Comic Review: Star Trek / Doctor Who: Assimilation²

Star Trek / Doctor Who Assimilation² Cover

Internet, the final frontier. These are the blogs of the comic reader, Travis. His mission: to explore strange, new comics, to seek out new books and new novelizations, to boldly review where no one has reviewed before … and speaking of which, this week’s review combines my two favorite science fiction shows of all time, into one glorious experience. That’s right, Alph joins the crew of Babylon Five! Urg, I mean, Doctor Who teams up with the crew of the Enterprise NCC1701-D!

Worf meets the Doctor

In Star Trek / Doctor Who: Assimilation Squared, we are treated with probably the most accurate comic representations of both TNG and Matt Smith era Doctor Who. Outside of flashbacks, its art style is mainly impressionism, reminiscent of a John Singer Sargent painting. But it really works — capturing both the essence of a comic and realistic accuracy of the characters we all know and love.

My only gripe with it is in the writing, and it’s that I’ve seen it before. There are a lot of panels that pay homage to actual scenes from Star Trek, (e.g., there is a scene where Riker is lifted out of the water by Data which looked exactly like the time Wil Wheaton was lifted out of the water by Data in Encounter at Farpoint. So, there is a good deal of the book that feels very been there done that, but I also think that helped a lot with the character’s accuracy. While a lot of the dialogue and scenes seemed borrowed, it still worked really well. It felt like I was watching an episode of Star Trek and the Doctor mysteriously showed up.

Anywho, the two part story revolves around the Cybermen crossing into the alternate dimension of Star Trek, along with the Doctor, Amy, and Rory, of course. But you know those pesky tin men like to gang up with like minded monsters, and who better but the Borg? So the crew of the Enterprise and the Tardis have to team up to stop the universe from being assimilated / converted. Personally, I would have rather seen the Doctor vs Q, but I takes what I gets.

kirkvscyberman

I can’t remember ever reading any Star Trek comics. But I do own a few Doctor Who ones, and this is easily my favorite, next to The Forgotten.

Overall, I think this is mostly fan service, but a good one at that, and it’s something no self respecting Trekkie or Whovian would want to miss out on.

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