Star Trek: Holo-Ween #1 Review
Star Trek: Holo-Ween #1 Review
Writer: Chris Sequeira
Art: Joe Eisma
Colours: Charlie Kirchoff
Letters: Clayton Cowles
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Yep, it’s that time of year again. You know the one, the smell of Pumpkin Spiced Latte is in the air, kids are calving pumpkins and you’ve just finished a scan of solar storms between Argelis 2 and Enoch-7 and you and a pal decided to chill with a skiing race on the holodeck, when it goes nuts and starts killing everyone, again. Honestly, it’s like every Halloween is just the exact same at this point. Seriously though, why still have a Holodeck? They’re a bigger liability than Data, and he was reprogrammed and lost it every other week!
In case you aren’t a massive nerd (what are you doing here if not?) and are now a little worried I have had an episode or some kind of fever dream, I’m actually referring to IDW‘s latest Star Trek offering, Star Trek: Holo-Ween. The Next-Gen crew of the Enterprise has been through a bit of a rough time navigating through some very hairy solar storms. In order to lighten the mood, Councillor Troy decides the ship should celebrate the old Earth custom of Halloween.
To help with preparation Data sends an information request to the Federation archive, a request that is unfortunately intercepted.
This leads to a number of mysterious disappearances from different sections of the crew. As it transpires, an old enemy has infected the ship to feed on the crew’s fears and pain. Spanning all the way back to the original series, Redjac is a being without form, basically a sentient ball of gas, that has lived for hundreds of years, possessing people, committing atrocities and eating up the pain and fear of its victims.
Most famously, on Earth at least, taking the guise of Jack the Ripper and murdering a bunch of women in late eighteen hundred London, as cool an easter egg as Spock being related to Sherlock Holmes, though cool in a much more awful way.
Over the years in Trek, Redjac has been quite the ongoing problem, framing Scotty for murder before copping a whooping from Spock. After that became a self-proclaimed God, all before returning to challenge Data, in his Sherlock Holmes persona, to a game with the fate of the crew hanging in the balance. Now, the nuisance balls of gas are back to possess more people and electrical systems in a four-part mini-series, on a holiday that seems specifically built for him.
This is a very fast-moving book. Clayton Cowles definitely had his work cut out with the amount of speech in this first issue, the spoken exposition being the driving force behind the story, you know, just like all of Star Trek! To begin with, the narration of Troy doesn’t sound anything like the councilor we all know and love, but Sequeira chills a few pages in and we get back to business as usual, continuing with personal logs to move the story forward.
Joe Eisma’s art looks good, and unlike some other books I’ve seen, you won’t have a problem telling who your favourite characters are. This book is very much a variation on a story that a Next Gen fan has seen quite a few times before, featuring a bad guy that Trek fans have seen quite a few times before. This time though, they have thrown in an interesting twist, slipping in one of the Enterprise D crew’s most formidable and feared enemies. Looks like it’s going to be a fun little romp over the Halloween season.
Jay Martin
Jay is an Auto Electrician and wanna-be writer from Manchester, UK. A long-time lover of comics, books, movies, and TV, he decided to try his hand at writing some of them around 2016. Since then, he has produced and self-published a number of comics, including ALV and the KA Anthology, and also his first novel, Domeinion.
