Puntabulous

Star Trek: Countdown – Review

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So I finished Star Trek: Countdown in a day. It was a short breezy graphic novel that connects the dots between Star Trek: Nemesis and the new Star Trek movie. While not a terrible read, it wasn’t particularly good either, and certainly not worth the $17.99 asking price. It was fun to see members of The Next Generation crew again, but we didn’t learn anything we didn’t already know, besides one or two “Anakin built C-3PO” moments that were a bit too far fetched for my taste, and only appeared to be done because it would be cool, rather than feasible or add to the story. The artwork was flat and uninteresting and there was hardly any action whatsoever. Honestly the best part of the book, and the only one that got an emotional response from me was the afterward, written by the new Star Trek screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who also created the story for this graphic novel:

The notion that we’d be called to serve Star Trek is something we never dared dream. This book has had particular meaning to us in that we fell in love with Star Trek through the characters of The Next Generation. The longest summer of our lives was waiting to find out how Captain Riker and the amazing crew of the Enterprise were going to defeat their former Captain, Jean-Luc Picard after his transformation into Locutus of Borg.

We don’t expect to ever feel the same level of anticipation again, but perhaps we can create some for new fans. That is the intention of this book… to take a ride with a beloved crew that no one believed would ever match the original and to pay homage to their stewardship of a thing called Star Trek. Their journey now takes us back to the beginning.

I think it affected me so much since I hope to someday get called into action in a similar fashion. Perhaps to reboot the Star Wars franchise from the dark wretched depths of awfulness? Of course that would depend on whether or not I’m too busy building my own franchise with Super Viagra and Vagina Girl.

BOOKS, GUIDES, REVIEWS | Craig | June 30, 2009 7:59 am

26 Comments

By Tam, June 30, 2009 @ 8:08 am

Holy crap, $18 for a graphic novel you can read in a day? That seems a bit steep. Too bad it didn’t really do it for you.
By Polt, June 30, 2009 @ 8:23 am

Yeah, the artwork sucked…storyline, meh. They afterward wasn’t included in the individual comics, but man, do I agree with his assessment of the Riker-Locutus thing! A friend of mine and I were watching that episode, and when Riker said, “Fire.” and the screen cut to black, both of us screamed “NOOOOOOO!!!!” and then spent the summer trying to figure out what was gonna be the result. Awesome storytelling, let me tell you!

HUGS…
By Xi_Heather, June 30, 2009 @ 8:43 am

I guess it’s something to be glad about, that a novel that wasn’t really all that great only cost you a day’s worth of time. Bummer that it’s an $18 cost. [So I thought to myself, "They should have a Netflix for books." and then I realized that Ben Franklin sort of started one.]
By Howard, June 30, 2009 @ 9:02 am

I thought it was great! I got it as a gift, so I give it higher props than you. Ha! It was fun seeing all those characters, but as massive as Star Fleet is do you think these people would keep running into each other like that over and over again?
By Dave S., June 30, 2009 @ 9:09 am

I’m disappointed that this hasn’t been getting the reviews I’d hoped for.

Polt: Believe it or not, that was back in the day when the TNG writers would deliberately write themselves into a corner with the season cliffhanger and actually not know how they were going to resolve it! I was agast when I heard one of the TNG writers say that during a ST convention. It made me anticipate the season openers even more after hearing that.
By Tam, June 30, 2009 @ 9:16 am

Howard: Actually perhaps in Star Fleet its different (space and all) but there are about 12,700 people who work for our Department world-wide and I am always amazed how time and again we suddenly find ourselves working with people we worked with years ago in a different capacity. So I could believe that.
By Polt, June 30, 2009 @ 9:28 am

Dave S.: Yeah, i heard that about the writers doing that too. And when you think back to the cliffhangers, that one about Data’s head being discovered in San Francisco and the time travel and the aliens that sucked people’s energies, the seond part of that one kinda sucked. But by and large, they did a pretty good job!

HUGS…
By Nicolle, June 30, 2009 @ 10:28 am

Dave S. and Polt: That’s neat about the writers not knowing how they were going to get out of stuff. That must be why the cliffhangers were so good. The Best of Both Worlds cliffhanger was one of (if not the) all-time best moments on tv.
By Craig, June 30, 2009 @ 1:03 pm

So who would win in a fight? Chewbacca or Data?
By john, June 30, 2009 @ 1:05 pm

Data.
By Tam, June 30, 2009 @ 1:09 pm

Data easy. Chewy gets too excited and would make an error. Data? Never.
By Bill, June 30, 2009 @ 1:22 pm

Chewy….IF he sneaks up behind Data and presses his “sweet spot”…
By Polt, June 30, 2009 @ 2:55 pm

Data. Chewy wouldn’t know about the manual override, and if he did, Chewy growls too much for stealth purposes.

HUGS…
By Craig, June 30, 2009 @ 2:59 pm

I quote Han Solo:

“That’s ’cause (an)droids don’t pull people’s arms out of their sockets when they lose. Wookiees are known to do that.”
By M. Nicodemus, June 30, 2009 @ 3:23 pm

Hmm… I am going to go against the grain and say Chewbacca. He is educated in advanced robotics enough to rebuild C3PO so he should have a trick or for taking droids out.
By Polt, June 30, 2009 @ 3:30 pm

Ah but, M.Nico, Dr. Noonien Soong built Data, and despite attempts by the greatest minds of Starfleet, they could not reproduce his work. I don’t know that someone that can tinker around with protocol droids that someone else built would be able to understand the advanced positronic brain and such of Data. And yes, since I wrote all this from memory, there very well may be spelling errors, but the geekgasm I had in doing so more than makes up for small mistakes like that.

HUGS….
By Polt, June 30, 2009 @ 3:31 pm

And when Data’s ethics subroutines were shut down, he did indeed kill, and quite easily at that. Remember how he was against the Borg in that episode where they were on the Borg planet of Lore’s Borgs?

HUGS…
By Michelle M., June 30, 2009 @ 7:22 pm

I’m going with Chewbacca.

Craig – you can warm up for the reboot by practicing with the Starship Puntabulous gang and their saga.
By Mel, June 30, 2009 @ 8:24 pm

Chewbacca has the advantage of brute force, of course, but for tactical calculation and likely faster reflexes, I think Data would win it. Which would probably make it hard for Chewie to rip his arms off. After all, he’s not a shuffling C3PO.
By Nathan, June 30, 2009 @ 8:58 pm

I feel like data would win, he’s better at thinking and, he’s a robot, so he can just turn off his pain, and then chewbacca won’t have a chance.
By Xi_Heather, June 30, 2009 @ 9:09 pm

Mel, I’m not sure that Chewbacca would win on brute force. Isn’t Data really strong? It seems to me that Data could rip Chewie’s arms off just as easily as the other way around.
By josh, June 30, 2009 @ 9:50 pm

You don’t have to axe me twice, I think Rhonetta would bust up in thurrrr and highkick the dinglez off of those two other gringoz! She’s setting the city on fiya!
By The Ryan with the Cupcake, July 1, 2009 @ 12:52 am

Data. C-3PO was designed by engineers for mass production, so he rightfully feared wookies. Data was built by a geek without concern about profit maximization, so he has many features that are just there to be cool. Super strength is one of them.
By Avitable, July 1, 2009 @ 1:56 am

I thought it was one of the best movie adaptation comics out there. So many times they suck so horribly, but this one actually had character development and new information.
By Craig, July 1, 2009 @ 7:15 am

Avitable: It seems we keep disagreeing on our reviews lately.

Or you could read that as: “Why do you keep being so wrong all the time?”
By Avitable, July 1, 2009 @ 7:17 am

Good question – why do YOU keep being so wrong all the time?