Star Trek: Voyager – Seven’s Reckoning Part 3 of 4
IDW Publishing
Written by Dave Baker
Art by Angel Hernandez
Colors by Ronda Pattison
Letters by Neil Uyetake
IDW’s first-ever Star Trek: Voyager mini-series continues today with the penultimate issue. Seven’s Reckoning is set during the fourth season of Voyager, right between “Scientific Method” and “Year of Hell pt. 1.” We have a review of part 3 of the mini-series, plus a preview of the first five pages.
Cover A by Angel Hernandez
Review
“These cycles…perhaps they cannot be broken. I should know my place in the ensemble. I am Greeb…and I surrender.” – Greeb the Vesh to Septa
The rebellion that had been brewing in the previous two issues of IDW’s Star Trek: Voyager – Seven’s Reckoning now boils over into outright war between the downtrodden Vesh and their Kz’ar overlords. And like many tried and true stories in all of fiction, this is a story of an under-resourced but scrappy majority up against a powerful and heavily-armed minority. And the outcome forces them to reconsider their beliefs. The discontent that had unified the Vesh is suddenly revealed to have been a mask for different factions. It’s then that Seven of Nine stumbles across a startling revelation; something that could change everything.
The crew of the USS Voyager, which had played a supporting role in the prior two issues, are almost entirely absent here. This issue is about Seven of Nine and the choices of the Vesh. It’s important to recognize that fact, because in many stories like these, including many Star Trek stories about our crew encountering an oppressed people, our heroes become a sort of “great white hope” saviors who show the backward natives what true heroism really means. Writer Dave Baker doesn’t take that route. In this story, Seven is a catalyst, but the Vesh and the Kz’ar are on their own paths, making their own decisions, and have their own issues to deal with. Seven is no savior. If anyone is going to save the Vesh, it’s the Vesh.
The only place the Voyager crew appears in this issue is in a one-page dream sequence prologue. Each issue has begun with one page, apparently a dream of Seven of Nine’s, in which the fully-assimilated Seven ambushes members of the Voyager crew, to assimilate them. Each single page introduction unfolds in roughly the same way, but each issue’s installment ratchets up the danger and suspense. It’s not clear what this is actually about, as the content of the dream seems to have no bearing on the rest of the story.
By this point, we are accustomed to Dave Baker’s story making sense, unfolding in a psychologically realistic fashion, and gradually unpacking the details of a fascinating alien civilization in the Ohrdi’nadar. Baker continues to use a banal opening narration over a spectacular double-page splash of the USS Voyager in flight, but the drawings are so good, it’s easy to let that go. Angel Hernandez’s artwork is dynamic, impressionistic, and vivid, though they’re a couple of action beats where I’m not sure what exactly took place. The Vesh can also be difficult to tell apart from one another at times. Ronda Pattison’s colors are explosive and lovely, with none of the gloomy muddiness that characterizes so much of comic book coloring these days.
From the preview of next month’s cover, it seems as though the Voyager crew will return to the story for the finale. How will the narrative of the Ohrdi’nadar conclude? Who will be the Dawn Bringer, leading the people into the light of justice? And how will Seven explain her actions to her Captain? I can’t wait to find out.
5-page preview
Available Today
The 32-page comic Star Trek: Voyager – Seven’s Reckoning #3 was released on Wednesday, January 6. You can order it at TFAW for $3.19. You can also order the digital version at Amazon ComiXology for $3.44.
Keep up with all the Star Trek comics news, previews and reviews in TrekMovie’s comics category.
This has been one of IDW’s worst miniseries to date. I’ve loved almost everything IDW has done, but this is so poorly written.