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Best Of Star Trek (Star Trek Next Generation )

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If you're looking for the best of Star Trek in the comics medium, look no further. Peter David and Mike Barr are the two best Trek comic writers ever, and this collection proves it! No Star Trek fan will want to miss "The Trial of James T. Kirk" Humor, adventure, science fiction and those characters we've all come to know and love, written by authors who obviously love this series! What more can you ask for?

THE BEST OF STAR TREK is a good sample of the wonderful DC STAR TREK comic series. The choice of stories gives people a good idea on what to expect in the rest of the series.The whole "The Trial Of James T. Kirk" story is good in itself,but the other stories chosen are very good as well.A very nice addition to any STAR TREK collection even if you have all of the single comics.

THE BEST OF STAR TREK claims to present the best stories from the DC Comics series, focusing on the crew of the Enterprise from Star Trek: The Original Series (STTOS). I am not that well-versed in the DC Comics incarnation of the original crew, but I can say that these stories do not inspire me to read others in the series (the Mirror Universe Saga excepted).

When summarized, the basic plots of the stories contained here don't sound that bad. The first story, "The Final Voyage", features the end of the original five-year mission, bringing back the more human-looking Klingons and the Talosians. "Mortal Gods" shows the crew investigating the disappearance of a Starfleet Officer, to find that he has violated the Prime Directive in a catastrophic way. The third story, "Double-Blind", features the Enterprise's involvement in a stand-off between two alien civilizations that are not as fearsome as their reputations would lead one to believe. "Retrospect" details the history of Scotty's first love, gradually moving backwards in time to their first meeting. The final story, "The Trial of James T. Kirk", has Kirk facing the charge of repeated violations of the prime directive, with numerous characters from the TV series returning to either witness for or against him.

To the point I can tell, these adventures are arranged to fit well enough with the TV series and movies, but writers Mike Barr, Diane Duane, and Peter David don't distill their ideas very well. Consider that this book is 240 pages, but there are only five stories, consisting of multiple issues in some cases - when the stories aren't all that great to begin with, stretching it out to two or three times the regular length is pure torture. In addition, there is too much reliance on witty banter between Enterprise crewmembers that is used to the point of overkill. The attitudes of the crew in most of the stories are so casual that you wouldn't think they were ever aware of any danger. STTOS was not primarily a comedy, but an adventure show... so let's have more adventure! In conclusion, if you really want to read the best of Star Trek, pick up the trade paperback STAR TREK: THE MIRROR UNIVERSE SAGA.

As an enthusiast of TNG comics, this is definitely an assortment of the best. It can't include them all, but The gift, the story of Q, is probably the best written and illustrated, with accurate depictions of facial features, expressions, gestures. It's like 3rd-4th season Next generation episodes!

One venue where Star Trek stories were published that is often forgotten is the series of comic books published by DC Comics. This book is a collection of five of the stories that appeared in that form, where one is in two parts and the other in three. The stories are:

*) Mortal Gods
*) The Final Voyage
*) Double Blind (2 parts)
*) Retrospect
*) The Trial of James T. Kirk

The dialog, artistry and coloring are first rate, unlike some comic's versions; you can always recognize the Star Trek characters in the captions. There is some variation in the quality of the stories, "Mortal Gods" is another story where a being from a technically advanced civilization adopts the position of a god. "Retrospect" is a look back in the life of Montgomery Scott and is the best of the five. "The Trial of James T. Kirk" is a bit of a spoof, Kirk is on trial for violating the prime directive and some of the witnesses are Bela Oxmyx from "A Piece of the Action" and Leonard James Akaar from "Friday's Child." Once again, Samuel T. Cogley is handling Kirk's defense, as he did in the episode "Court-Martial." In "The Final Voyage" the Klingons have somehow been able to take over Talos IV and they have learned the Talosian power of illusion. It is an absurd episode, as the Talosians demonstrated in "The Menagerie" that their mental powers extend out light years and it would be impossible for the Klingons to surprise them. This fact makes this story the weakest of the set. In "Double Blind" the Enterprise encounters two distinct space-faring species that attempt to bluff their way into convincing Kirk to surrender to them. It is also a bit of a spoof.
The collection of Star Trek stories in comic form is one that I enjoyed reading. Properly done, Star Trek is also a visual experience and in this case it is done very well.

*NOTE - Currently, Amazon combines reviews of "The Best of Star Trek: The Next Generation" with reviews of "The Best of Star Trek" (original series). This is a review of the former.

THE BEST OF STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION

The Best of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1994) collects issues 5, 6, 16, and Annuals 1 and 2 from volume 2 of DC Comics' Star Trek: The Next Generation. It includes three stories by longtime Star Trek writer Michael Jan Friedman and one by John de Lancie (who played Q in various Trek series), with art by Pablo Marcos, Gordon Purcell, Matt Haley, Peter Krause, and Carlos Garzon. In this collection, Geordi and Riker encounter old flames, Dr. Crusher has a birthday, Picard turns into a goat and has another encounter with Q, and Riker teaches a history lesson. TNG writer and producer Jeri Taylor has contributed the book's introduction, wherein she talks about her involvement with the show and says virtually nothing about the comics.

Somewhat surprisingly, de Lancie's story ("The Gift") is the most interesting, although it takes its sweet time to get going (not surprisingly, it prominently features Q). Friedman's stories are adequate at best - they would have made for fairly mediocre television episodes. Exacerbating the problem are the flow issues in Friedman's stories - the comic book medium doesn't lend itself well to the amount of exposition that a typical TNG story features.

The art here is decent - characters are mostly recognizable and don't suffer too terribly from comic book over-muscleization. The book is garishly colored, though, in the manner of the day, and the backgrounds (which often feel somewhat sparse) suffer as a result.

So these are the "best" stories this series had to offer? Really? DC's Star Trek: The Next Generation ran for 80 issues plus 6 annuals. If these stories are the best, then the comic must have been poor indeed.