Alternate Cover: Looking at Star Trek: Countdown

I've spoken before about my disdain for licensed comics. To cut a long argument short, they rarely capture what made the source material great, and feel like little more than a pale imitation of the 'real' stories. However, there is one thing that can convince me to buy them, and that's a sense of their own continuity. Whether that's one divorced from the 'proper' series, as in the case of Transformers or Street Fighter comics, or something made canonical with the original medium by its creator (the Buffy comics), I will concede, sometimes grudgingly, that it's a story I want to read.

Which brings me to this week's topic. Star Trek: Countdown.

Countdown is a series set in the post-Star Trek: Nemesis TNG universe. According to the creators, it exists in-continuity with the new Star Trek movie, as authorised by director JJ Abrams. Shallow as I am, that makes me interested in reading it - after all, it's both the final and first example of the Abrams Star Trek universe, and since it's canon, it also presents the newest appearance of the TNG crew.

It doesn't take long, however, before it's clear that things aren't quite what I was hoping for.

The story largely follows Nero, the Romulan villain of Abrams' Star Trek movie, as he makes his journey from a simple mining captain to the man who'll threaten the timeline. In practise, this involves explaining why he doesn't look like the Romulans we're familiar with (he, er, shaved his head and got tattoos) and why he has a special ship (experimental Borg-derived technology). It explains how he came to learn about Kirk. And why he hates the Federation. It's quickly clear that the series is mostly an exercise in continuity plugging to give nerdy, Abrams-wary fans like me something to refer to that explains why Nero is the way he is.

This in itself, wouldn't be so bad, but the events that surround it are bordering on absurd, and that leaves us with a story that only a mother (or a fanboy) could love. A parade of TNG guest stars attempts to sate those easily pleased by a glimpse of Picard or Worf, but accomplishes this by hammering the characters into oddly convenient roles.

Unquestionably the worst of these is the appearance of Data, now Captain of the Enterprise, and successfully "resurrected" (to use his own bizarre take on the situation) after his memories were copied onto his younger brother, the android B4, prior to his sacrifice in Star Trek Nemesis.

The entire comic is as poor as any licensed series ever was, and I say that as the exact target market for such an adaptation. I love Star Trek. I love comics. I love nitpicking over continuity. I should've loved this, but I didn't. Instead of telling a story, the creators delivered what amounts to little more than a cynical request to Trek's nerdiest fans not to cause a scene.

The sad truth is that the only reason Abrams has allowed the creators 'free rein' with this incarnation of Star Trek is that he knows the truth: the film won't refer to it in any meaningful way, and, what's more, the continuity it's set in is most likely about to be wiped off the map. Whether that means we'll see any more comics set in the TNG timeline, I don't know - but if this is the standard set by them, well, maybe it's better that we don't.

James writes Alternate Cover every Monday at Den Of Geek. His previous column can be found here.