Star Trek 1285: The Hunted

1285. The Hunted

PUBLICATION: Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Killing Shadows #2, Wildstorm Comics, December 2000

CREATORS: Scott Ciencin (writer), Andrew Currie (artist)

STARDATE: Unknown (follows the last issue)

PLOT: The Bodai Shin attack the Enterprise-E with a techno-plague that shuts down its systems and Geordi's eyesight, even as Troi has been dragged out of phase and is being interrogated. Down on the planet, Sela has joined the away team. They attempt to reach the dead scientist's equipment before the space ninja use it to obliterate the planet. Picard follow an intuition and activates the planetary transporter. It doesn't work and the planet isn't destroyed. The Bodai Shin were only testing Starfleet's capabilities before truly attempting to cripple the Federation. Aboard the ship, Troi beats down her interrogator, but the entire ship has been dragged into a void. Now both Picard and Riker want to turn the tables on the hunters...

CONTINUITY: Barclay appears.

DIVERGENCES: The title is already that of a TNG episode. Sela is an outcast here, but will have her command back in her next appearance, the Double Helix novel Double of Nothing.

PANEL OF THE DAY - Initiate big hands program.
REVIEW: The further we get into this series, the more exciting it gets, but also the more confusing the action becomes. It's not always clear what's going on, which is perhaps part of the "ninjatude". Dialog is more elliptical that it has reason to be, though one could suppose that things will be explained later (how Sela fell from grace, the Bodai Shin's plans). In a graphic novel, that works well. In separate issues, ideas tend to become diluted. Not quite clear if the entire ship has followed Troi to the "void" or if it's the reverse and how. You're not sure how many Bodai Shin there are, or what that whole thing with the city transporter was supposed to work. It all looks cool, and the creative team makes everyone a martial arts expert (since Troi took Worf's classes, it's more how she should have been portrayed anyway), but I'm not always following along with the narrative logic.

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