We’ve come for Smaug’s Gold!

Is this how you answer all your calls?

Issue 55 takes a break and allows readers to catch up with season 6 and all the recent changes: The O'Briens have moved on to DS9, Chain of Command has come and gone and the latter is reflected here nicely (there was a similar scene in Ten Forward with LaForge and Worf with the latter glum about having lost Keiko’s botany skills).

The type of artwork here bothered me a lot as a kid and still does, although a bit less. The process is called graphite limning and while it certainly looks more technically proficient I always felt there was something lost here. It doesn’t help that a good chunk of their Enterprise references is basically lifted off the Technical Manual and limits the angles they have available for the ship and the interiors.

*I’m just a siiiiimple, kiiiind of maaaan!*

Claude Picard. deLancie did one thing that usually was frowned upon in trek manuscripts: Giving main characters siblings we’d never heard about. In this case Jean-Luc’s brother, Claude. Claude had been killed as a child and Q offers to bring him back, only to see that he would have turned into a fascist dictator who takes over Starfleet as his own personal plaything. Which again all hinges on one person making a difference, the choices right and wrong and that, once again, the Federation is a lot more vulnerable than you think it is (there were the equivalent of Nazi rallies in Picard’s youth!)