Back in June, even before I packed up Cumbernauld Road and moved out of Mayne Road in Elgin, I wrote the first post, on James Blish novelizations and Gold Key comics. I only alluded to the Alan Dean Foster Logs which adapted the Filmation animated Star Trek series. It was aired on BBC Scotland in the late summer of 1974 ( in a random order, natch) and I read Log Two on my first visit to Rothesay the following year. I continued reading the Logs in secondary school but only this summer finally tracked down numbers 6-10. Logs 9-10 are greatly extended adaptations of individual episodes and in middle age, I find Dean Foster's style dry and unexciting, in comparison with Blish.
This summer, the Horror Channel began repeating Enterprise, and I've found I'm enjoying these episodes far more than I remembered, circa 2002/03. I particularly like the dynamics of the crew which, comprising a solitary Captain , a Vulcan and a personable Good Ole Boy, faintly echoes the classic series. For me, really, nothing really beats the first and most famous Trek.
Since initially (at least in 1969), the BBC viewed Trek as a children's show and a fit replacement for Troughton's Who, I was given the annuals intermittently for Christmas during the 70s and that's where I first saw the Gold Key stories. UK original adventures were also printed in TV21 and Valiant. By 1979, however, I wasn't reading Star Trek comics- if they even appeared on Central Belt shops. It wasn't until the early 80s that I first saw the Marvel Trek, reprinted in the b/w Future Tense and in a 1981 summer special.
Happily, Trek comics are reprinted in hardback by Eaglemoss. I'm going to review the contents for this and future posts.
As you'll doubtlessly know, Star Trek the Motion Picture was developed from the stillborn 1977 Star Trek Phase II tv series. It also riffs on The Changeling episode as the kaleidoscopic, mechanical V'ger entity seeks its creator, attempting to commune with God. The film is very slow-moving and very 70s . Dope fiend and womaniser Roddenberry introduces the sensual Deltan ( Moondrag- Ilia, sorry,) whose psycho-sexual relationship with executive officer is an arguably more interesting prototype for that of TNG's Riker and Troi. Ilia's vow of celibacy is a throwaway line, like her empathic powers. Deltans never seem to have had anything other than a cameo role in Trek again, to my knowledge. Like the Starman, would they just "blow our minds"? I'm too sexy for my ship?
V'Ger's pilgrimage is contrasted with Spock's training to expunge all emotion and is the most profound thing in this overblown attempt to "out-trip" 2001: a Space Odyssey.
I'm always reminded of the climax to the Topographical Man in Gerber's Guardians of the Galaxy or the Celestial Madonna saga in the Avengers as Ilia and Decker "merge" into, well...what? Some kind of new life form? It's transcendence, Jim, but what does that actually mean? In comics, when Thanos or Libra achieved this ascendancy, they were humbled or seemingly destroyed. I suppose we're meant to be reminded of Clarke and Kubrick and Kirby's New Seed. Heavy.
This saga was first printed in Marvel Super Special 15 and then formed the first three issues of the Marvel comic. It's a fair adaptation of this Headshop Kozmik epic, although the scrappy art team of Dave Cockrum and Klaus Janson, while achieving very good likenesses, seems constrained by small panels. The scenes withV'ger remind me of the trippy Gold Key era but there's also a more juvenile, cartoony feel to the next three issues. Cockrum has peppered the Enterprise with aliens, which recalls the halcyon days of Animated Trek's tripedal Arex and the feline M'ress.
The Haunting of Thallus/The Haunting of the Enterprise is an incoherent two-parter by Wolfman and Mike Barr. A horror film archivist is hooked up to a Klingon Thought-Enhancer and traps the Enterprise crew in a haunted house. The alien madman M'Gora is Giger-esque; Cockrum also throws in the George Pal manta-ray Martians from War of the Worlds. Intriguingly, Marvel's Monster of Frankenstein and Dracula both appear and Wolfman's Quincy Harker is referenced, implying mischievously that Trek is the future of Marvel-Earth.
The Enterprise Murder Case flashes back to Kirk's tour of duty on the Republic and is a hokey tale of revenge and court intrigue by M.W. Barr. With its ornately-costumed, tailed aliens it looks a lot like a LSH adventure or an X-men/Shi'Ar exploit.
Tomorrow or Yesterday is a metaphysical tale of a race that transcends time. It's by Tom DeFalco, (who previously appeared as a navigator in a barroom brawl last ish!). Mike Nasser/Netzer ( who had worked on the Legion with Levitz) is more dynamic and more experimental and he cheekily references the Krell technology from Forbidden Planet for the Andrean civilization.
The book closes with a Gold Key reprint, which is in the first volume of Checker reprints. Len Wein's The Flight of the Buccaneer is an entertaining parody of Treasure Island pitting dilithium pirate Black Jack Nova against space-wrecked Ben Cannon (*hee!*). It's by far the most enjoyable tale in the book and makes me wish Wolfman's old pal Wein had written LSH stories instead of Cary Bates.
To sum up, Wolfman does a good job, to my surprise, of adapting a difficult film script and Cockrum/Janson supply psychedelic vistas. The humorous approach doesn't really work in the subsequent stories although we do glimpse the Legion of Monsters. Nasser (Netzer) brings experimentation to his issue but Gold Key rather trumps Marvel. Come back for volume two soon.
Coming soon: The Expansionist Syndrome
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