Review – Star Trek Voyager: Seven’s Reckoning #1 (IDW Publishing)

Publisher: IDW Publishing
Writer: Dave Baker
Artist: Angel Hernandez
Colours: Ronda Pattison
Letters: Neil Uyetake
Release Date: 18th November 2020

It’s been 25 years since Voyager first took flight on our silver screens and there continues to be new adventures to be had and mew stories to be told. This time round, IDW are bringing us a mini-series focussing on the new crew member Seven of Nine. Interestingly, the creative team aren’t focusing on the crew at a point after the return home (spoilers for anyone who wasn’t aware of the end of Voyager, but I think it’s been long enough now!), but instead at a point still fairly early on in their journey just prior to the Year of Hell.

Having recently lost her connection to the collective, Seven is coming to terms with her new condition and becoming part of a very different collection of ‘individuals’. With personalities clashing and tensions fraying, an ideal opportunity to explore these changes presents itself in the form of a seemingly abandoned cyclopean vessel. However, it’s not long before things are uncovered to be far from what they originally seemed…

Series writer Dave Baker delivers the opening of an intriguing story here which is very much in keeping with the story telling and allegory of the era. There’s a very Next Gen morality play vibe which Voyager tapped into, and this issue could easily pass muster with the openings of some of the better episodes. Uyetake’s lettering obviously helps immensely in that respect, providing an easy, comfortable read throughout.

The artwork here is similarly inviting. Hernandez and Pattison capture the character of these well-known crew members well and, more importantly, consistently. It can’t be an easy feat to recreate something with this level of expectations involved, but the team do a good job avoiding any pitfalls or pulling the reader out of the story. The alien ship design is impressive and whilst I appreciated the novel twists it leads to a somewhat odd conflict regarding the aliens themselves.

The Ohrdi’Nadar, stuck in the Delta quadrant after a warp accident and endeavouring to make their way home (sounds familiar right?) are quite unlike anything we typically see in episodes of Star Trek. Without the confines of a makeup or effects budget, the team can essentially enjoy free reign in visual design. This results, for me, in an odd spot where the look, while undeniably interesting, jars a little with my preformed ideas of how I think Voyager, and the wider Trek should look. All the more so as this blends more modern ideas with the aesthetic of 20 or so years previous. It’s a relatively minor quibble though which I’m sure many would either neither care or overlook.

Overall then, a strong debut for this miniseries which fans of Voyager in general, and Seven of Nine in particular, would do well to check out.

Rating: 3/5.

[PREVIEW ARTWORK – CLICK TO ENLARGE]