New STAR TREK Comic Features All Six Doctors (If You Believe That’s Bashir)

IDW announced a special Star Trek comic today, featuring all six doctors, that ties in with a global competition to develop a real tricorder (aka $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE).

Star Trek Special: Flesh and Stone, written by longtime Star Trek scribes Scott and David Tipton, takes place at a Starfleet medical conference, which is crashed by a deadly metamorphic virus.  The EMH and Doctors Beverly Crusher, Julian Bashir and Katherine Pulaski (with some help from Leonard McCoy and Phlox) join forces in a race against time to find a cure –  only to discover that the answers lie in another place and time! The clock is ticking and only the medical officers of Starfleet can save the day.

“There aren’t very many ‘firsts’ left in the world of Star Trek,” said Scott Tipton. “So when IDW and XPRIZE came to us with the opportunity to team up all six of Trek’s doctors for the first time, how could we say no?”

“The tricky part is how to get them together, since some of them are separated by about two hundred years,” added David Tipton. “How does it happen? You’ll just have to wait and see…”

Um, you just said that “the answers lie in another place and time.” I think I have an idea how all six doctors manage to work together. Whatever the storyline, finding a way to feature all of them in the same story is interesting, and tying that to the real life quest to build a tricorder is certainly on brand.

But can we talk about this cover for a minute? In what galaxy does that guy on the left look like Dr. Bashir? The receding hairline and pudgy face are bad enough, but they made him white? For a franchise that’s prided itself on diversity for nearly 50 years, that’s a major misstep.

Star Trek Special: Flesh and Stone will be available this July.