson" – The series kicked off with an interesting season 1 story on the planet Tigan where history gets rewritten. It’s rather familiar to any Stargate fans with the same concept being used in the SG1 episode "Revisions". But this version is a little larger in scope with a whole planet’s history being rewritten and coups happening with no one even knowing. The story was for the most part well written, having a couple of little plot holes that make you join the dots, but mostly enjoyable. And a very attractive start to the series, with lovely colourful bold designs and great use of “sound effects” in a fight scene.

Issue 2 "Captain’s Pleasure" – My favourite issue of the series, a classic “Picard has an adventure” story as the captain takes a bit of time off after the events of the episode "Unification" and enjoys a spot of archaeology. Unfortunately Picard’s holiday curse follows him on every day-off and it turns into serial killing who done it. A completely different tone but just as beautiful art really help the excellent story which like the first issue suffers from being a bit rushed and requiring the reader to join the dots. And that’s where the main flaw of this issue comes in; three pages of the limited twenty-two are devoted to an odd little holodeck B-plot. It’s a nice idea, and if this was a 45 minute TV episode as it seeks to emulate, it would work. But it isn’t and those three pages could have helped a lot in making the already excellent A-plot really fantastic.

Picard's holiday chums really got on

Issue 3 "Strategy" – A mysterious hybrid ship attacks the Enterprise, meanwhile Worf with his Deanna-sense knows he needs to rescue his girlfriend before going to the bridge. The series’ plot holes continue to plague this issue, but it does work. The main story has an interesting adversary and a satisfying conclusion and the B-plot of the Worf-Troi-Riker love triangle is a very well done character piece. Whilst this issue does continue to suffer from leaps of logic in the story, it is one of the most successful because it’s pretty simple and manages to fit everything it has to into the tale. It also drops the first hints of the miniseries being tied together with the mysterious unidentified attacker leaving Picard wary of who might be after the Enterprise.

Issue 4 "Light of Day" – A shuttle crashes on a planet full of zombie monks. Meanwhile on the Enterprise a world destroying scientist come religion fanatic gets to know Data. The main zombie story once more suffers from the series’ characteristic plot holes, but it’s fun and the characters pull it though. The Data B-plot is the real highlight of the issue through, it’s a pretty flawless element of the story which makes this one of the better issues in the series.

Issue 5 "Space Seeds" – The Wesley story, run for the hills! Or in the case the asteroid belt, this is a nice little agricultural mystery with an interesting conclusion, but yep, you guessed it, that conclusion is reached through another series of jumps in logic. And then it gets really interesting, an epilogue! Jumping six years ahead Picard jumps out of bed having apparently figured out what links the miniseries together in his sleep. He has Data do a little data retrieval and finds some dastardly people have been using the Enterprise’s mission logs to conduct evil! That wont do, Picard is out for justice!

Issue 6 "Space Seeds"… part 2? – Jumping straight into the action Riker and Worf beam in to stop some probably baddies doing something on what sort of looks like the Enterprise. Meanwhile Picard has a chat with Admiral Nechayev to tell her of his recent discoveries, but unknown to him she’s in on the conspiracy! Back on the weird fake Enterprise the rest of the main characters are up to something and while Picard has a chat with Boothby he gets shot at by a random Tellarite. Meanwhile on the Enterprise Crusher lies to some random Admiral to cover why the Enterprise is back at Earth. The gang decide to blow up the fake-aprise and then everyone gets to meet the mysterious bad guy. He tells them the Ferengi made him do it (apparently a reference to "Little Green Men" except he refers to events 200 years ago rather than the 400 it would need to be for that to be the case), tells the gang they didn’t manage to blow up his fake enterprise and then beams way maaawww ha ha ha. Picard is sooo angry at that, but he’ll win in the end …or not, the final two pages see the crew enjoying a buffet and a toast back on the Enterprise. The End.

The mysterious bad guy, Section 31? Who knows?

The art throughout the series was generally excellent, the main characters are definitely the weak points, and under the most scrutiny, but the scenery is consistently fabulous and more than makes up for that weakness. The writing though is another story, David Tischman writes the characters perfectly, the stories are all quite interesting, with good concepts and interesting twists and turns. But, every issue in the series suffers plots holes and jumps in logic which make it a pain to read and really drag the whole series down. The series also suffers a from little errors in the text, like he above mentioned Ferengi dating mistake.

Still, each issue works as a stand alone story, and where this series really fails is the conclusion, at the end of the third and fifth issues and throughout the sixth Picard is out to stop these mysterious baddies (kind of maybe Section 31?), but he doesn’t get to, the baddies escape, and what’s worse Picard seems entirely content with that! The ending feels so open I feel… I hope… IDW has something else up their sleeves to finish the story properly.

Each issue of this series, despite the plot holes, is enjoyable, but together it lets you down and I feel IDW would have been better off leaving them just as random one-off stories. IDW’s other series Klingons: Blood Will Tell has managed to both tell individual stories that work fantastically and tie the whole series together, so it definitely could be done, but it didn’t work in this case. David Tischman is writing IDW’s third series Star Trek: Year Four which starts in a fortnight, there’s no indication yet whether that will have some attempt to tie the standalone stories together, I’m hoping not because that’s where he really failed this time. I approach the first issue of that series sure the story will be interesting and the characters well written, I just hope he manages to avoid the constant pattern of plot holes second time round.

Star Trek: The Manga 2 updates

Tokyopop have updates their website with a cover and blurb of their second Star Trek manga volume:

Manga-style art and Star Trek tales collide again in this next volume of TOKYOPOP's voyages of the U.S.S. Enterprise, commanded by Captain James T. Kirk. Once again ten artists and writers from across the artistic spectrum deliver up brand new tales of universal betterment featuring the classic Star Trek line up. In Kakan ni Shinkou, Kirk is put on trial for crimes he has yet to discover... Uhura demonstrates the true power of communication... Bones gets to the core of Vulcan emotion... Scotty has to extract dilithium crystals from a mine in the middle of a war zone... and an alien delegation uses the Enterprise as a vessel of deception!

This new volume of Star Trek: The Manga-- Kakan ni Shinkou features stories by TNG's Wil Wheaton, Diane Duane, Mike Wellman, Paul Benjamin and Christine Boylan as well as art by EJ Su, Don Hudson, Steven Cummings, Bettina Kurkoski and Nam Kim.

The covers note that like the first volume the book will contain a short story from Pocket Books' latest anthology, this time a TNG tale from the anniversary anthology "The Sky's the Limit". This manga book is due in September, and "The Sky's the Limit", which if they follow last years pattern of cross-promotion will include one of the manga stories, is due in October.

Corroney cover for Blood Will Tell #4

Joe Corroney has updated his blog with his cover artwork for the next issue of IDW's Klingons: Blood Will Tell miniseries:

He also showed off a previously released cover for the first issue of the Year Four miniseries, the new version, which you can see on his blog, has a few more light effects and a more varied background than previously released versions.

Blood Will Tell #3 title

It didn't make it into the comic again but as before writer Scott Tipton comes to the rescue in supplying the title for the third issue of IDW's Klingons: Blood Will Tell miniseries. The title for issue three is *fanfare*:

"The Order of Things"

In his post on IDW's message boards Mr. Tipton also confirmed the photomontage cover for this issue features a Mugato rather than the version featuring Krell shown on IDW's website. Finally he stated he would love to do more comics in the same vein of this fantastic miniseries, so keep buying them peoples!

Academy: Collision Course cover

TrekBBS poster Frontier came across the cover for the next Shatnerverse novel "Academy: Collision Course" on tfaw.com, here it is:

The first hardcover printing of the novel, by William Shatner with Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, will be available in October.

Charlie X remastered

StarTrek.com have updated their comparison gallery with a new shot from "Charlie X" featuring the newly visualised starship Antares:

Interestingly StarTrek.com claim the design was inspired by the Woden, however that was just a reuse of the DY-100 model, the new design is in fact quite clearly a design taken from the TAS episode "More Tribbles, More Troubles". It is indeed almost identical with the variation of an additional module on the front of the ship, presumably a crew compartment which the robotic ships in TAS would not have required.

TAS screencap from the most wonderful TrekCore.com.

Blood Will Tell part 3 preview

Ahead of this week's release of the third part of IDW's Klingons: Blood Will Tell series the publisher has updated their new releases page with a five page preview and cover images:

Covers: 1, 2, and 3
Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5

They have also added a page from this comic to their Art du Jour page.

This month

Well June was a little slow news wise and only had standard releases, but July has all sorts of stuff coming, so lets see what in store this month:

Prose:
This months novel is the Lost Era/TNG prequel story "The Buried Age" by Christopher L. Bennett which tells us what Jena-Luc Picard got up to from the loss of the Stargazer all the way up to taking command of the Enterprise-D. This months eBook is the Corps of Engineers story "Ghost" by Ilsa J. Bick. Additionally this month sees the release of the Corps of Engineers omnibus "Grand Designs" which includes novellas numbers thirty-seven to forty-two of the SCE eBook series.

Comics:
From IDW this month is issue four of Scott and David Tipton's Klingons: Blood Will Tell miniseries, this one retells the episode "Day of the Dove". This month also sees the start of the new TOS miniseries Star Trek: Year Four by David Tischman, which as the name implies, tells us stories from the would be forth season of the original Star Trek TV series. Preceding the first issue of that new series is "IDW Focus on: Star Trek", a behind the scenes look at IDW's Star Trek works including a new short comic story.
It should also be noted last months IDW comics have yet to be released, the third issue of Klingons: Blood Will Tell is just a little late being released this week, whilst the final issue of the TNG miniseries The Space Between is due next week.

Toys:
Lots of action figures from Diamond Select Toys this month; Continuing their TNG releases is the Crusher wave, which consists of Doctor Beverly Crusher and Ensign Wesley Crusher in later TNG uniforms and limited edition "All Good Things..." version of Doctor Crusher and a Q figure in Starfleet Uniform.

DST's Wrath of Kahn figures kick off with the first wave consisting of Admiral Kirk and Khan and the limited Captain Terrell and "Double cross" (aka battle damaged) Kirk. Then a second wave comes as retailer exclusives consisting of Sulu, Chekov, McCoy and Scotty, and if you get all those at the San Diego Comic Convention you can get a free battle damaged "Genesis Kahn".
Movie era TOS not your thing? Well worry not, as well as all that this month sees a double pack of Kirk and Kahn from the episode "Space Seed". This month also sees DST's first wave of TOS Minimates, which consists of three double packs: Kirk and Spock, Pike and Vina, McCoy and Scotty and a limited edition dress uniform version of McCoy. Still not had enough TOS figures? Well in addition to all of that this month also sees the first waves of DST's retro cloth figures, this months figures being Kirk and a Klingon.

Other:
As well as all those figures DST also have a couple of sculptures coming out this month, the McCoy part of the "Landing Party" statue set and the first of their Star Trek: Icons series, James T. Kirk.

In Region 1 a new Fan Collective DVD collection should start showing up. A full episode list has yet to materialise for this set, titled "Captain's Log", but in addition to the fan voted episodes the set will includes the captain's actors favourites, with introductions amongst the extra features.

And in Region 2 from GE Fabbri this month are parts twelve and thirteen of their Magazine and DVD collection Star Trek: The Collector's Edition, which will includes six TOS episodes from "The Apple" to "Journey to Babel".

Related Articles:
-The Buried Age info
-Tischman on Year Four
-IDW July releases
-IDW July covers
-The Wrath of Kahn figures
-DST exclusives
-DST Mego figure packaging
-Kirk Busted
-New Fan Collective DVD collection