Villordsutch reviews Star Trek: The Next Generation: Terra Incognita #3…
After last month’s slice of Star Trek: The Next Generation: Terra Incognita we discovered that the Federation, after the Borg encounter at Wolf-359, is at a desperate time and is currently placing a lot of hope on the upcoming ‘Peace Talks’ with the Cardassians – the key negotiators being Vulcans diplomats. After numerous curious ‘hiccups’ all sides have finally met around the table on the Planet Telvina 2, bar one key Vulcan diplomat who was badly wounded on an unexpected hike across the aforementioned planet. Meanwhile Mirror Barclay made a brief mistake, revealing his Mirror-like views in front of the more diplomatic Prime Crew.
With the Federation/Cardassian peace talks close to collapse, due to the lynch-pin that is Vulcan Ambassador Hendryk moments from dying in the Medical Bay, Dr. Crusher calls in the help of Dr. Selar to see if she can pull him from the brink of death. The Enterprise’s current medical equipment not up to scratch for the Ambassadors neurological needs, so Engineering is called in – along with the talents of Mirror Barclay – to hopefully save this extremely crucial conference.
The Tipton Brothers are really on a roll here with the Terra Incognita series. They really could have taken the easy route and made every issue an “Evil Reg twiddling a Dick Dastardly moustache”, with the crew wondering what happened at the end and come the final issue Troi releases it was Evil Reg all this time etc., but no. Here, as they have for the previous tales, they are giving us (the readers) fantastic, well-fleshed out Star Trek stories and this one in particular is just as grand as the last.
Tapping into to a Star Trek: TNG character that we’ve seen perhaps once, but has been mentioned in passing a few times, then giving her an actually backstory as-well-as some honest weight for her future – in the Trek comicverse – is not only brilliant, but shows the writers know their onions and also have seeds they want to sow for upcoming issues.
What is also rather splendid is once again Mirror Reg is still charming his way around the corridors and jefferies tubes of the Enterprise, though as yet we know not why. Yes, he’s wicked and he currently has Barclay Prime in a makeshift Stasis Tube, but the PR work he is doing for Barclay Prime… Well, you really couldn’t buy that for all the gold-pressed latinum in the Alpha Quadrant.
The artwork and colours this month come from the excellent Angel Hernandez and Mark Roberts, and nothing in these panels can be faulted at all. It all looks perfect from the first pane up to the last. IDW Publishing would do well in asking both to stay on for a while longer for future Star Trek comic books.
Star Trek: The Next Generation: Terra Incognita keeps getting better and better. If anyone asked me, “which was the best Trek story for 2018?”, I’d probably point at Terra Incognita before anything else.
Rating: 9/10
