Chopping Up the Captains Log! (Star Trek: Countdown - J. J. Abrams)

Member Name: T4imbo3107

Product:	Star Trek: Countdown - J. J. Abrams
Date:	08/05/09 (205 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Sets a high standard for the film!

Disadvantages: Depiction of some characters can be confusing at times.

With every big movie release there is always the obligatory marketing campaign, the newly released Star Trek film is no exception, in the last few months there has been a series of graphic novels released that takes us into the movie, actually it takes us right up to the opening scene of the film. Now if this isn't a mouth watering prospect then I don't know what is.

To give an idea of how epic the story actually is, the effort to include key people from the Next Generation cast has been taken at every opportunity to assist in the story telling. The story centres on Spock and Nero, Nero being the leader of the Romulan mining ship, Narada, whilst Spock is the Federation Ambassador who has been residing on Romulus for nearly twenty years.

It is detected early on in the story that the Hobus star is about to go supernova, and is threatening the Romulan home world with extinction, which is in its path. Spock with the assistance of Nero has a solution. He proposes to the Vulcan Science Council to use a Romulan mined element called Decalithium. On Vulcan it can be converted to Red Matter which when injected into the supernova will turn the supernova into a black hole. Surprisingly the Vulcan Science Council does not agree to the plan of using Red Matter. Nero has a lot more to lose as his family are on Romulus and so he leaves Vulcan to rescue them on a personal mission. He arrives at Romulus too late to save his family, as Romulus is destroyed by the Hobus star which has already gone supernova. This drives Nero over the edge and from here on he exerts all his strength on revenge for the needless death of his family and home planet, his crew following his every order. The crew of the Narada murders anyone or anything that gets in its way. Nero has set himself a personal agenda as a man who has been mentally beyond belief.

The evolution is glorious to read, but also chilling given the lengths that he is prepared to go to and the crimes against his own people that he is willing to commit. Probably the best example explaining how the Narada was altered to become the immense warship as originally it was just a Romulan mining ship.

What has to be realised is that one intention of this prequel is to answer questions on how this happened and why they did this and so on and on this ground it answers all the questions without raising new ones. So in theory it ties up all the loose ends, in some cases before they happen. The story acts as an exceedingly strong prequel to the film, as this sets out the foundations and overall it is a good story that entertains and fills the background of the characters in the movie. It also answers questions as to what happened to characters after Star Trek: Nemesis as Data is now back to his old self and is now the Captain of a certain well known Starship; where as Picard has been appointed as a Federation Ambassador to Vulcan rather than taking a place in the Admiralty. The story brings a fair amount of closure to the Next Generation set of characters, and as the story unveils and more familiar people appear such as La Forge and Wolf then you start to get the impression that this is a handover story that will hand the torch from the Next Generation era back to the characters of the original series. Other than the fact that the older and more mature crew of the Enterprise-E are working together again, regardless if they are now siding with the Klingon Empire or the Federation.

David Messina inked the story and although in some places the stance of the characters appear to have been copied from a photo the art is generally good overall, although the quality does tend to vary between some of the pages, where as Spock or Wolf are instantly recognisable in some frames there are places that you do tend to have to look twice to see who is who. The use of colours compliments the parts of the story that makes them stand out; a good example is the pastel colours that are utilised when the story is set on Vulcan. Beige, Orange and dark yellows fill the frame and give a good amount of perspective. This also gives an idea of how the film will depict certain things and certainly sets the expectation.

The thing that I found to be the weakness is the dialogue that is spoken throughout, short sharp sentences that in some cases don't reflect the personality of the character who is speaking the words, although by the end I considered this to be a minor issue overall as the art does tend to speak on its own without the need for words to be added, which a quite a compliment.

What the writers and Messina has done is expand the Next Generation universe just that little bit more. Data and the crew of the Enterprise -E wearing the newly designed Starfleet uniforms that are also seen in the Star Trek On-line gaming portal as well. So eve though these are totally different to what we have seen before the story is true to the little Star Trek media that has been recently made available. Impressively each part finished on a climax, and if the reader doesn't go straight to the last page then the final frame can be quite a surprise. From reading each of the four editions individually the turn of the page was actually quite staggering as the twist that was discovered was fresh and unexpected. Please note this feeling may be diluted when reading the collective edition.

Writers JJ Abrams, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who wrote the film, have delivered a strong story, it's a shame that this couldn't have been added as a prequel movie, perhaps in the same manner as the Kill Bill films that you have a large scale story split into two parts. Although given the scale of Star Trek as a whole, this would have cost a lot of money. I also tend to think that this was originally part of the script that may have been removed due to constraints.

Overall this is a good read, as you get towards the end of the book you do start to feel that the story will come to an abrupt end. To be honest it does, however what it does is open up the film and when the film is watched the readers of the book will have a bit more awareness of what goes on in the film. The story comes to a logical conclusion and as this is set in the Next Generation era is quite a sad ending. In some ways though this is refreshing, but in others this is frustrating as you end up wanting to go and see the film immediately after putting the book down.

Originally the story was released in comic format in four parts from the end of January this year to mid April. Each comic had a depiction of who was the central character in that specific part. The covers ran parallel design with the film poster as each showed a quarter the Starfleet delta with the character shown inside it. At the end of April all four editions were released in a single graphic novel.

As I said at the beginning, if this is a taster of the pressure building in a story that will run directly into the new film then bring it on as it looks like the film will start on a high note... and guess what? Yes it does!!! Leave that for another review.

Summary: This compliments the film entirely!