Are Star Trek fans insane, or are they just so hungry for more that all sense of, you know, standards in storytelling has left them?

I'm not referring so much to the upcoming Star Trek movie, helmed by the unworthy J.J. Abrams, but the series of comics released to bridge the events of the new film with the previous continuity. I have just finished reading the first in the series of comics, and I must say, though the thrust of the story is interesting, the execution leaves much to be desired.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

The comic begins with Captain Nero and his mining crew hitting the bigtime: a substantial deposit of Decalithium on a distant planetoid that would earn a fat bonus for Nero and his men. However, before they can mine the rare and improbable mineral, the planet's parent star flares up and destroys the planet. Nero and company barely escape home to Romulus.

Spock, now Federation ambassador to Romulus, announces the need to deal with this star's erratic behavior if the Romulan Empire is to be saved. For if it is left unattended, the star will go nova and destroy everything in Romulan space. The Romulan Senate finds this statement preposterous, and Spock's proposition to use Vulcan technology to save Romulus even more preposterous, but Nero does not. The miner agrees to help Spock acquire more Decalithium and save Romulus at the risk of being torn by law from his wife and unborn son. Their efforts, however, are almost thwarted by marauding Remans, and the episode ends with the interference of none other than the U.S.S. Enterprise.

While the appearance of old favorite characters is no doubt bound to warm the cockles of any fan's heart, I am left cold by glaring flaws in the story. Star Trek: Countdown Issue 1 is fraught with flagrant scientific errors and narrative missteps. The result is a weak comic that fails to live up to even average Star Trek standards.

The first blunder to catch my eye appeared on the second page proper of the story. Nero and company had just discovered Decalithium on the planetoid they were mining, as stated by the ship's science officer. Immediately afterward, signs of an incoming flare appear. It is difficult to explain in words what in experience was a jarring discontinuity between a moment of discovery and a moment of danger. There was no foreshadowing to the effect that this star was unstable, or that the crew was keeping an eye on it. I do realize that comics are a medium of brevity and conciseness, however it would have taken little space to insert a line about the instability of the nearby star. One line would have been enough to both build suspense regarding Nero's mission and smooth the transition from discovery to danger.

Such lazy plotting is typical of this Star Trek: Countdown issue, and combined with the sometimes atrocious writing results in a story that sings off-key. Spock opens his address to the Romulan Senate with the words "Friends, Romulans, countrymen, we have the same ears!" One wonders exactly whether the authors were taking their source material at all seriously. Putting aside the improbability that a logic-driven creature would begin with such an ostentatious homily, the line comes across as just plain silly. Though a vein of comedy runs through Star Trek, it is by and large an adventure and a drama. In a scene that must evoke the gravity of a world at risk, this ham-handed attempt to do a Shakespeare joke stands out like a sore thumb, tearing the audience out of the moment. The author's handles the appeal of Nero's wife to her husband to "follow his conscience" in a similarly unconvincing fashion, leaving "Countdown" wanting in the dialogue department.

On top of all of this, "Countdown" wallows in comic-book science of the worst kind. Dilithium, in the original Star Trek, was a bad enough breach of believability, since two lithium atoms cannot make a stable molecule. "Countdown"'s decalithium is even more improbable, and it is introduced with nary an explanation as to how such an unlikely compound could exist naturally. Even worse is "red matter," a refined form of decalithium which, when injected into stars, can form black holes. This sort of handwavium has increased in latter-day Trek, and is a regrettable trend in a venerable science fiction series.

However, decalithium and "red matter" are not nearly as bad as the flagrant disregard for basic physics displayed by the writers of "countdown." A star's solar flare destroys a planet early on in "Countdown," when such a flare in reality would only scorch the surface of a world. Plasma, though hot, is not very dense. A brief exposure of a planet to the ionized gas from a flare would not be enough to vaporize it. What is truly egregious, however, is Ambassador Spock's ability to observe this star's state of being from light-years away. The name of the unit "light-year" stems from the fact that light travels at a finite speed, about 300,000 km/second. If Nero's ship, the Narada, had to warp away from this star, faster than the speed of light, to reach Romulus, at several light-years away, it would take several years for any sign of the flare to be visible from the Romulan homeworld. Yet Spock can look at the star through a telescope. Ridiculous.

On that same note, the proposed solution for the supernova issue is problematic. Turning an exploding star into a black hole won't necessarily prevent its expansion. Indeed, as the black hole sucks in more material, it would tear that matter apart, releasing x-rays and gamma rays and much more harmful radiation. Given that the most dangerous part of a nearby supernova is the radiation that it emits, having a massive, hungry black hole nearby can be almost as dangerous. Furthermore, the process of turning a star into a black hole is usually a supernova. Thus, on the issues of science and plot, "Countdown" fails the believability test.

One may say that I am being too harsh, but therein lies the problem: I am not being too harsh. I am holding this volume to basic standards of good storytelling and science-fiction believability. If the comic cannot meet these metrics, then how can we expect J.J. Abrams, Alan Kurtzman and Roberto Orci to do the same with the "Star Trek" movie? What I find most disturbing is that all of the reviews I have seen of these comics are filled with excitement and adulation, with nary a critical eye toward the atrocious dialogue, flagrant denial of the basic tenants of physics, and poor plotting. The story of Nero appears to be an interesting one, however it is scarred by bad storytelling form and suffers from shoddy narrative presentation. The fans of Star Trek deserve better. Apparently, these days, all that one needs to succeed in the comic world is a decent idea implanted into a hackneyed corpse of a story. If you have the backing of a well-known and respected franchise, with a good dose of fan-service, you will have legions of fans lapping it up.

Time will tell whether or not Abrams', Orci and Kurtzman's Trek reboot will fly or fail, but they failed in their most important promotional tool for the film. That, in my book, does not bode well for the movie proper. And I would like to see a lot more noise being made by the fanbase, for if we don't make that noise, there's no way to keep the minds behind Star Trek honest.