Day of Blood is nigh in Star Trek Defiant #3!

Having just fallen into an obvious trap, Worf, Ro and Torres have been captured by Orion pirates, while Spock and Lore struggle to rescue them. Meanwhile, a Klingophile Starfleet captain visits the Klingon Korvat colony under the rule of Kahless the Unforgettable. Star Trek: Defiant #3 written by Christopher Cantwell, with art by Ángel Unzuetta, colors by Marissa Louise and letters by Clayton Cowles. Prelude to Star Trek: Day of Blood written by Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly and Christopher Cantwell, with art by Mike Feehan, colors by Lee Loughridge and letters by Clayton Cowles.

Mark Turetsky: The Star Trek hits just keep on coming! This week it’s another double whammy, this time in the form of a Free Comic Book Day short prelude and the third issue of Star Trek Defiant.

Tony Thornley: Quite a one-two punch. And from the looks of it, these two stories happen simultaneously.

The Ambassador and the Psychopath

Mark: If there’s one thing to appreciate about the current spate of Star Trek comics, it’s the ability to have interactions between characters from different eras that never would have interacted otherwise. For instance, a major plot in this issue is Spock captaining the Defiant, with his sole company being the disembodied head of Lore hooked into the ship’s computer, running everything else on the ship.

Tony: One of the biggest flaws of the movie era is that we never got to truly see Captain Spock. It was all the same roles with different ranks. Seeing Spock the commander and tactician was brilliant, and adding Lore to that equation makes this sequenceeven better. It might have been the best of these odd couple interactions we’ve gotten yet (though Ro and Torres as bickering siblings is climbing up there). I have a feeling that as this series goes on, we’ll see more and more of that pairing.

How great was that opening scene in general?

Mark: There’s a weird thing that this series has done, and that’s to include the Romulan cloaking device on the Defiant. Now, you may be wondering what the heck I’m talking about, since the Defiant had one in DS9. But this is the second Defiant, the renamed USS Sao Paulo. The original Defiant was destroyed in the late-series episode “The Changing Face of Evil,” and the new Defiant was never shown to have a cloaking device on the series. Still, there are some apocryphal novels which include the cloaking device; the Romulans gave them another one, which seems to be the status quo that Cantwell is going with here. Understandable, because a cloaking device is a fun thing to have, not to mention that this renegade team is breaking a treaty by using it.

But anyway, the cloaking device doesn’t fool the Orions for a moment, and the Defiant takes some heavy damage. I do love seeing Spock, as the only embodied crewmember, having to scramble around the ship, while issuing commands to Lore. It helps that the Defiant is a much smaller ship than the Enterprise. That, and it’s a pretty fun allusion to Star Trek II. 

Tony: Yeah, if I remember correctly, the Defiant can be run by a crew of less than twenty, and clearly one of the Fleet’s most decorated officers and a positronic brain are worth that many officers. There’s a great antagonistic streak coming from Lore, even minus his emotion chip, but even better, Spock doesn’t put up with it. He is just doing his damnedest to make sure the Defiant survives and doesn’t give into the poking and prodding.

Mark: It’s funny, because we got to see Spock interact with Data in “Unification, Part II,” because obviously you want to see them meet, but Spock’s also a character with a villainous brother as well as an evil duplicate. And they have a good rapport: Lore is as smart as Data, but he has very different priorities. We saw Lore with a body on the cover of issue #1, and as you know, issue #1 covers generally are there to sell the series as well as that particular issue, so it’s something of a spoiler for the end of this issue, where Spock and Lore reach an agreement: Spock won’t go into the engineering box of radioactive death, and in exchange, Lore gets a body and does it himself. How did you feel about the final page reveal, of Lore sitting in the captain’s chair?

Tony: It did catch me by surprise (pleasantly, of course). Now that Lore is fully bodied again, what trouble is he going to get into? I mean, I think Worf can generally trust Ro, but Lore, there’s no way anyone will be able to. And how much of a rift will this cause between Worf and Spock? 

Born on a Pirate Ship

Mark: Speaking of Worf, last issue he walked himself, Ro and Torres into the most obvious trap possible. And he did it without really preparing an exit strategy. As much as you’re enjoying Ro and Torres arguing, it’s starting to wear thin for me. Luckily, it’s put to novel use here to create a distraction for the Orion guard and help them escape. Which is where they encounter the real mystery of this issue: the Orion crew member who helps rescue them after Worf gets shot. The obvious question: is this D’Vana Tendi from Lower Decks?

Tony: We both saw it pretty quickly. Now, this story is set roughly two years before Lower Decks, and that’s not a lot of time for Tendi to attend the Academy after this adventure wraps. However, she would have needed sponsorship from a Starfleet officer to join, and who better than Spock or Worf?

I think a lot of clues are there, though. After the trio are taken prisoner, we see her display similar skills that we’ve seen from her before. She has a medical/science inclination (once Worf is shot, she knows exactly how to use the Red Path’s drug to save his life), and clearly wants out of this life. I’m a little frustrated that she doesn’t directly confirm her identity, but I think it’s pretty obvious. What about you?

Mark: A few things: let’s remember that the first episode of Lower Decks, “Second Contact,” has Tendi’s arrival on the Cerritos. We also know that she was a pirate before joining Starfleet, known as The Mistress of the Winter Constellations. With her having served on a starship before, she might have done an accelerated course at the academy. She also skipped the course on spacewalks and it might not have been the only course she skipped (or she might have altered her records and given herself Bs in a bunch of courses she never took). Still, she was transferred from Outpost 79, so the Cerritos is at least her second posting. 

There’s also the fact of the Orion story she tells over the course of the issue, about a clever Orion named Neeva who gains the trust and friendship of a Gorn captain, only to betray that trust, murder the Gorn and inherit all of his stuff. The way it’s framed, we’re supposed to take from this that she’s going to betray the Defiant crew. But on the other hand, as she puts it in issue #1 of the North/Fenoglio Lower Decks comic (excerpted in this year’s Free Comic Book Day offering!), every Orion story starts with a heist, even the fairy tales. It’s just Orion culture to frame every turning point in life around intrigue and betrayal. Maybe she heard about the stolen Defiant and has gotten herself aboard in order to return it to Starfleet because she wants to join up. 

Tony: Also, worth remembering the recently published interview with Cantwell from the official Star Trek podcast, The Pod Directive, in which he mentioned that there are several surprise cast members coming. It’s not a sure thing until she’s named on page, but unless she’s another character in disguise as an Orion, all signs point to Tendi!

Mark: Still, Tendi or no, this Orion character looks to be a fun addition to the cast. She’ll fit right into our crew full of renegades misfits.

The Korvat Incident

Mark: Speaking of the FCBD issue, we get a data page with a garbled distress call from one of Sela’s operatives during an incident on the Klingon Korvat colony, which we see in “Prelude to Star Trek: Day of Blood.” In it, Captain Meyerson of the USS Santa Cruz visits Korvat on the invitation of Emperor Kahless. Meyerson has an academic interest in Klingon culture, peppering his dialogue with Klingon phrases here and there. He brings a certain sense of Starfleet naiveté, like calling his Klingon guide Valkor “my new friend.” He also comes across as incredibly condescending. 

Tony: Meyerson comes off like the foreign tourist that explains the native culture to the natives like they don’t know it already. Meanwhile, while Meyerson is “Fleet-splaining”, Valkor is coming off as remarkably sinister. His creepy smile, his stories, some of the phrasing he uses as he responds to Meyerson. It’s obvious that he’s an adherent of the Red Path immediately, which creates a great sense of foreboding doom. This festival is absolutely fascinating though. If it had been a full length issue, I would want the story to spend more time with the festival until the action kicks in.

Mark: And it’s great that they work in a Discovery reference with the shout-out to T’Kuvma, the Klingon who brought the Klingons back to the worship of Kahless, who in his death united the Klingon houses into the Klingon Empire we know today. I know a lot of people hate the portrayal of the Klingons in Discovery, but their design aesthetic was baroque as fuck. The festival in this story reads like a massive rightwing rally, except that the members who don’t throw their support behind the current guy in charge get massacred instead of being frozen out and losing their primaries. 

Tony: So either Kelly or Lanzing (or both) recently stated that Star Trek is the culmination of all their Trek work, including Star Trek: Year Five and the relatively recent Star Trek: Klingons one-shot. That one shot shows the ascension of the original Kahless as he battles his way up to the top. The biggest twist of the story is that the Klingon god that Kahless slew, Molor, was an alien that demanded worship. The one-shot doesn’t actually show Kahless hunting and killing Molor, but it does set that story up.

Really, that’s a long winded way to say that this whole violent ordeal could have been prevented by an alien minding his own business instead of visiting ancient Qo’nos. But since he didn’t, we get this story.

So after Meyerson and Valkor explore the festival, three red Romulan ships enter the atmosphere, and things go to hell from there. It seems that the Red Path is recruiting and they’re out to bring others in or slay them for resisting.

Mark: And we later see a Romulan (or a Vulcan) serving on Kahless’ bridge on the final page. Maybe some have bad memories of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and have it in for anyone claiming to be gods.

When the shit starts to hit the fan, Meyerson beams back to the Santa Cruz just in time for Kahless to infiltrate his bridge and kill off everyone in person, Meyerson included. For new readers jumping on board, this is a great bit of catch-up as to just how dangerous Kahless is. But what really strikes me is the conversation between Kahless and Alexander on the final page. Alexander frames his question about what honor is as a foolish question Meyerson asked him. It’s about as convincing a framing as a high schooler saying, “ha ha, wouldn’t it be hilarious if we made out?” to their crush. 

But Kahless picks up on Alexander’s doubt immediately, giving him some extremely vague ideas about what honor is, but it’s “ultimately a path that leads to me.” To Kahless, Klingon honor, the bedrock their society is built on, has no absolute or objective meaning, it all comes down to what Kahless himself says it is. This is demagoguery and, yes, fascism. 

Tony: One hundred percent this. I sort of feel like we see Alexander’s faith being shaken by this a bit. The pensive look Feehan gives him (which, by the way, DAMN he’s good at facial expressions) seems to indicate he’s not totally the true believer that many others on the Red Path are. Beyond that, you said it so well, I can’t add anything!

But I do want to back up to the top of that last page. Kahless says something in the first caption, as the Santa Cruz is exploding. 

“Raze the surface. I want the Orb suitably charged.”

In Defiant, one of the plot threads is that Worf and Spock realized that the energy signature of Kahless’s weapon now matches the Crystalline Entities. That line of dialogue seems to point to an answer, doesn’t it? Does the Orb of Destruction use its victim’s “souls” (for lack of a better term) to charge?

Mark: Oooh, I hadn’t considered that! So it’s feeding on all of the dead at Korvat and aboard the Santa Cruz like the Crystalline Entity does. I like it!

Tony: Exactly! It’s such a small piece of dialogue that I think it’s easy to miss, but it definitely seems to point to what’s going on. Also, I remember the initial marketing for Defiant saying something about Worf exploring the human cost of Kahless’s campaign. Putting those two things together, it seems to me that Korvat may just be the beginning!

Mark: Sounds like he’s planning some kind of…day of blood, if you ask me! Seriously, a big summer comic event generally wants an outsized villain with a horrific plan (looking at you, Infinity Gauntlet) and this is setting up something pretty epic.

Diverse Defiant Deductions

• Spock’s passcode, “Omicron Theta,” is the name of the colony that Data and Lore are from.
• I know we didn’t talk much about Torres, Ro and Worf escaping from the Orions, but that’s largely because it was a pretty standard (but still entertaining as heck) run-and-gun action scene.
• Truly looking forward to Sela showing up fully on page.
• On the subject of Sela, her data page serves as an excellent diegetic recap for new readers who’ve possibly been brought into the story through the FCBD issue.
• Wild that the Santa Cruz isn’t a California-class ship (like the Lower Decks‘ Cerritos). Maybe the thought of seeing crewmembers in Cerritos-style uniforms might have created too much of a tonal disconnect.
• We talk a lot about story in these columns, but Unzuetta is so incredibly good at what he’s doing in Defiant, and between this issue and the most recent of the main book, Feehan is knocking it out of the park. They’re both able to capture the human side of Star Trek so well. The color artists on both books (Louise and Loughridge) are doing a great job at making it feel like Trek, too.

Tony Thornley

Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.

Mark Turetsky

Mark Turetsky is an audiobook narrator and voice actor who sometimes writes about comic books. Originally from Montreal, Canada, he now lives in Northern Louisiana.