Star Trek: Defiant vol. 2 — Another Piece of the Action

IDW’s new line of “Star Trek” comics has been pretty good so far, with the main title and its sister series coming together already to give us one big event in ”Day of Blood.” While we’re still waiting to see how the main title follows up on the climactic events depicted there, that future is now for “Defiant.”  It’s here with a brand-new status quo for its cast that sounds cool as hell… until you see it in action.

The Defiant’s crew, led by its Captain Worf and currently consisting of science officer Spock, engineer B’elanna Torres, helmsman Ro Laren, and previously unnamed medical officer/pharmer Nymira Vondect, are currently en route back to Starfleet Headquarters.  Not before bidding farewell to duplicitous yet helpful Romulan intelligence officer Sela, who does so after giving Spock a mystery to ponder regarding some missing astronomers.  While the crew is apprehensive about what Starfleet will say about their actions, the hope is that the part they played in the preservation of the Klingon Empire and Captain Sisko’s recommendation will see them through it.

That’s not what happens.  Rather than being given command of the Defiant along with the reinstatement of most of his crew, Worf is given new and unconventional orders from Starfleet.  Seeing as how their methods in helping to resolve the Day of Blood were definitely not by-the-book, High Command has decided to utilize that for their own ends.  Which means that the Defiant’s crew are now off-the-books bounty hunters with the directive to address problems that Starfleet can’t directly intervene with themselves.

What kind of problems, you ask?  There’s the actions of the renegade Borg known as Hugh, who is currently going around attacking other Borg ships through unknown means at the edge of Federation space.  You’ve also got temporal fugitive Berlinghoff Rasmussen who is thought to be on Talos IV, whose telepathic inhabitants are under an informal quarantine by the Federation.  Last is Benny the Munch, a member of the emergent conservative class on Sigma Iota II who have embraced their “history” of Old-School Chicagoland gangster violence in response to the planet’s emergent democratic movement.

Seeing Worf and company devise clever ways to  take on these problems unburdened by bureaucratic red tape should make for a great time, right?  Well, writer Christopher Cantwell has anticipated this and has come up with a downbeat but more interesting take on this setup.  That’s because each of these encounters turn out to be more complex than they initially seem.  What with Hugh having ties to a piece of original “Trek” tech, the consideration of how the quarantine on Talos IV runs contrary to the ideals of the Federation, and what Worf is asked to do in order to deal with Benny.  

None of the stories here play out in a straightforward manner, and Cantwell skillfully utilizes this to dismantle and refocus your expectations about how being an off-the-books bounty hunter for the Federation would work.  That he’s able to do this over the course of four issues is impressive, and while I’m not impressed by the non-cliffhanger we’re left with at the end of them, it does make sense given what’s come before and I’m curious to see how it’s going to be used to transition “Defiant” into its next status quo.

Cantwell also continues to demonstrate that he has a solid handle on the core cast of the series.  While the series is is currently driven by Worf’s dogged pursuit of honor as it relates to his position in Starfleet, it’s also regularly put into conflict with his own moral code here which leads to some good drama amongst the crew.  Spock is still Spock, of course, and while he’s given an interesting subplot to dig into here, his best moments are when we see him playing against his cultural norms.  Vulcan sarcasm is arguably the best kind of sarcasm as we’ll see.  B’elanna and Ro don’t get a whole lot to do besides play devil’s advocate, but they at least play that part well.  Nymira also gets a proper name in this volume, along with some proper history and a chance to play up her criminal past.

If there’s any real fault with the writing here it’s in how it constantly presents Starfleet as the bad guy in all of these stories.  While anyone who has watched any iteration of “Star Trek” long enough will know that it’s not a perfect organization, its purpose is to be a force for good in the galaxy.  Seeing Worf and the rest of his crew do their dirty work consistently makes them into pretty unambiguous bad guys in this volume, and the lack of nuance there is striking.  I’m not saying that Starfleet can’t be the antagonist in a story, but they come off as more outright villainous here than that.

Also, and your mileage on this issue may vary, “Defiant” continues the current “Star Trek” comics trend of drawing heavily on the history of what has come before in its stories.  All of the targets featured in this volume can be traced back to specific episodes of “The Next Generation” or “The Original Series” and one even references the “Year Five” series of comics that I’ve talked about before.  While I think these stories are mined to interesting effect, and are presented in an accessible manner, those of you hoping to see some strange new worlds (and characters) in this current run of “Trek” comics are going to have to keep waiting.

It’s all illustrated capably by Mike Feehan, jumping over from the main series to give regular artist Angel Unzueta a break after he illustrated most of “Day of Blood.”  Feehan does capable work here, making all of the characters look like their film/TV counterparts while capturing a bright and slightly cartoonish depiction of this universe.  Ramon Rosanas illustrates the “Annual” that’s collected here and he gives it a grittier look than you’d expect compared to the rest of the volume, which is appropriate given its story.

That’s because it’s all about Sela.  While the first issue of this volume implied that her guest role was over, it appears Cantwell has longer-term plans for her.  As such, it’s necessary to give her a more rounded character than Evil Daughter of Time-Displaced Tasha Yar.  Which he manages to do here, assuming you can get past the casual way in which time travel is used here.

That aside, I like how the character’s failures in “The Next Generation” position her here as a failure in the eyes of her superiors and one who’s desperate to get back into their good graces.  This involves her trying to find out what happened to some missing Romulan astronomers, but instead leads her to a revelation about her mother’s death.  Even though it’s a retcon, it’s a clever one that makes sense regarding how she’d want to remember it rather than what actually happened.  That it looks to lead her back to the Defiant is fine by me.

While vol. 2 of “Defiant” starts out with a clear post-crossover direction, it subsequently self-destructs it in ways that make for entertaining reading.  I liked having my expectations upended in that way, while also getting some stories that, while very heavy on fanservice and recognizable characters, offered some interesting twists and characterizations.  Cantwell’s first volume of “Defiant” may have been marked by seeing how its incongruous and volatile cast tried to function as a crew, but this volume makes it clear that this approach is definitely a feature and not a bug.