(courtesy IDW Publishing)
SNAPSHOT
Ensign, report to the bridge! Board the U.S.S. Cerritos for a mission to the enigmatic Qvanti system as the hit Paramount+ animated series comes to comics! Captain Carol Freeman leads her crew on an expedition aimed to build bridges and advance Federation technology, but she and the away team quickly suspect that the planet and its people are not all what they seem… Meanwhile, the crew in the lower decks take to the holodeck for some much-needed recreational time—until a bloodthirsty visitor decides to join in on their games. Can Boimler, Mariner, Tendi, and Rutherford save the ship from the likes of Dracula? Star Trek: Lower Decks unites New York Times-bestselling and Eisner-winning writer Ryan North (Unbeatable Squirrel Girl) and comics artist extraordinaire Chris Fenoglio (Goosebumps, Star Wars Adventures). (courtesy IDW Publishing)
Leaping from one medium to another, even for a successful show from an enduringly popular franchise, is not without its risks.
What works in one may not work in the other, leaving you, in the hands of a new medium, with a pallid reflection of the characters and places we love in their original home.
Thankfully, that risk has well and truly paid off for Star Trek – Lower Decks #1 by Ryan North and Chris Fenoglio which feels so much like an episode of the series now in its third series, with a fourth on the way, that you feel as if someone slipped in a secret extension to the last run of episodes when no one was looking.
Star Trek – Lower Decks #1 is a delight from start to finish, encapsulating the wit and satire of the show with some very comic-based touches such as hilarious asides that gleefully almost all the pages and which preserve that seditious sense of humour that serves the series well.
Lower Decks is a series that has successfully trod the thin line between homage and satire, serving up standalone episodes in the tradition of The Original Series, The Next Generation and current streaming wunderkind, Strange New Worlds that are both serious sci-fi storytelling with weighty emotional resonance and Star Trek parody writ large.
The fact that the streaming series and now the comic have managed to deliver this potentially volatile mix and done with drama and a sense of fun intact is a miracle, speaking to how well the original vision and execution have translated across to a graphic novel form.
(courtesy IDW Publishing)
It helps that Ryan North absolutely nails the parodic mischief at the heart of Lower Decks, primarily through the accidental giving of life to a holodeck Dracula by Boimler who, as per usual, took things a little too far when the U.S.S. Ceritos was lunging through a messily disruptive atmosphere, while Chris Fenoglio has matched the look and feel of the show down to the last whimsically mischievous pixel.
Another masterstroke is that every single character feels exactly like the versions you love on the show.
Boimler, Mariner, Tendi and Rutherford emerge with their personalities and looks happily intact; the same can also be said for Captain Carol Freeman and the rest of the bridge crew who act precisely like they do Lower Decks proper with the storyline making sure it makes as good a use of these complex and amusing as the streaming entity.
While the narrative is pretty Lower Decks business as usual, the funny asides strewn about the graphic novel are a nice comics-only touch that serve the same function as the occasional visual asides you see on the show but with an extra sense of mischief and silliness that works perfectly in the comic book format.
Thus, while Lower Decks #1 is very much faithful to the medium which gave it birth, it’s also its own delightful creation, a 2D panel rendering of a seemingly 3D show – true the streaming episodes are just as 2D as the comic but they feel somehow more rounded and big and alive – that comes alive with a story simultaneously wacky (a redemption arc for an initially villainous holodeck Dracula? You got it!) and meaningful as sentient life is respected and given its own shot at autonomy at the same time as a botched Second Contact moment actually ends up not as badly executed as first feared.
There’s a sense of buoyant fun throughout the entire novel and honestly you finish up the story feeling pretty damn good about the world – after all, if Dracula can be redeemed and learn to play nice in the futuristic utopia of Star Trek (something the comic book observes, rather naughtily but amusingly, that Picard never managed with Dr. Moriarty’s holodeck creation), then anything’s possible right?
While Star Trek generally leaves you feeling largely more optimistic and hopeful at the end of an episode or movie than you did at the start, Lower Decks excels at bolstering your mood, and the joy of Lower Decks #1 is that it not only sustains this shot of animated serotonin but manages to be its own marvellously unique thing while keeping faith with the show from it is drawn, a feat truly worthy of praise and not a few smiles.
(courtesy IDW Publishing)