This review contains some spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – The Seeds of Salvation #3, on sale now from IDW Publishing
At the start of this miniseriesthere is a major debate between Una, the second-in-command of the U.S.S. Enterprise (known as Number One) and Nurse Christine Chapel over whether the missions that the Enterprise has been going on have become too boring. Number One feels that Chapel has a need for danger more than anything else, and she is confusing THAT for a lack of excitement.
Well, as Number One points out during this issue, there might be something to the excitement that danger can bring out in a person, but I think that Chapel probably now disagrees, and would prefer some of the Enterprise’s boring missions to this strange adventure that has led to a group of aliens trying to break free from an ancient prison…but who, exactly, are the jailors, and is the prison a legit one or not?
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – The Seeds of Salvation #3 is from writer Robbie Thompson, new artist Serg Acuña, colorist JP Jordan, and letterer Jodie Troutman, and it continues to ratchet up the excitement in this series with twists and turns that take this series from its initial horror theme to a much more expansive threat.
Who are the Seeds trying to do to escape?
The whole series began when Chapel went to go visit an old friend of hers who was experimenting on a planet that was seemingly all made out of ice. The friend and all of her colleagues have vanished, so Captain Pike authorizes a rescue mission to find the missing scientists.
They use a submarine, and team up with a robot that Chapel’s friend had been using on the mission. The book seems like it was setting up some sort of Lovecraftian horror story, especially as they passed some crazy giant octopus-like creature as they went to the bottom of the planet.
That’s where we got the first twist, that the beings here are known as the Seed, and they are vine-like creatures who have possessed the bodies of the scientists, and are using them as a sort of power source. Meanwhile, they animated Chapel’s friend to communicate with Chapel. They reveal that they have all been imprisoned here, and that this is, in effect, their big escape plan.
Obviously, the first instinct is that, of course, these vine beings are bad guys, and that this whole planet is a prison for these villains, and the Enterprise better help take them down. But in this issue, Thompson cleverly continues his stretch the plot open even further.
How do the members of the away mission split up?
The away team splits up to try to get to the surface to contact the Enterprise. They have to fight against some vine monsters. Serg Acuña joins this series with this issue, and Acuña stepped into the series nicely. His style really fits the departed Travis Mercer really nicely. It’s rare to have an artistic transition on a series go this smoothly (it helps that JP Jordan remained as the colorist, and Jordan’s colors certainly provide some consistency).
Spock and Scotty try to escape in a submarine to get help from the Enterprise. However, they are stopped by the Lovecraftian-esque monster from the first issue.
Meanwhile, though, the new big twist for THIS issue is that the Enterprise are under attack by the aliens who are holding the Seed captive on the prison planet, but the reveals is that the aliens who are holding the Seed captive are actually the REAL bad guys. They go around, conquering planets, and when they subdue a planet, they punish their enemies by putting them into prisons. So the Seed actually aren’t the real bad guys, per se.
The big issue, though, is that whether they were ORIGINALLY the bad guys or not, the Seed have essentially now BECOME the bad guys of the series, or at least ONE of the bad guys of the series, as they are so desperate for revenge on their captors, they don’t care WHO gets hurt in the process.
And really, while I don’t want to be too harsh about people being kept prisoner for so long as they have, it still speaks to their character that their first instinct towards acquiring a spaceship isn’t just getting the heck off of the prison planet, but rather to use the ship to get revenge on their enemies.
Chapel, though, has a different read on things, and simply believes that spending centuries in confinement (until the scientists accidentally opened up their prison) has driven the seeds insane. The problem for Chapel is that they not only have her friend, plus all of those other innocent scentists, but also now have two of her crew members under their thrall.
The big reveal at the end of the issue that both Number One and security officer La’An Noonien-Singh have had their bodies taken over by the Seed and their vines. It’s obviously a very striking reveal, and it’s one that Acuña and Jordan handle well, keeping the lighting dark (because they are in an underground prison deep, deep below the ice) but also keeping the figures easy to see.
I think that there is certainly something to be said for having a compelling plot and doing a deep dive into said plot, but I can’t deny that there is something equally compelling as taking a strong plot, and then going off in wild tangents, taking that plot into new, unexpected directions, and that is precisely what Thompson has been doing with this series.
What I am most impressed about in that regard is how elastic the Star Trek: Strange New World franchise is that it can GO in these wildly different directions, and yet have it all still feel very much true to the spirit of the TV series. This all feels like it COULD be an episode of the series, and a good one at that!
Source: IDW Publishing
