A Merging of Continuities

When last we checked in with the combined crew of the starship Enterprise and the holdovers from the Green Lantern Corps in Star Trek/Green Lantern: The Spectrum War, we had just seen them defeat Necron before venturing off to have many more adventures exploring strange, new worlds as a very powerful collective. Of course, with the greatest threat the universe (any universe, since Necron killed the DC universe at the start of that story) has ever seen defeated, it’s hard to imagine what bigger threat could be posed that would be worthy of a crossover between the two teams.

That is a trick with this crossover series, Star Trek/Green Lantern, and I’m not really certain the sequel title, Star Trek/Green Lantern: Stranger Worlds, really has an answer for that. Frankly, starting off the whole series (that likely wasn’t intended to be more than a single, one-off mini-series) with the defeat of the greatest foe the combined Skittles Corps had ever seen put the cart very well before the horse. Showing how they could handle that problem with aplomb meant that any challenge that came after would pale by comparison. How could it not?

This gets back to the fact that, when I read the first book of this series, I felt like bringing Necron in when they did was a bad call. They should have had the combined team of the Enterprise and the Lanterns take on a more reasonable threat, like the Klingons who somehow got their hands on yellow rings. Doing that battle first, and then hinting that Necron was coming would be a way to string the series along (if there was any thought of there being a series) while keeping everything at a controlled level. Instead the big threat of the universe was wiped out, and all the series can figure to do for its sequel is a story that barely feels like it needs to be set in this universe at all. Which might explain why we haven’t seen a third book yet, or likely ever will.

The sequel picks up some time after the events of the first book with the Enterprise off exploring the cosmos while the various members of the Lantern Corps have been scattered to the winds. Green Lantern Hal Jordan and Violet Lantern Carol Ferris have remained aboard the Enterprise, serving as Lantern liaisons to Starfleet. Green Lanterns Guy Gardner, John Stewart, and Kilawog, meanwhile, have gone to Earth to aid Starfleet as Lantern ambassadors while they figure out the next phase of their lives. The problem for all the Lanterns is both simple but also troubling: without a central power battery to charge their rings, the Lanterns are all slowly losing their powers.

However, a chance encounter with a strange robot, a kind of early version of the Manhunters of Oa, gives Hal Jordan some hope. If the Manhunters exist in this reality, maybe that means that Oa and the Guardians exist here as well, and if that’s the case, surely there has to be a central power battery as well, right? Unfortunately for the team, Sinestro, who has put himself in charge of the Klingon Empire, also catches wind of the existence of the Manhunters. He takes it upon himself to get to Oa first to find the Guardians and eradicate them. It’s a race against time to get to the center of the universe and stop Sinestro from destroying the Corps, once and for all.

As far as basic stories go, Star Trek/Green Lantern: Stranger Worlds isn’t terrible. It’s a solid enough story of the Green Lanterns taking on Sinestro, with both having cause to worry about how long their powers will last and if they can stop the other side from winning. I wouldn’t say it has terribly original ideas going on, but it works at a basic level, giving us more Green and Yellow Lanterns battling it out for the fate of the universe. This is a story we’ve seen before, in some form, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t work, and it does here, for the most part.

The issue is that as much as it’s a decent Green LanternMade up of aliens from sectors scross space, the Green Lantern Corp. defends the universe against threats with the power of the Green Light of Willpower. story, it totally fails as a Star TrekOriginally conceived as "Wagon Train in Space", Star Trek was released during the height of the Hollywood Western film and TV boom. While the concept CBS originally asked for had a western vibe, it was the smart, intellectual stories set in a future utopia of science and exploration that proved vital to the series' long impact on popular culture. tale. The power (such as it was) of the first book in this series was that it felt essential to have both the Enterprise crew and our stalwart Lanterns working together. It combined parts of both franchises into something that was fun to read. Silly, stupid, and pretty daffy, yes, but that didn’t diminish the fun. It knew what it wanted to be and it swung for the fences no matter how dumb the story got. The core, though, worked because it was as much a Star Trek story as a DC ComicsOne of the two biggest comic publishing companies in the world (and, depending on what big events are going on, the number one company), DC Comics is the home of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and just about every big superhero introduced in the 1930s and 1940s. one.

The same cannot be said for the sequel. This is functionally a story about the Lanterns: running out of power, racing against time, finding their home world, getting their power back. The crew of the Enterprise is there simply to hang out. They don’t fundamentally add anything new or interesting to the story at all. Hell, the three crew who gained rings in the first story – Chekhov's blue ring, Uhura’s violet ring, and Bones’s indigo ring – don’t even have their rings or get to use them in this second tale. It’s like they gave them up to Starfleet for study, except that’s not even mentioned in the book at all. The rings simply stop being a factor.

It would have been interesting to have those crew still as Lanterns since it would have given them some connection to the story as a whole. Instead, though, what we have is the Enterprise crew hanging around, asking questions about what’s going on, and then waiting so they can fire phasers when the need calls for it. The closest we get to any kind of meaningful connection to their crew is when Kahn, found on a distant planet with all of his imprisoned crew by Attrocitus, gets his hands on the Red Ring of Rage and becomes a Red Lantern for a spell. Of course, for us to care about that we have to care about Kahn, which we don’t since his movie, Star Trek Into Darkness, was awful.

This, naturally, relates back to an issue I had with the first book that is still rearing its head here: the book doesn’t do a good job of investing in the Star Trek characters. Because the focus of the story is on the Lanterns, they come across better here, but all of the Star Trek characters amount to little more than set dressing, and that goes for Kahn as well. The book doesn’t flesh out his character or even do much to remind us of who he is. You’re supposed to know Kahn and fear him because you’re already familiar with him, but when that requirement hinges on us having knowledge of Star Trek Into Darkness and enjoying the character and his exploits, that quickly falls apart. Had the book done more to invest in Kahn as a character that would have changed things, but then the book really doesn’t seem interested in being a Star Trek book at all.

As an experiment I thought about how this book would have worked if we removed all the Star Trek references. The Lanterns ended up in some parallel universe, say Earth-101 (just to pull a number out of my ass) and, after defeating Necron there, they’ve spent the last year bebopping around, acting as Lanterns as best as they can. But when their rings start to fail they have to find a central power battery so they can recharge, and Sinestro, backed up by a new corps of Yellow Lanterns, is there to try and stop them. Meanwhile, Atrocitus is defeated by some other, classic DC villain who just so happens to be in this universe as well, and that births a scary new threat in the form of a new Red Lantern. All of those plot points can be preserved from this book, stripped of their relevance to the Star Trek side of the story, and it all plays out the same. Nothing the Enterprise crew does matters because they aren’t the focus of this story.

Meanwhile, I do have one other nitpick that kind of makes the rest of this story fail as well, if I’m being truly brutal. The Lanterns need a central power battery. That’s their goal. The massive battery at the center of the universe powers their smaller lanterns that they all store in pocket dimensions connected to their rings, and then they charge their rings off those smaller lanterns. If the central power battery exists in this universe, as we’re shown it does, and they can charge their rings off the big battery, which we’re shown they can, then there’s absolutely no need for them to fly to the homeworld to charge their ring because the whole system is up and running. This plot literally doesn’t need to happen.

This is a flaw, but it’s not as big a flaw because the writers could have said, “oh, their lanterns are locked in a different universe,” or, “well, their smaller lanterns aren’t connected to the big one until they visit the homeworld.” A simple line tossed off to take out a big plothole would have helped a lot. Nothing like this is done because this book, frankly, isn’t very well written. It’s both slower and more methodical than the first book, but also somehow more sloppily written than anything in that previous volume.

As I said, as a basic story about the Lanterns, this sequel crossover is fine. It’s not ground breaking, and even has some basic flaws to the story that, as a writer, I really wish the creators of this book had addressed. It’s certainly not the worst Lanterntale I’ve ever read, but it’s nowhere near the best either. Where it fails, though, is in betraying the whole point of the crossover: having it be both an Enterprise and Lantern story at the same time. As silly and stupid as the first book was, it nailed that whole concept perfectly. This book feels bored having to be both so it ditches one side. Because of that, we get a far more generic and basic tale, and that wipes away so much of the silly fun of the series.

There’s life that could be had in this crossover concept, and it certainly can lead to fun, silly tales that are enjoyable to read. Star Trek/Green Lantern: Stranger Worlds isn’t that kind of story, and the book feels so much worse because of it.