Star Trek 1229: Cloud Walkers

1229. Cloud Walkers

PUBLICATION: Star Trek: Voyager #13, Marvel Comics, January 1998

CREATORS: Laurie S. Sutton (writer), Terry Pallot and Al Milgrom (artists)

STARDATE: Unknown (follows issue #12)

PLOT: In need of certain ores and chemicals, Voyager is given directions to an Elessian colony by her new "battle sisters". While collecting materials on this strange planet filled with heavy gasses and giant flying fish, Tom Paris falls afoul of a pirate mining platform. Voyager must dive into the thick atmosphere if its crew has a hope of rescuing Tom, and as the atmosphere ignites during the battle, the platform is disabled and Tom beamed away. Voyager then captures the pirates and delivers them to the colony. Meanwhile, Kes is being telepathically bombarded by thousands of voices from the Alpha Quadrant, and her visions tell her that "they" will destroy the Borg, and then Voyager...

CONTINUITY: Kes is contacted by a Talosian (The Cage) and we see events unfolding in the Alpha and Gamma Quadrants (Telepathy War crossover). The vision also includes the Borg.

DIVERGENCES: None.

PANEL OF THE DAY - There are worse things than "the bun".
REVIEW: It is customary for crossover events to spread into books that can't normally sustain such tie-ins, and Voyager's Delta Quadrant setting puts it in that column. The tie-in is slight, though portentous, and the last chapter of Telepathy War has a lot of things to resolve! Or are there elements of Kes' vision that will relate to later Voyager storylines? The main plot shows Sutton, Pallot and Milgrom having fun with a truly bizarre environment, which would have been difficult to represent on television. This fulfills Voyager's creators made when the show was originally announced. At the dawn of the CGI age, they made us expect worlds and aliens such as we'd never seen before, but never made good on it. At least we have the comics. So a fun romp with big explosions if a slight story, but big on ideas and exploration for exploration's sake.

Comments