Friday, June 28, 2024

Positively Trek Book Club: Day of Blood

Positively Trek Podcast:

Star Trek: Day of Blood
The Podcast Discusses the Star Trek / Star Trek: Defiant Crossover!


Purchase:
Hardcover: Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk


Positively Trek 275: Book Club: It All Comes Down to This…
Star Trek: Day of Blood

The Star Trek and Star Trek: Defiant ongoing comic series from IDW are featured in an epic crossover when the crews under Sisko and Worf come together to finally take on Kahless and his Red Path devotees. Fighting for freedom from his particular brand of tyranny, the two crews must put aside their mistrust and apprehension to work together and defeat Kahless once and for all…

In this episode of The Positively Trek Book Club, hosts Dan and Brandi discuss Star Trek: Day of Blood. We talk about all seven issues that make up the hardcover collection: The Free Comic Book Day issue Prelude to Day of Blood, Day of Blood #1, Star Trek issues 11 & 12, Star Trek: Defiant issues 7 & 8, and a personal favorite of both of us: the Eisner-nominated Day of Blood: Shaxs’ Best Day!

Click below to go to the show page, or stream directly from this page using the player below!




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Previous episode: The Next Generation: Pliable Truths by Dayton Ward

Wednesday, June 26, 2024

New Comic Day: Defiant #16

Star Trek: Defiant #16
Hell is Only a Word - Part 5


The Battle of the Bugs continues in the sixteenth issues of IDW's Star Trek: Defiant comic series!

In Star Trek: Defiant #16, Worf and his crew are reaching the end of the "Hell is Only a Word" arc of their series, as they continue their battle against the parasites that have plagued them for the past few issues.

Check out the cover art, publisher's description, and purchase links below!



Written by Christopher Cantwell
Art by Ángel Unzueta
Cover A by Ángel Unzueta


Purchase:
Digital (Kindle): Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk



Official synopsis:

It's now or never for the Defiant crew if they are to survive the parasitic infestation on the isolated Section 31 outpost Starbase 99. But with B'Elanna still connected to both Borg ally Hugh and the parasite hivemind, Nymira nowhere to be found, and a giant portal connecting their reality to a horde of hellish bugs just itching to burrow into each of their brain stems, things are looking dire at best. The third arc of the critically acclaimed series ends here!



Variant covers (click to embiggen):


Cover B by J.K. Woodward




Retailer Incentive Cover by Judd Mercer







Previous comic release: Star Trek #21
Next comic release: Sons of Star Trek #4 & Star Trek Annual 2024





Wednesday, June 19, 2024

New Comic Day! Star Trek #21

Star Trek #21
Pleroma - Part 3


IDW's ongoing flagship Star Trek comic series continues this week with issue #21!

In Star Trek #21, the Pleroma story arc enters its third part as Sisko and his crew go up against the god-like species of the Star Trek universe. Check out the publisher's description, cover art, and links to purchase the digital edition from Amazon below!



Written by Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing
Art by Megan Levens
Cover by Megan Levens


Purchase:
Digital (Kindle): Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk



Official synopsis:

Welcome to the Pleroma, a place outside time and space where god-level species have gathered to discuss the fate of the universe! It's up to Captain Sisko and his valiant crew of the U.S.S. Theseus to persuade the gods to allow them to help repair Kahless' unraveling of space-time – but will they listen to mere mortals responsible for their prophesied undoing?



Variant covers (click to embiggen):


Cover B by Rahzzah




Retailer Incentive Cover by J.J. Lendl



Previous comic release: Sons of Star Trek #3
Next comic release: Star Trek: Defiant #16





Tuesday, June 18, 2024

Out Today: Star Trek: Defiant Volume 2: Another Piece of the Action

Star Trek: Defiant:
Volume Two:
Another Piece of the Action

Written by Christopher Cantwell
Art by Mike Feehan


The next chapter of the voyages of the USS Defiant under the command of Worf and his renegade crew is featured in Another Piece of the Action, the second omnibus collection of the Star Trek: Defiant comic series from IDW! This hardcover release collects Star Trek: Defiant issues 8-11, along with the 2024 Defiant: Annual

Following the events of the Day of Blood crossover, the five issues in this collection feature Worf and his crew dealing with some "off the books" problems for Starfleet.

Check out the back cover blurb below, along with links to purchase the hardcover edition from Amazon!







Publisher's description:
Arc two of the acclaimed Star Trek: Defiant series is collected here!
Still reeling from the battle on Qo’noS, Worf and the Defiant crew have been ordered to return to Starfleet headquarters. Despite their heroic actions, the Federation can’t celebrate the crew’s involvement in the fight against Kahless and the Red Path. In fact, the Federation is cornered by their tenuous relationship with the Klingon Empire. To save the alliance, they’re forced to discharge Worf and his crew! With the unspoken, unwritten agreement that they’ll operate with full Starfleet authority...completely off the books.
Disavowed from Starfleet, Worf and his crew set out in their new roles as secret bounty hunters for the Federation. Their targets: untouchable criminals protected by treaties and alliances. They’ll take on villains from across Star Trek’s history such as an individualized ex-member of the Borg Collective, a time-traveling con man from The Next Generation, and an alien gangster from Sigma Iotia II.
This volume collects issues #8–11 and the Defiant: Annual.
 
Purchase Star Trek: Defiant, Vol. 2: Another Piece of the Action:

Hardcover: Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk





 

Friday, June 14, 2024

Positively Trek Book Club: The Story We Didn't Know We Needed

Positively Trek Podcast:

Star Trek: The Next Generation
Pliable Truths

Interview with author Dayton Ward!


Purchase:
Trade Paperback: Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk
E-book (Kindle): Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk


Positively Trek 273: Book Club: The Story We Didn’t Know We Needed
Dayton Ward: Pliable Truths

When Star Trek: Deep Space Nine hit our television screens in 1993, we were introduced to the planet Bajor, the end of the Cardassian Occupation, and a cast of colorful characters that were very different from the sanitized Starfleet environment of the Enterprise-D on Star Trek: The Next Generation. But what happened just before “Emissary”? How did Starfleet establish a presence in the Bajoran system? How was the withdrawal negotiated? Why did O’Brien decide to transfer to DS9? All of these questions and more are finally answered, over 30 years later, thanks to Dayton Ward’s latest Star Trek novel.

In this episode of the Positively Trek Book Club, hosts Dan Gunther and Bruce Gibson are once again joined by New York Times Bestselling author Dayton Ward to discuss his new novel, Star Trek: The Next Generation: Pliable Truths. We talk about the story of the transition from TNG to DS9 that we have been waiting decades to read!

Click below to go to the show page, or stream directly from this page using the player below!




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Previous episode: Star Trek Explorer Presents: "The Mission" and Other Stories - Part 2
Next episode: Day of Blood

Wednesday, June 12, 2024

Fusion

Star Trek: Voyager
String Theory, Book 2
Fusion by Kirsten Beyer
Published November 2005
Read May 27th 2020

Previous book (published order): Distant Shores
Previous book (String Theory): String Theory, Book 1: Cohesion
Next book: String Theory, Book 3: Evolution

Purchase:
Mass-market paperback: Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk
E-book (Kindle): Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk

Spoilers ahead for
Fusion!

From the back cover:
As the Cosmos Unravels 
The disruption in the space-time continuum caused by the creation of the "Blue Eye" singularity continues: Thread by thread, the fabric slowly frays and peels away, breaking down barriers between dimensions. As the lines between realities blur, the consequences cascade. 
A Sleeping City Awakes 
Voyager pursues Tuvok to a long-dormant space station, a place of astonishing grandeur and wonder. Ancient almost beyond imagining, the city seduces the crew with the promise that their greatest aspirations might be realized. Such promise requires sacrifice, however, and the price of fulfilling them will be high for Voyager. 
A Mysterious Power Stirs 
Unseen sentries, alarmed by Voyager's meddling in the Monohoran system, send emissaries to ascertain Janeway's intentions. Unbeknownst to the captain, she is being tested and must persuade her evaluators that their contention -- that Voyager poses a threat to the delicate web of cosmic ecology -- is baseless. And failure to vindicate her choices will bring certain retribution to her crew.

My thoughts:

Continuing the String Theory trilogy which began in James Swallow's Cohesion, Fusion almost feels like a spooky ghost ship-type story as the tale of this mysterious region of space is picked up by author Kirsten Beyer. Many Star Trek book fans will know Kirsten as the author of the amazing run of post-finale Star Trek: Voyager novels that began with Full Circle back in 2009 and culminated in 2020's To Lose the Earth. Her career has of course now expanded into the television arena, as she works as a writer and producer on a few of the new Star Trek series under Alex Kurtzman.

Interestingly, Fusion is Kirsten Beyer's first Star Trek novel, and signs of the great stories she will tell over the course of her career thus far are apparent in its pages. Beyer obviously has a great affinity and knowledge of the characters, and she deftly writes them in such a way that their voices come through very clearly.

Voyager encounters an array, much like the Caretaker's or Susperia's.

The story itself is an interesting one, full of strange scientific mysteries and anomalous occurrences which are part and parcel of Voyager's style of storytelling. Tuvok, who disappeared at the end of the previous novel, is taken aboard a mysterious space station. This station is referred to as an "array," for reasons that soon become apparent as we learn that it is linked to the Nacene, the creators of the Caretaker's "array" as seen in the premiere episode of Star Trek: Voyager, as well as Susperia's "array" in the episode "Cold Fire."

One of my favorite subplots of this novel is an attempt to infiltrate Voyager by a Nacene who impersonates Kathryn Janeway's sister, Phoebe. This Nacene is able to accomplish this by altering the memories of the crew, making them believe that Phoebe had accompanied the ship on the mission to the Badlands and become stranded with the rest of the crew when they were thrown into the Delta Quadrant. The means by which this deception was uncovered was quite clever, as Beyer makes use of the fact that Harry Kim and Naomi Wildman are not natives of the same universe as the rest of the Voyager crew; fans might remember that they were both replaced by their counterparts from an adjacent reality in the episode "Deadlock." This made them slightly out-of-phase with the rest of the crew, making "Phoebe's" attempts to alter their memories ineffective.

The fact that Harry Kim and Naomi Wildman come from a slightly different universe comes into play in this novel.

I also enjoyed the outcome of Tuvok's part in the story. He is presented with the opportunity to realize his deepest, most profound desire. Ultimately, however, he gives up this chance in order to help another, in a stunning display of self-sacrifice. This revelation of Tuvok's deepest feelings reminded me of a line that always resonated with me, from the season six episode "Muse." An alien playwright tries to explain to one of his actors the nature of Vulcans when the actor is unable to understand the Tuvok character's motivation, telling him that "beneath your unfeeling exterior is a heart that's breaking, silently, and in more pain than any of us can possibly understand, because that's what it is to be Vulcan."

If I have one major complaint about this novel, it's that there is a great deal happening in it, with much of it being somewhat confusing. The story does tend to get bogged down in the minutia of what is happening, and again, there is just so much of it that it is quite easy to get lost. However, a lot of that is mitigated by Beyer's deft handling of the characters, which is what I really connected to. Her firm grasp of these individuals and their motivations was the lifeline I clung to when trying to make sense of some of the complexities of the plot.

Like Book 1 with the fate of Tuvok left in the air at the end, Fusion ends with Tom and Harry missing, and the Doctor seemingly in the extradimensional realm referred to as "Exosia." We will, of course, have to wait until Book 3, Evolution, to pick up these plot threads.

Final thoughts:

I enjoyed Fusion for the most part, despite the overly-complex and often confusing plot. Though this is Kirsten Beyer's first Star Trek novel, one can see why she would go on to make the Voyager "relaunch" novels so compelling. Her grasp of the characters that she so obviously loves to write is impressive, and was the hook I needed to bring me along on the journey of this novel. There is also a great deal of cleverness in the story, with Beyer using past lore from Star Trek: Voyager to great effect. A competent and enjoyable middle entry in the String Theory trilogy.

More about Fusion:


Star Trek: Voyager: String Theory:

Wednesday, June 5, 2024

New Comic Day! Sons of Star Trek #3

Sons of Star Trek #3


It's new comic day once again! This week, we have the third issue of a four-part miniseries from IDW.

Out today is Sons of Star Trek #3, featuring Jake Sisko, Alexander Rozhenko, Nog, and Q Jr. continuing their cross-reality adventure. As always, check out the various covers below, and the publisher's synopsis, along with links to purchase the digital edition from Amazon!



Written by Morgan Hampton
Art by Angel Hernandez
Cover by Jake Bartok


Purchase:
Digital (Kindle): Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk



Official synopsis:

In a—SNAP!—turn of events, Q Jr has kidnapped three of Starfleet’s eldest sons and transported them to an alternate reality. By way of a bold maneuver with Lieutenant Jadzia at the helm, the U.S.S. Avery crew finally avoided being turned to shrapnel by the Breen…for now. But the crew now face a new challenge: The infamous Curzon maneuver has left them sitting dead in space, and the Breen have already begun infiltrating the ship. To make matters worse, Q Jr.'s powers have stopped working. It’s do or die for Jake Sisko and the crew of the Avery—for real this time.



Variant covers (click to embiggen):



Cover B by Aaron Harvey




Retailer Incentive cover by Andy Price




Previous comic release: Star Trek: Celebrations
Next comic release: Star Trek #21





Tuesday, June 4, 2024

Adam Nimoy Memoir & 'Strange New Worlds: The Scorpius Run Out Today!

We have two new book releases today: A memoir from the son of Leonard Nimoy, Adam Nimoy, as well as the latest paperback omnibus of an IDW Star Trek comic miniseries! 


The Most Human:
Reconciling with My Father, Leonard Nimoy

by Adam Nimoy


Adam Nimoy's frank and sobering discussion of his strained relationship with his father, Leonard Nimoy (Star Trek's Spock), is the main feature of his memoir that is officially released today.

Check out the back cover blurb below, along with links to purchase the hardcover, e-book, and audiobook editions from Amazon!






Publisher's description:
While the tabloids and fan publications portrayed the Nimoys as a “close family,” to his son Adam, Leonard Nimoy was a total stranger.
The actor was as inscrutable as the iconic half-Vulcan science officer he portrayed on Star Trek, even to those close to him. Now, his son’s poignant memoir explores their complicated relationship and how it informed his views on marriage, parenting, and later, sobriety. Despite their differences, both men ventured down parallel paths: marriages leading to divorce, battling addiction, and finding recovery. Most notably, both men struggled to take the ninth step in their AA journey: to make amends with each other.
Discover how the son of Spock learned to navigate this tumultuous relationship—from Shabbat dinners to basement AA meetings—and how he was finally able to reconcile with his father—and with himself.
 
Purchase The Most Human: Reconciling with My Father, Leonard Nimoy:

Hardcover: Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk
E-book (Kindle): Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk




Also out today is a new graphic novel collecting the most recent Star Trek: Strange New Worlds comic miniseries from IDW:

Strange New Worlds:
The Scorpius Run

Written by Mike Johnson and Ryan Parrott
Art by Angel Hernández


The Starship Enterprise finds itself in an unexplored region of space, out of contact with Starfleet and trapped in hostile territory. This graphic novel collects all five issues of the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: The Scorpius Run comic miniseries.

The publisher's description can be found below, along with links to purchase the paperback edition from Amazon!




Publisher's description:
Explore never-before-seen adventures of the hit Paramount+ show! Strange new worlds beckon! 
Set course with Captain Pike and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise to the Scorpius Constellation as they become the first Federation vessel to explore this uncharted region of space! In this romp across the stars, the Enterprise crew learn what it truly means to explore the strange and unfamiliar when they lose contact with Starfleet and everything outside the region. After entering a crime lord’s starship competition to save an innocent pilot, the Enterprise jets through a gauntlet of dangerous environments in the unexplored Scorpius sector. But cosmic storms and sentient ship-eating asteroids aren’t the only obstacles the crew will have to survive!
Collects the five-issues series by Star Trek comics veterans Ryan Parrott, Mike Johnson, and Angel Hernandez.
 
Purchase Strange New Worlds: The Scorpius Run:

Paperback: Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk