Advance Review: `Star Trek: Resurgence’ #2 Needs Characters The Audience Cares About
by Tom Smithyman
For drama and suspense to work as intended, the audience needs to care about the characters in jeopardy.
That empathy keeps readers flipping from one page to the next to make sure their favorite characters survive. When it works, the audience comes back for more. When it doesn’t it’s just a whole bunch of characters running around for seemingly no reason.
That’s the main problem with the second installment of Star Trek: Resurgence. It’s not a bad story. Rather, aside from a few legacy characters we met in The Next Generation, we haven’t had time to really know who Capt. Solano and first officer Commander Sullivan are. (Aside from two human men commanding the USS Resolute, which is an odd choice for the usually enlightened Trek.)
Solano and Sullivan are captured trying to rescue warp scientist Leah Brahms from the Talarians, which leads to yet another rescue mission from some other Resolute crew members (whom we really don’t know either). To be fair, the first issue introduced the audience to much of the crew. But aside from a memorable Vulcan chief – who doesn’t even appear in this installment – none were worth remembering.
Writers Andrew Grant and Dan Martin are clearly building to a bigger mystery here as we soon learn that everything is not as it appears to be. It may also be that the upcoming video game, upon which this five-part comic series is based, is limiting some of what the writers can explore here.
Artist Josh Hood does a fine job depicting the crew as well as an ongoing phaser fight with the Talarians. He also clearly had a talent for recreating likenesses, from LeVar Burton’s Geordi LaForge to the futuristic-yet-clearly-80s-inspired dress that Brahms wears at one point.
It is still early in the limited series run, so there is time to either develop these new characters so we care more about them, or change the narrative to focus on Brahms and others the readers know. Given the announced focus of the video game though, that doesn’t seem likely.
Star Trek: Resurgence #2 will be available for purchase tomorrow.
Overview
When does drama falter? When you don’t know the characters well enough to care whether they live or die. That’s the problem with this issue. We’re meant to care about some Starfleet officers that we haven’t had the opportunity to connect with.
