Review:
Star Trek #3

After the strong showing of Star Trek #2, I was hoping for another knockout with issue #3. Unfortunately, the limitations of the medium finally caught up with the adaption series. Long story short…it’s too short. The two previous issues progressed through the original script of the movie at a respectable – if occasionally languid – pace. While this afforded the writers some latitude with character depth and the inclusion of deleted scenes, that decision has finally caught up with them, and as a result brevity is the name of the game in issue #3.

However, what was there was pretty good. It remained faithful to the source material, and even managed to capture the charm and wit of Leonard McKoy. Personally, I was very happy to see Karl Urban’s outstanding performance as the good doctor survive the jump from celluloid to cell-shading. I was, however, hoping to see the Kobayashi Maru scene fleshed out a bit more, mainly because I felt it portrayed Chris Pine’s Kirk as flippant and glib, neither exactly qualities befitting Starfleet’s future finest Captain.

Still, that’s a criticism more appropriately aimed at the movie than the comic itself. Unfortunately though, as said before, the speed at which the issue moved not only left little room for the fleshing out of scences, but in some instances the occlusion of promised ones. We were told that each issue would feature deleted scenes from the movie, no doubt in an attempt to get the trekkie cannon campaigner’s interested.

Now, I could be mistaken, it has been almost a year since I saw the movie, but I didn’t notice any scenes in this issue that weren’t included in the movie. In other words, there were no deleted scenes, and I do find that a bit disappointing, especially since the last issue’s deleted scenes really helped to flesh out certain parts of the story and characters.

In the end though, issue #3 stands on its own as a decent, if not exceptional, adaption of the Star Trek XI.