Monday, September 28, 2020

"Commendations for all of the landing party. And not engineering."

Do I have alt-text back?
I didn't read all of Marvel's first Star Trek series when it came out, although I remember having the Marvel Illustrated Books reprint of three issues. (Good god, don't pay that for it.) The stories weren't always great, but there were good bits here and there, which I may have lumped into one solid story in my memory. From 1981, Star Trek #11, "...Like a Woman Scorned!" Written by Martin Pasko, breakdowns by Joe Brozowski, finishes by Tom Palmer.

It's an evocotive opener, as a landing party dies of Berthold ray exposure, a callback to classic episode "This Side of Paradise." Kirk and the crew are watching that horribleness, to re-familiarize themselves with the radiation's effects, since they have to recover a colony that's on the verge of being exposed to it. Who would build anything anywhere that could happen? Why would you live there? Well, it would be a good place to get away from everyone, since this colony is headed by a Dr. Wentworth, his clinic of "anti-apologists." Bones considers Wentworth a con man; Spock explains he treats his patients to live without guilt, through a philosophy of "enlightened self-interest." Sounds like dicks, but we'll see! And Scotty is uncharacteristically mopey; and we see why when Wentworth's pretty assistant Andrea Manning beams up: he doesn't seem thrilled to see an ex.
Wentworth starts in on the crew quick, pushing them to if not think for themselves, to look out for number one and do what they want to do...with a little nudging. More troublingly, Scotty is repeatedly attacked, by manifestations of weird Scottish folklore crap! Hey, looking it up, Black Annis is a real thing! Well, not real, I guess; you know what I mean.
The security guys wore pads and helmets now, rather than the old redshirts, but are still treated as utterly disposable. By this point, Wentworth has encouraged the crew to mutiny and take the Enterprise to a nice planet rather than a dumb Starbase; and Andrea is getting drunk.
I kinda think that's more than then-Doctor Chapel got to do, in the movie or this entire series. Scotty had some trouble with the dames before--Andrea name-drops his former flames Carolyn Palamas and Mira Romaine, before angrily passing out. The Scottish crap stops when she does, and Kirk, Spock, and McCoy start to put it together. There's still a phaser shootout on the bridge and the Enterprise vs. the Loch Ness Monster; but neither are that great, sorry.

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