‘Star Trek: The Next Generation – The Manga’ (Tokyopop)

If the cover is anything to go by then it’s a hard life being a Starfleet Captain... The burden of command is such that you never have a moment to yourself and you never get a chance to do all the things that you like doing. One day Captain Jean Luc Picard found that he needed to get away from it all and get back into one of his favourite hobbies. Beaming down to the nearest deserted planet, he waited until the ship had gone and... started dancing like a robot! Seriously, you take a look at the cover and tell me that Picard doesn’t have an ‘eighties body popping’ thing going on! It’s either that or he’s a closet mime artist...

Anyway...

The last Star Trek manga was a bit of a mixed bag for me but there was enough there to make me want to give this one a go when it arrived. As with any compilation of stories, I found ‘The Next Generation’ to be a bit hit and miss in terms of what the stories did for me. This time round it was a straight 50/50 split in terms of the stories themselves although the artwork was consistently good (in my opinion) throughout.

I’ve never liked stories where a character is taught an obvious lesson so they can ‘grow as an individual’. Unfortunately, ‘Changeling’ is just that and we see Wesley Crusher get taught valuable lessons on his first mission on an away team. There’s no attempt at subtlety here and the story comes across ham fisted as a result.

‘Sensation’ is a lot more enjoyable with a mystery that slowly unfolds (a mysterious illness strikes down an archaeological team and then moves onto the Enterprise) and kept me guessing the whole way through. You might see the ending coming but I didn’t! Funnily enough though, I found that the ending didn’t quite match up to the promise that the rest of the story had set...

It wasn’t ‘The Picardian Knot’s’ fault that I didn’t get much out of it. Here’s a tale (of the Captain’s loss of emotion) that demands further knowledge of the Star Trek universe and isn’t particularly forgiving if the reader doesn’t have this. I don’t have much of a clue about events outside whatever tale I’m reading (or film that I’m watching) and I felt that I missed out as a result. Hard core fans will get a lot more out of this than I did...

‘Loyalty’ also demands a wider knowledge of Star Trek but, unlike ‘The Picardian Knot’, makes allowances by bringing the reader up to speed with past events. The end result is that I had more time to concentrate on the story itself and the interaction between characters in a highly charged situation. It’s funny that this story (where hardly anything happened compared to the others) actually became my favourite in this book; I’m putting this down to the in depth look we get at Riker’s character and what he is prepared to do to defend his captain and friend...

So, another ‘hit and miss’ Star Trek manga but once again there’s enough there to make me want to see what comes along next. I’m looking forward to it...