Star Trek 1142: Descendants

1142. Descendants

PUBLICATION: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine #10, Malibu Comics, June 1994

CREATORS: Dan Mishkin (writer), Leonard Kirk and Terry Pallot (artists)

STARDATE: Unknown (between Armageddon Game and Whispers)

PLOT: An alien couple flies out of the Wormhole without a ship and boards the station, at which point the Bajoran immediately assume they are Prophets. Odo follows them around and finds they've been leaving glowing eggs around DS9. These explode and release winged serpents that the aliens say they can control. Having noticed something crucial, Odo has a security officer fire on the aliens, revealing them to be winged serpents as well. They want to use DS9 as a nesting site for their young. O'Brien beams them off and Sisko uses the station's phasers to drive them back to the Wormhole.

CONTINUITY: Bashir wonders if the aliens are the same who seeded the galaxy with humanoids though they look nothing like the one we saw in The Chase.

DIVERGENCES: Bashir makes the common mistake of calling the Chase aliens, "Preservers" (The Paradise Syndrome). In The Chase, Galen says the commonalities cannot all be attributed to the Preservers, which indicates the seeders are a different (and older) group.

PANEL OF THE DAY - Odo Cat likes to watch.
REVIEW: Dan Mishkin's first story starts out promisingly, but fails to deliver on that promise. The idea of Prophets made humanoid, and who may or may not be what they say they are (pah-wraiths are alluded to in the pre-pah-wraith days), is an intriguing premise and very DS9. That they turn out to be CGI monsters who somehow survive phaser blasts but will never be seen again is a comic book idea that sells the premise short. And because it's a one-off, there isn't much in the way of character moments. Leonard Kirk's art is good though, with nice expressions and action, but he fails to deliver on the "tell" that Odo sees. I flipped back and looked at the panels again, but I just don't know what Odo is talking about, so the revelation may as well come out of left field.

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