Both a stream of visuals and a narration are all-new to a mind meld here. Previous melds had no imagery (the flashes in that one version of TUC notwithstanding), and the dialogue relating to them was fragmentary, the actual exposition coming after the meld was broken and the character had recovered enough to report on his findings to his colleagues in a coherent manner.
Here Spock shows and tells in a seemingly coherent manner, perhaps with the skill and experience of a veteran melder, perhaps because this is also our first-ever meld actually performed for the purposes of show and tell. Both halves of his presentation could be argued to be accurate, inaccurate, artistic or pedantic; there's little inherent difference between the two.
Except in the content, that is. The visuals describe a "natural" explosion of a star, a phenomenon of limited scope that gets stopped before it kills more than one star system. This matches exactly the premise that Spock would fall into the timehole of his own making, followed by Nero, since the timehole would be where the star blew, but also where Nero witnessed the loss of Romulus with his own eyes.
What it does not necessarily match is the idea that the explosion could endanger the galaxy (or, as Spock puts it in that inane comic, the universe). Also, the "I had little time" bit is left mysterious; is the destruction about to accelerate or escalate somehow after that "little time", and if so, how? Is it a case of the black hole being unable to suck back the wave of hurt if it gets farther out?
The verbal part in turn may be interpreted in ways that are different from the above. Or then in ways that are not. The visuals seem strictly causal: kaboom, expansion of said through the rubble field, loss of Romulus, Spock's delivering of the droplet of red matter, black hole and salvation. The narration may be causal or not. It seems to start with an introduction: "a star will explode". Is it a strictly causal story that describes this event in detail, but does not include the title line which in fact belongs in a slot within the narrative? Or is the title line already part of the causal chain?
The "little time" line gets even less justification if we assume the star first blows and the other events then follow. The destruction then is already lightyears from its source. What would a few (dozen/hundred/zillion) lightyears or minutes more matter?
But if we say that "a star will explore" is but the title for the story, then there is no contradiction between the two representations of the event, which ought to be an attractive option, right? Furthermore, it provides at least one theoretical out from the "little time" conundrum - that the super-duper black hole can suck back the hurt across a limited radius. And FWIW, it dovetails to the one salvageable bit of Countdown, the idea that the explosion was predicted in advance but Spock faced an uphill battle in doing anything about it - and perhaps involved Nero in that battle before the actual kablooie itself, too.
Timo Saloniemi
