More info on Borg figures

Toy News International has released some more details, and higher quality images, of DST's new wave of Borg figures. apparently, while each figure in this wave will come with parts to make the electronic alcove, the whole thing will not be completed until additional parts come out with the future second wave. The report also gives a little blurb for each of the figures:

Borg Drone: The Borg Drone is a bulky zombie-like figure with an ominously vacuous expression. His chassis is more elaborate than the other two, scalloped armor plating overlaps columns of intermingling circuitry; the Borg Drone’s right arm is weaponized; the drone’s face is partially obscured by a mechanical scope, and the back of his skull is festooned with thick black hoses.
Seven of Nine (Borg Form): Seven of Nine’s grimly pallid countenance is moderately contradicted by the voluptuousness with which she occupies her form-fitting sculptured chassis. Her face is partially obscured by a mechanical scope, the back of her skull festooned with thick black hoses.
Assimilated Starfleet Officer: From Star Trek: First Contact.


Seven of Nine (Brown Voyager Uniform): is a Previews exclusive sclupted by Jerry Macaluso. It will also includes a piece of the electronic "Borg Alcove" to build your own figure-sized display!

Enterprise Experiment, a review

So, months after the completion of the series I finally got a hold of the final issue of Year Four: The Enterprise Experiment this week. And so finally can offer up my thoughts on the whole thing.

Having just read through the whole saga my thoughts are mixed, it was much better than I remembered it being on the first read, but there was still something just a little off about it.

The story managed to do quite a lot, it was big, yet it was delivered in a way that didn’t make it too over the top. The political side of the tale I found most engaging, the balance between the three big TOS powers and the effects on it by the Organians and cloaking technology were explored with some depth and with great success.

That said it feels unfortunately repetitive, I’m sure the end of the Organian peace treaty has been done a couple of times before (as has the origin of the galactic barrier). That is forgivable as happening in older publications by other producers, what I find quite bizarre is that implication in this series that it was the events shown here that prompted the Klingons and Romulans to ally (the previous Romulan D7’s apparently being the consequence of one-off purchases between the empires) which rather flies in the face of how the alliance was formed as shown by IDW in John Byrne’s Romulan Alien Spotlight released before this series, and his follow-up two-parter Romulans: The Hollow Crown which was released just a month after the final issue of this series.

The final issue of the series in-particular leaves some massive dangling threads, showing Starfleet making use of cloaking technology and leaving a big unanswered question about what exactly it is the Edosians (not using the lit-verse name of Triexians to my disappointment) have ahead of them. I really hope both of these are answered in the not too distant future, they seem way too big to just be forgotten about.

One element of the series I very strongly disliked was the use of flashbacks and internal monologues/log entries for Kirk, Spock and McCoy to try and introduce a sort B-story of how the three rely on Starfleet for family and generally have made a mess of their actual families. This again seems a little too familiar, and in the context of the series it’s little more than a somewhat irritating distraction. Flashbacks used in the series also had a slight problem of sometimes occurring unannounced; the second issue opens with a flashback and then jumps back to the “present” without any visual signature change or notation of events happening at different times, which was rather confusing at first! Though on the whole most flashbacks are marked with rounded corner panels.

On the art in general: I don’t place Gordon Purcell anywhere near the top of my favourite artists list, and this series has done nothing to change that. His art is perfectly functional; it services the story, and as he so often praised for his likenesses are consistently spot-on. However there is rarely any flare to the art, it doesn’t have an especially eye-catching style, nor does it ever really play with layout or do much exciting. It works to tell the story but it’s not especially interesting.

All in all this series was, ok, not top of the IDW pile, but not quite at the bottom either. If you’re a big TOS fan I imagine you would enjoy it. If you like the character Arex it’s a must get, as he is used extensively and to good effect. If a decent sequel comes along to pull together the dangling threads left by the series it might gain it a bit more value as a lead into that. At the moment though, I think it can be summed up with: *shrug*.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Star Trek comics are alive!

After a slight lull in output from IDW, next March seems to be jumping back into Trek, as the solicitations for the month released by ComicNewsi reveal. The month sees the start of three new series! The long awaited second Alien Spotlight series, John Byrne's Crew, and a previously unannounced series called Mission's End! Plus the latest issue of Countdown, the final issue of The Last Generation (with an awesome cover!) and a new omnibus!

The Last Generation #5
Writer: Andrew Steven Harris, artist: Gordon Purcell, covers: J.K. Woodward and Nick Runge
The time-shattering conclusion! In an alternate history in which the Klingons have conquered Earth, Jean-Luc Picard and his Resistance travel back to the past in a daring, final gambit to restore the timeline and liberate Earth. But what awaits the rebellion may not be what it expected at all, and the fate of the Federation itself hangs in the balance.

Countdown#3
Writer: Tim Jones & Mike Johnson, art and cover: David Messina
From J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman comes the exclusive comic
prequel to STAR TREK, the motion picture event of 2009! The Romulan villain Nero continues his vengeful crusade against the Federation. Don't miss any of the action as the clock ticks down to the premiere of STAR TREK this summer!

Alien Spotlight: Tribbles
Writer: Stuart Moore, art and cover: Mike Hawthorne (and a photo-cover)
An offbeat one-shot featuring STAR TREK's most unlikely alien race! Welcome to Serjilla IV, an abandoned world completely overrun by Tribbles: friendly, trilling balls of fur that eat constantly and, in the words of Dr. Leonard McCoy, "reproduce at will." When a human freighter, boarded by hostile Klingons, crash-lands on Serjilla, the Tribbles' quiet but lonely existence is shattered. It's a simple situation, really—three desperate humans, a squadron of angry Klingons, and a billion hungry Tribbles. What could possibly go wrong?

Crew #1
Writer, artist and cover: John Byrne
Eight years before "The Cage,” the young woman who would become the Starship Enterprise's "most experienced officer" was a lowly cadet assigned to the shakedown cruise of an uncommissioned starship. But that supposedly pedestrian mission may prove the most dangerous of her life. John Byrne begins an all-new, six-part miniseries torn from the Federation’s beginnings!

Mission's End #1
Writer: Ty Templeton, artist: Steve Molnar, cover: Kevin Maguire
The most important "lost" tale of the Star Trek saga can now be told: The final mission of the original Starship Enterprise and her crew. What prompts Mr. Spock and Doctor McCoy to retire from Starfleet? What earns Kirk his promotion to Admiral? And what is the mystery of Archenar-IV that threatens to tear the Federation itself apart? All will be revealed in this five-issue miniseries, with appearances by fan-favorite characters, Gary Mitchell, Lee Kelso, and Dr. Piper in this special opening chapter. Fan-favorite artist Kevin Maguire provides this issue’s cover!

Archives #4: Best of DS9
Relive events and missions from the first four seasons of television’s Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in this collection of five full-length comics stories! Join up with the crew of DS9 as a mysterious toxic mold runs rampart on the station. Where did it come from? And that’s not all! Star Trek Archives, Vol. 4: DS9, Vol. 1 also includes the special 8-page preview “ashcan” story, “Hostage Situation.”

Before and after, the new movie

Various articles recently have provided new details on the new movie, and the prequel comic series Countdown. Firstly (though actually most recently) an interview with Robert Orci at TrekMovie.com reveals how the new movie will take place in an alternate timeline which diverges from the point Nero travels back in time, so the USS Kelvin is part of the original/main Trek timeline, while the new Enterprise and Kirk's different career path exist in the newly diverged timeline.

I think Christopher L. Bennett's summary of this news at the TrekBBS describes it best: "So basically this is a Myriad Universes movie, so to speak. It's a tale about an alternate Trek universe that exists alongside the "classic" one. And yet, like some of the MyrU tales, it provides some insights that can be presumed valid where the main timeline is concerned."

See the original TrekMovie article for much more in depth discussion about all the quantum theory and such that makes this idea work. I'm quite curious to see if this will actually be explained within the film.

Meanwhile, back in the original timeline Countdown will be showing us the lead-up to the film in the 24th century, and the creators have been talking about that. In an article at Comic Book Resources the writers, Mike Johnson and Tim Jones, have described the series as "a very poignant character piece tracing the steps of Nero, who descends from a proud Romulan patriot to a murderous arch villain". Another TrekMovie interview with Robert Orci confirmed the series takes place after Nemesis (still no details on Data's role) and IDW's new Trek editor Andy Schmidt also commented on the series in an interview at Newsarama "You'll get a lot of firsts in this series - you'll see a lot of stuff that's in the movie for the first time here and get to know the characters so that when you walk into the film, you're already going to care about them. They're really tremendous characters with a lot of dramatic conflict and flair."

In that same article Schmidt teased at new things in the works from IDW, commenting that Trek comics will take a "bold direction change, but I will say it is not entirely because of what the film ‘does’ to the series. But things are only beginning to heat up!"

Crew number two

On his forums John Byrne has released his cover artwork for the second issue of the forthcoming Crew miniseries. Following his cover design motif for the series, the cover features a scene contained in the silhouette of the main ship (the USS Fortune) in the issue.

Final issue of the Enterprise Experiment finally out in the UK!

A mere three and a half months late, and after the release of the omnibus book, the final issue of Year Four: The Enterprise Experiment has finally made to the UK! I've no idea why it took so long, and I rather irritated my comic book guy in contacting Chris Ryall to try and find out. I also don't know the extent of this issue, I know my local shop didn't have it, and I was contacted by someone in Wales who was also wondering what was taking so long. Did it effect the whole country, or even further afield, I'd be interested to know readers if you had trouble getting this issue.

Star Trek Online: 2382

The Star Trek Online website has been updated with the next year in it's timeline building up to the setting of the game. The information continues to be a jumble of rearranged ideas from trek-lit and new original elements.

This year's events seem to center largely on the Romulans with tensions continuing to rise between the Star Empire and Imperial State. Tal'aura reluctantly accepts Federation after Donatra's control over key agricultural worlds stretches' the Star Empire's resources. Meanwhile Tal'aura reforms the Romulan political system to give her direct control over the make-up of the senate, irritating traditional Romulan noble families who loose some of their previous status.

The Romulan situation also spurs Spock and the unificationists to take the opportunity to assert their power and push for representation in the new senate and recognition and support of the movement by the Federation. While at the edges of Romulan space the Klingons take advantage of the weakened state and reclaim a number of disputed worlds, including Khitomer.

In the Federation Admiral Owen Paris of Starfleet R&D orders the doctor's mobile emitter be taken for study, a decision which is contested by the doctor.

And in the vicinity of Bajor tensions rise when several hundred Cardassians Bajor hoped to pursue for war crimes vanish, prompting Bajor to accuse Cardassian of putting them into hiding.

Finally, Ro Laren completes her time in Federation custody and returns to Bajor where she assumes the role of chief of security on DS9.

See the orignal report for the full entry.

DST update

Diamond Select Toys have announced a new deal with Toys'R'Us to have their products stocked in the big toy shop with a giraffe for mascot. That stock will include DST's model of the TOS Enterprise and coming soon two exclusive new action figures (with more to come in the future).

Meanwhile on the Art Asylum blog the latest Ask DST Q&A session gives some details on the direction of the DST Star Trek line.

On action figures, they suggest the next wave will likely be TOS figures (and they are thinking about reissuing some of the previously released TOS figures), and that the DS9 figure sales have not been that great, but they would like to find a way to fill out the crew, and offer Kira in a Bajoran uniform (as well as the current Starfleet offering) eventually, if possible.

On ships, they have two in development, and neither is an Enterprise, they're also still keen to do a "bad guy ship" at some point. Meanwhile the variant edition of the next ship, the All Good Things... Enterprise-D has yet to find a buyer, but they are continuing to develop it in the hope one will appear.

See the original report for the full questions and answers.

Finally Toy News International has given us the first look at the final make-up of the Borg action figures wave. The final four figures are Seven of Nine as a drone and in her brown cat-suit, a standard Human(oid) drone, and a partially assimilated Starfleet officer (based on someone from First Contact apparently). Each of the set will come with a section of a regeneration alcove, so if you get the whole set you get a whole alcove.

See the original report for more photos.

Weird figures are coming

As reported by TrekMovie.com a company called Funko have obtained a new Star Trek license (for old Trek and the new movie) to make novelty action figure sort of things. They presently have two lines planned, with concept art for both. These are:

A series of "Wacky Wobblers" bobble-head figurines, featuring Kirk, Spock, a Gorn, and an Andorian:

And a series of caricature-like figurines called "Urban Vinyl", which will feature Kirk, Spock and an Orion slave girl.

See the original report, with more details on Funko and these sort of products, here.

"Credit crunch " hits Trek lit

Discussion at the TrekBBS has brought to my attention some really horrible news: Simon and Schuster/Pocket Books have laid off thirty-five staff in cost cutting measures, and according to an article at Comic Mix, that number includes Marco Palmieri, the editing god responsible for the likes of the DS9 relaunch, Titan and Vanguard. Which hugely sucks for him, and hugely sucks for us. *annoyed*