Star Trek: The Next Generation — Forgiveness

Star Trek: The Next Generation — Forgiveness

By David Brin & Scott Hampton (WildStorm)
ISBN 1-84023-421-0

The Star Trek franchise has had many comic book homes. This effort published by DC/WildStorm is set during the period when Deep Space 9 was being broadcast and tangentially informs the season storyline that featured an intergalactic war between the Federation and its Alpha Quadrant allies on one side and the J’em Haddar warriors of The Dominion on the other.

As the Dominion war rages the USS Enterprise is being used for diplomatic service. Whilst delivering an ambassador to a quarantine sector where an alien race has been embargoed for fifty years the ship intercepts a random Transporter beam heading directly towards the sun of the Palami race.

After serving only half their sentence of interstellar Coventry, the Palami, who had created a plague that decimated the galaxy’s population have demanded a meeting with Federation Authorities, and to be allowed access beyond their system once more.

Tensions are high aboard the Starfleet vessel. This is the wrong time to be fighting another enemy, especially one so proficient in creating bio-weapons, so the added complication caused by the transporter beam’s passenger bodes nothing but trouble.

Fifty years before the official invention of teleport technology a dedicated Earth scientist almost made a commercial go of the revolutionary discovery. He was thwarted by vested travel and shipping interests, betrayed by his own staff and threatened by religious fundamentalists. On the very brink of snatching victory from his near-defeat, a tremendous explosion destroyed his lab and he passed, forgotten, into history. More than two hundred years later he is reintegrated by the Enterprise science staff as the beam continues on towards the sun.

The brinksmanship between Federation and Palami continues as Data and Dr. Crusher pursue radical methods to solve the mystery of the ancient – amnesiac – Earthman. But when they do it’s only to discover that the beam had another passenger. If they are to rescue that other traveller in time and space they will have to break the tense face-off with the dreaded Palami…

David Brin has crafted a solid tale of cold-war tension and personal drama bewitchingly painted by Scott Hampton. Sheer delight, not only for franchise-followers, but also SF fans and art-and-story lovers too.

©2001 Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.