Star Trek 1367: The Bottle

1367. The Bottle

PUBLICATION: Star Trek: Crew #2, IDW Comics, April 2009

CREATORS: John Byrne (writer), John Byrne (artist)

STARDATE: Unknown (follows the last issue)

PLOT: As an Ensign, Number One served on the USS Fortune. When the Fortune found a colony's destruction covered up by holograms, she was part of the landing party soon attacked by aliens unknown. Soon beamed up to the ship, the chief engineer sends her on the hull to turn off key systems and make the ship "go dark" as an alien ship has been detected. While playing hide-and-seek with the aliens around the planet's horizon, it loses its entire front section, its bridge and half the crew. Number One convinces the chief engineer to go with her plan to beam everyone to the planet, while setting the ship to auto-destruct when the aliens come close. The explosion ignites the planet's atmosphere, and the crew only survives by going underground to wait for a rescue party.

CONTINUITY: See previous issue (Number One). In this era, bicorders are used instead of tricorders. Based on the ship design, the aliens were Ferengi.

DIVERGENCES: None.

PANEL OF THE DAY - Because I know you like ship designs.
REVIEW: Byrne makes his use of panels dynamic and exciting, with a two-page spread explosion and lots of diagonal structures and moments extended through multiple panels. Number One seems to lead an exciting life, although I wonder how many commanding officers she can lose before rumors start spreading that she's a jinx. Once again, she's a hero in both the physical and cerebral sense. There's a guy called Breen, and I was happy to read the word. Unfortunately, the alien species doesn't appear. Making this an early and mysterious appearance of the Ferengi is decent, but I would have loved to see early Breen. Maybe next time. Once again, the only real deception here is the mini-series' title.

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