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Star Trek Year Four #1

An interesting read. Currently, IDW has fielded two different Star Trek full colour series, both with heavy, quality paper stock, including heavy stock cardboard covers.

Bravo!

Star Trek: Year Four # 1 comes out on the newsstands, and in specialty comics stores just as Star Trek: Klingons # 3 is out, a series I bought also.

In Star Trek: Year Four # 1, The Enterprise’s bridge centre has picked up a large mass dead ahead. There 46 planets and moons in synchronous orbit, as reported by Mr. Spock.

It’s not an asteroid belt, but rather, oddly enough, all 46 planets and moons (many of each) are physically connected by man-made poles of some - to Spock and Kirk - unknown elements, thousands of miles long, each.

However, Spock’s sensors pick up only twenty life signs, whereas the sensors tell him that at one time, there could have been eight hundred billion inhabitants-!

Kirk, Spock, McCoy and one of those red shirted nameless security guards all beam down to the planet. Hey nameless- take that red shirt off quick, if ya wanna save yer life-!

Oh -ehhh … nevermind.

They are greeted by Mr. Othelo Beck, a great scientist.

It turns out that over a thousand years ago, an alien race, incredibly sophisticated, put together this “planetary collective, which is scientifically advanced, but socially agressive.” Unquote.  The whole structure, planets and all, is referred to as ‘the strand.’

The aliens destroyed themselves, and left tons of scientific equipment behind, which goes down numerous levels. Obviously, this part of the comic book plot is taken from the classic science fiction film ‘Forbidden Planet‘, starring a young Leslie Neilson, Richard Anderson and Robby The Robot, to name just three.

Una (her name presumably taken from Marvel Comics’ Captain Mar-vell, circa 1960’s)  is introduced by Othelo Beck, is his ’daughter’ and also his CREATION!

She is a beautiful young woman with a unicorn-like horn coming out from her forehead, and with long white hair, dressed in a gossamer-white gown.

You see, like the movie ‘The Island Of Doctor Moreau’, Dr. Beck takes animals and through genetic engineering, has made a manlike wolf, which, predictably, kills the red shirted security guard from the Enterprise.

He’s also created a porcupine man and a raccoon man. Dr. Beck, of course, is also a geneticist, born in the year 2210.

He also bought, illegally, vulcan genetic samples, to use in research against logan’s disease.

The attractive art in this full colour comic book reminds me of the cartoonlike style of the animated Star Trek TV series, which I have complete, on DVD.

One of Dr. Beck’s humanlike creatures drops a beaker in the laboratory, where he is helping Dr. Beck.  Dr. Beck then pulls a gun and executes this harmless creature!

He feels that since he created this INTELLIGENT creature, that he has the divine right to execute them if he chooses to do so on a whim.

Then, The Enterprise is fired on by a barrage of old style nuclear missiles.

The alien with four arms from the animated TV series Star Trek is on the bridge in Chekov’s bridge position.

Spock takes the Enterprise out of firing range.

Kirk and McCoy have been made prisoners, however, they escape

Dr. Beck kills the rest of his creations after one of them fires on the Enterprise, the aforementioned nuclear missiles. Then, Dr. Beck and Una kill each other.

The moral to the story is that Dr. Beck had kept his wife, seen in but one panel, alive artificially, while she suffered horrifically with Logan’s disease, in horrenous pain throughout her life.

Rather than let her die, which, in her case, would have been a mercy, he prolonged her life, seeking a cure which he never, ever found.

Now, she would, ironically enough, outlive them all.

The art and story are certainly adequate. I enjoyed this comic book. I’ll be back for future issues. The artist draws well enough so that we know who the main characters are, and The Enterprise has never looked better. As good as, sure.

-Review by Phil Latter