Customer Reviews

Star Trek: Alien Spotlight Volume 2

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After the absolute powerhouse that was "Alien Spotlight, Vol.1" I was greatly looking forward to this follow up. I'm sorry to say that I was disappointed.
Like the first volume, this is an anthology featuring one story each about various different Star Trek races, in this case the Tribbles, Q, Cardassians, Klingons and Romulans. The Tribble story I found to be fun, but somewhat lacking, just because it strained my willing suspension of disbelief that a species which, up to this point, had never been shown to exhibit thoughts above the level of "eat, eat, reproduce" should be able to exercise such planning at the climax. The Klingon one was unambiguously good, with artwork, particularly in the last bit, which lent an epic quality to the story. My only complaint is that was already an IDW Klingons miniseries a few years earlier, though I assume that they could only get Keith R. A DiCandido if he was allowed to tell a story about his favourite species.
Some readers may recall that was already a "Romulans" issue in the first volume (as well as two follow-up miniseries), so it seems strange that they would choose to put another such issue in here (I can only assume that this was done in an effort to capitalize upon the popularity of the latest Star Trek movie). This is not necessarily a bad thing, mind you; it might have been interesting to run, for example, a Next Generation-era Romulans plot. Instead, however, the plot was very similar to that of the John Byrne's volume, except (frankly) much more ineptly told.
I had been looking greatly forward to the Cardassians volume, which may go a ways to explaining my disappointment; the protagonist character, although given sympathetic motivations, didn't seem remotely realistic and Garak's appearance at the end just seemed like a total asspull. Moreover, the non-ending that it had was just plain silly; we know that Garak is not going to die in a comic book.
The best in the volume was the Q entry, which felt very much like an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation. Even that one suffered a bit, though; the issue was so "decompressed" in terms of its storytelling that there wasn't really time to build up the plot to more dramatic heights.
All in all, a mediocre entry. Let's have a volume three!