Star Trek 824: Pon Farr

824. Pon Farr

PUBLICATION: Star Trek #7, DC Comics, August 1984

CREATORS: Mike W. Barr (writer), Eduardo Barreto and Ricardo Villagran (artists)

STARDATE: 8180.1, immediately before ST III (follows the last issue)

PLOT: Saavik is in the throes of pon farr, so Kirk makes a detour to Vulcan. But her fiancé has left for a secret mission. She finds out where, and in her blood fever, steals a small ship and heads for the Galactic Barrier (that damn thing again). When they catch up to her, she's so far gone, she attacks the Enterprise...

CONTINUITY: This occurs just before ST III, with the Enterprise taking David Marcus and Saavik to the USS Grissom, and both Amanda and Sarek have questions about Spock's katra. McCoy surprises himself by reading Vulcan. We're also told the Secret Origin of Saavik: Between his tours with Pike and Kirk, Spock finds her as a child, the lone survivor of an abandonned Romulan base. She's then raised by Spock's parents. The comic "reveals" that female Vulcans also go through the pon farr, which in later works, became accepted fact (New Frontier, Enterprise).

DIVERGENCES: Kirk meeting Sarek just before the events of ST III doesn't quite mesh with their meeting in that film where they seem not to have met since Spock's death (debatable because Kirk leaves in a hurry without giving Sarek closure).

PANEL OF THE DAY - It's like he watched him grow up.
REVIEW: The first part of the last Saavik story the comic series might be likely to tell, and they make it worthwhile. More than just a reprise of Amok Time, we get an origin story for her, one that explains her bond to the elder Spock, and prefigures her bond to the "new Spock". Not much is made of Kirk and David though, and since it's also his last story before his last movie, he could have been better integrated into the story (maybe next chapter). Other than that, there's a lot of racing from one point of the universe to another. Hopefully, the momentum will take us somewhere interesting.