Here in Elgin, I saw The Tempest at the cathedral and Zippo's Circus at Borough Briggs.
I didn't get everything ticked off my To-Do list- the yard work, which will free up space eventually for my comics room/study, is a bit beyond me, at present. But I put up roller blinds on my own and made two long-awaited purchases: a spinner rack, of sorts and a frame for a thirty-five -year-old poster.
Sienkiewicz's "Primal Scream" reminds me of his cover for DC's very first Star Trek:The Next Generation from the late 80s. I first saw TNG on my friend Graham Sim's VCR in Dumfries over thirty years ago. I then watched it every week on BBC2 in the early 90s, when I first moved to Dennistoun.
I bought the first issue of the first mini-series, however, when I was living behind a dance studio in a basement flat in Hyndland, in the West End of Glasgow. That miniseries was then collected in the mid-90s in a trade paperback titled New Beginnings. Script and art are by Mike Carlin ( Superman editor and the model for the Batman Adventures crook The Professor) and Pablo Marcos, the Preuvian artist who drew the lead story in my very first US issue of Savage Sword of Conan.
Trek always seems like a summer series to me and these are the voyages...
Where No One Has Gone Before: the Away Team become involved in war games played by children on a planet where the inhabitants age backwards. Deanna calls Riker "William". There's an exotic, reptilian female transporter chief, Mr. Moezer and on the bridge, a married couple called the Bickleys, who, er, bicker and wear capes. I really wanted to see more of this caped, carping couple.
Spirit in the Sky: the Creeg, an energy-siphoning alien race who look like the Grinch, invade the Enterprise Xmas party to capture Santa.
SANTA.
I think this was my favourite story.
Q Factor/Q's Day/Q Effects is a three-parter. Tasha recalls the "malevolent pit" that was The Colony and then is tormented psychologically by Q. The omnipotent being is condemned by the Q to live as a human but his sentence is revoked when he learns selflessness by saving Geordi's life. It's very long and very predictable
Here Today: the Enterprise escapes from the "Shangri-La" planet Faltos thanks to Data's records of Dr, Soong's visit. This is very like the Time Trap animated episode ,with a Klingon and a part-coloured Cheron.
An Andorian admiral, Thivov, appears in a Wrath of Khan uniform and is called "Purcell" in one panel. This makes me wonder if this were a re-purposed TOS story.
The likenesses are very strong in places although the figure work is often rather small. This works if you're George Perez or Curt Swan but doesn't if you're Marcos or Bob Hall, for instance. The series is very faithful to the concepts that had been established at the time, although the stories are very typical Trek comic fare.
Picard is a stuffy, autocratic prig, while Wesley's the slightly annoying kid identification figure. Riker, Geordi and Worf don't really have personalities. Tasha, Troi with her precognitive visions (!) and Data -who behaves a bit like the enraged Vision in the Thomas/Adams Avengers, when Geordi is shot-, are the important characters.
Clearly unimpressed, I didn't buy any more of this series after number one, although I did buy a couple of issues of the Modala Imperative miniseries in 1991.Once I got to see the series on a regular basis, I didn't feel the need for stories in other media. In fact, I hardly bought any Trek comics until very recently and then, only as collected editions. To be honest, I'm not enthusiastic about most Trek spin-off series, especially DS9 but I have a couple of posts in mind for John Byrne's Star Trek comics and Peter David's New Frontier. Before that, I think, there'll be Primords, Vardans and Kree.
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