Villordsutch reviews Star Trek: New Visions – “A Scent of Ghosts”…
John Byrne continues his new Star Trek photoplay adventures with “A Scent of Ghosts” and “Memoriam.” Past and Present collide, as the Enterprise takes aboard a special figure from Spock’s past, only to find themselves haunted by an mystery from years before. Plus, a sad farewell.
Star Trek: New Visions “A Scent of Ghosts” for me (and I’m going on record here by saying this) is the most interesting science fiction tale I’ve encountered in these New Visions pages. We’re crossing over the generations between Pike’s time in the chair with and Kirk’s era in the throne. We join the Enterprise which is currently escorting Pike’s old Number One, who is now a Commodore (still no name the poor soul) to the Yorktown. However the trip doesn’t go according to plan as the Yorktown is rather empty of crew, and yet when Kirk and the away team beam over to check out what’s going, they promptly vanish too. It appears Scotty, Spock and the Commodore have encountered something similar to this on an away mission with Pike years back.
Now up until the wrap up of this story it was –as said – one of the most interesting New Visions tales I’ve encountered in these here issues, and I was actually quite enjoying it, but the close of the tale was messy and ended rather too quickly. I feel this was to make way for the second tale in this issue called “Memorium”, which albeit a rather emotional second story and also being in memory of Arlene Martel, it did impact upon the “A Scent of Ghosts”; now I feel like a cold-hearted swine for saying that, but it’s true.
Turning to the Photomontage itself and starting on the positives, I thought the switch between the bright Kirk colours and the muted Pike palette was an excellent idea within the comic, and it looked brilliant as it moved between the two time periods. As for the negatives, there are the usual problems we have with New Visions, moments which people could find if they went through panel-by-panel looking for an error, along with three glaringly nasty moments: the Commodore’s mallen streak, her green shirt which liked to change shades of green depending on the panel, and inside the Alien starship, which looked abysmal and looked even worse when Pike and crew had to be pasted upon them.
On a whole this is a much better New Visions comic than I’ve seen over the past few months; the main story “A Scent of Ghosts” is strong and only let’s itself down at the close. The secondary story, “Memorium” is short and though I feel it did impact on the main tale it is still is a rather beautiful thing that John has done for Arlene Martel.
Next New Visions arriving in May appears to see Kirk and company coming up against the Borg in “Resistance”.
Villordsutch likes his sci-fi and looks like a tubby Viking according to his children. Visit his website and follow him on Twitter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMekjOsexHs&list=PL18yMRIfoszH_jfuJoo8HCG1-lGjvfH2F
Originally published March 4, 2015. Updated April 13, 2018.
