Star Trek #1 Goes Boldly

Once upon a time, Captain Benjamin Sisko brought an end to the Dominion War, fought off the Pah-wraiths and then walked with the Prophets in the Celestial Temple. Now it’s three years later and he’s been sent back to the Alpha Quadrant with a mission to save the gods themselves. Star Trek #1 is written by Collin Kelly & Jackson Lanzing, with art by Ramon Rosanas, colors by Lee Loughridge and letters by Clayton Cowles.

Tony Thornley: For a bunch of us at ComicsXF, this was a hotly anticipated issue. I think we didn’t realize exactly what we were getting into here, for the best.

Mark Turetsky: The return of Captain Sisko and a crew of all-stars from the TNG–VOY era was what we were promised, but this is so much more than just that!

The Return of the Sisko

Mark: First off, the transition from Sisko in the Celestial Temple back to the real world is fantastic. The brief look at him living in “nonlinear” spacetime, along with his use of past, present and future tenses (“I wanted to rest. I’m wanting to rest. I will want…”). And then, the Prophets’ pronouncement that he must go “Where no one has gone before.” It just gives me shivers. I’ve been reviewing Al Ewing and Javier Rodríguez’ Defenders comics for the past couple years, and Ewing loves taking metatextual phrases like this one and embedding them into the text of the universe. I never thought I would see something like this in a Trek comic. But will Sisko be going boldly?

Tony: Oh exactly. This opening was a very pleasant surprise, including the title of the issue. The switch in tenses is subtle (I know I missed them on my first read through), but it sets up a recurring theme throughout the issue. This is a story about a demigod descending from heaven. The opening sets up the same sort of disorientation that Ben’s about to feel.

From an artistic standpoint, I love how the first two pages are a synthesis of the creative team. Rosanas’s layout is surreal, but three of the panels are close-ups on Sisko’s eye, creating an intimacy with the character immediately. Cowles’s lettering choices makes the Prophets seem omnipresent, while showing Ben’s humanity is still intact, and Loughridge uses blues predominantly to make the setting feel more unearthly than it already is. It’s great comics.

Mark: Another thing I didn’t think we’d be seeing in this Trek comic is data pages. We get a scene-setting passage written by Jake Sisko in our first data page. It does a very fundamental job of re-capping DS9 and telling us when precisely this is set. But, much more importantly, it also establishes the emotional state that Jake has been in. The title, “What We Left Behind,” is, of course, a callback to the series finale, “What You Leave Behind,” and is also the title of Ira Steven Behr’s documentary about the series. This article shows Jake on a very specific path in his life: he’s been repeatedly traumatized by war while living in a society that insists it’s a utopia. His mother was killed by The Borg when he was eleven, he was brought to live above a planet in crisis when he was fourteen. He saw the horrors of war, military occupation and his best friend lost a leg in battle. Then he lost his father. He wants to write about his experiences, but now that war is over, the average Federation citizen just doesn’t want to think about it. He’s still living on Deep Space Nine three years later, not on his stepmother’s starship with his little sister, not on Bajor in the house that his father built for them, not back on Earth with his grandfather in New Orleans. He seems to be on the road to becoming the broken man he became in an alternate future in the episode “The Visitor.” 

Tony: Jake is probably the DS9 character that I never really connected with. “The Visitor” notwithstanding of course. In two pages, I felt more connected with him than I did in 7 seasons of the show. The essay and his conversation with Colonel Kira immediately after both accomplished that.

Mark: Now, I’ve been paying some attention to the press surrounding this comic, and I don’t think Jake was mentioned at all in its promotion. I’m very glad that Kelly and Lanzing have brought him back, not just to be there when Sisko returns, but apparently as one of our main castmembers, coming along for the ride. He’s the first of a few surprise crewmembers that we get in this issue.

Tony: The least surprising of the surprises too! We’ll get to that in a minute. I really liked how the issue built from those opening pages. We start with the familiar- a slow pan-in on Deep Space Nine. A conversation between Nerys and Jake that could have been an epilogue to the finale of DS9. Then, in a flash of blue light- something that I could see getting pulled off on-screen- Ben Sisko is standing back in the promenade, kicking off a flurry of activity.

Mark: I also love how Cowles letters the conversation between Jake and Kira. It’s a totally white page, but it’s lettered as if it’s got panels, as if there are figures on the page inhabiting the panels. This gives us a sense of pacing and a sense of space. It’s the perfect visual metaphor for someone who is just starting to reacquaint themselves with normal time and space (and likely gets us an extra page of art elsewhere in the issue, to boot!).

Tony: These pages are probably the slowest, most character-based in the story, which is why I’m glad we get a moment of Jake and Ben hugging, and Kira thanking the Prophets for Ben’s return. This is exactly what we need to prepare us for what comes next.

Mark: We’re spending a lot of time on what’s really the prologue of the story, but I think it’s worthwhile, because it’s so well done. The page of five panels, the first four being bounded by borders, the final one bleeding to the edges as a baseball is lobbed toward Sisko shows us that some amount of time is passing, and yet no time seems to be passing at all for Sisko. Not until Jake snaps him into the present (hence the unbound panel). It reminds me of this shot from Trainspotting (which is itself an homage to the opening shot of A Clockwork Orange):

The final location, Sisko sitting on a couch in his quarters, is also a visual nod to one of his most memorable moments from DS9, his confessional captain’s log from “In The Pale Moonlight.”

Tony: It’s a great use of comics as a medium, and a stellar set-up for Ben’s mental state.

Getting The Gang Together

Mark: The two page scene with Captain Picard is another unexpected surprise. First, it’s a bookend to their meeting from “Emissary,” the Deep Space Nine premiere episode. There, Sisko can barely contain his disgust at meeting Picard, the man who, as Locutus, killed his wife and scarred him and his son for life. Here, ten years later (well, 7 years as well as eternity from Sisko’s perspective), Sisko meets with Picard as something of an equal. They’re not only both captains and decorated heroes, but Sisko now comes to Picard with real empathy for his time as Locutus. Sisko says, “… and then I was taken by a mysterious alien race no one else understands and had my body and mind forever changed.” I never would have thought to connect Sisko’s experience with The Prophets to Picard’s with The Borg, but wow. The very idea that they could reach a kind of understanding over their experiences with truly alien races. Just great, great stuff.

Tony: This is one of several scenes that I mentally saw being played out on screen too. I mentioned in our review of Lower Decks how too many Star Trek comics just couldn’t really capture how the shows and movies were dynamic and interesting. The art and writing do both here. I’m trying to not be too hyperbolic in saying this, but this issue does such a good job of capturing the spirit of Trek both in-universe and in a meta sense. It might be my favorite Trek comic yet.

Another thing I really enjoyed about this scene is how the characters’ history informed the plot. Ben didn’t just relate to Jean-Luc on a level that they hadn’t in their last meeting. You can see Jean-Luc already knew what he was going to do and how he was going to proceed. Which led into a character reveal that we knew was coming but was probably my favorite of the issue- Picard telling Sisko he’d help but he’d need to take a first officer of his choosing.

Naturally that leads to Data, Spot’s carrier in hand, standing in the doorway. This might have been my favorite page of the issue. My favorite Data page, if you will. What did you think of our favorite android’s arrival?

Mark: It’s a good reveal, and one that’s given more space than any other character reveal, with a full page. It’s half as much space as the ship itself and the cataclysmic stuff that happens later in the issue. I love Data, but maybe this would have had a bit more impact were he not on the cover and in all of the lead-up (but you’ve gotta sell the comic, right?). I’m interested in seeing the dynamic between Sisko and Data play out, especially since the relationship between captain and first officer is such a crucial one in Star Trek, traditionally. 

Still, there’s a moment in their shuttlecraft conversation that gives me pause. Sisko says Data would be great in a kitchen, and Data says he learned from the best, implying that Data believes Riker is a good cook. Now, Riker may be many things, but a good cook isn’t among them. He’s an enthusiastic cook, he likes cooking, but he’s not good at it. Let’s not forget when he prepared one very small pizza to feed four adults and a teenager in season one of Picard! All joking aside, I do realize that Data is referring to Riker being the best first officer.

Which leads us to the introduction of the USS Theseus, our hero ship (one supposes). The spec sheet on the ship is kind of wild, in that it seems like the timeline starts in the wrong century. But it doesn’t! This ship is over 100 years old! It’s a relic. And speaking of…

Tony: SCOTTY! This was my favorite surprise cast reveal, by far. Captain Montgomery Scott is standing in engineering, ready to hand command of the Theseus to Sisko and Data. Scotty has long been one of my favorite Star Trek characters. He’s one of the few that I owned an action figure from the Playmates line. I had a massive grin on my face each time he appeared on page. And when we get deep into the mechanics and engineering of the Theseus, his role here makes perfect sense. 

The Thesus is not just a name chosen at random, it is a modular ship- meaning that you can strip it down to its spaceframe and refit it with all modern equipment, or remove certain elements and replace them with mission specific tech. It’s literally the ship of Theseus. Who else besides the greatest engineer in Starfleet history (sorry Trip, Geordi and B’Lanna) would design a ship like that? Even better, this isn’t just a cameo, Scotty appears to be our full-time engineer.

From there, it’s kind of fast and furious. Sisko and Data end up on the bridge where we meet the rest of our cast- our new Andorian and Vulcan shipmates who we saw on the cover, Commander Beverly Crusher, and Lieutenant Tom Paris, fresh off his return from the Delta Quadrant! (Do I have the timeline right Mark?)

Mark: Yes, the Voyager returned to the Alpha Quadrant in late 2378 (around December), and the stardates listed in this issue show it taking place in early 2379 (April or so?). So Paris is just back from getting home from the Delta Quadrant. And he’s left Torres alone with their daughter (though he frames it as her wanting him out of the house). We’ve got a couple of absent fathers serving on the Theseus, don’t we? That aside, we’ve got rep from Enterprise in the form of Lily Sato, a descendant of Hoshi, TOS, TNG, DS9 and Voyager. No Picard, Lower Decks, Discovery or Strange New Worlds crewmembers yet, but we’ll see!

Tony: One point about that cast before we move on. We’ve had B’Lanna’s involvement already confirmed in the next series- Worf-led Star Trek: Defiant. I wonder what’s going to happen with their daughter. Is she going to spend some time with Auntie Seven? Uncle Harry? We’ll see I guess.

Mark: Speaking of Harry, Ensign T’Lir has been on the ship “almost as long as Captain Scott.” Scotty has been on the ship about 9 years. And yet they’re still an ensign. Someone is suffering from Harry Kim’s disease.

Hephaestus And Beyond The Infinite

Mark: They head to the Hephaestus nebula, the one breadcrumb that Sisko remembers from his time with the Prophets, and they find practically nothing at first, except for maybe massive amounts of space krill. Sure enough, like whales feed on krill, these guys are being fed on by hundreds of crystalline entities! For those who don’t remember, a single crystalline entity destroyed Data’s home planet after it was lured there by Lore. One often ignored facet of Data is that he’s been loaded up with the memories of all of the colonists who were killed by it. He’s their “Silicon Avatar,” if you will. So, it’s not surprising that seeing hundreds of them triggers a fear response in Data.

Tony: What a perfect introduction to the series’s big threat here too. It’s something that a casual fan can understand immediately but a bigger fan will pick out from that episode. (For me, it’s an episode I remember watching as a kid, but don’t remember anything about it now, since I didn’t ever rewatch it on Netflix before TNG was shifted to Paramount+ only.) So we get a fairly easy to understand entity that’s then threatened by our unknown enemy.

I also loved the responses. Data is afraid, for the reasons you mentioned. T’Lir is fascinated. Paris is snapping pictures with his PADD (which is now conveniently smartphone sized). 

Mark: Tom having an iPhone just works for me, somehow.

Tony: Then Sisko has his reaction- a vision from the Prophets. This emphasizes the point that’s been mentioned several times now- Ben is untethered from time, and is still experiencing it non-linearly. This was a great way to pull off a jump scare on the comics page. On a page turn, we discover Sisko has failed, and we all are thinking, wait, what? Then a ship appears on sensors… This scene was like a gut punch to me.

Mark: Yes, it raises all kinds of questions. Has he already failed? Or is he destined to fail in the future? Also, the prophet who tells him he fails appears in silhouette, is it Sarah Sisko, his mother? And the destruction of the crystalline entities is certainly a shocking way to introduce the reader to what Sisko et al. are up against. Sisko refers to them as gods in the final moments of the issue, and whatever the threat is, it kills gods. Sisko mentions TOS’ Apollo, the Prophets, the Q. One he neglects to mention are The Borg, who were compared to gods earlier in the issue. I think it’s fair to say that they’ll also be on their enemy’s list. It’s a helluva way to show what the crew are up against, and to confirm that Sisko isn’t just delusional.

Tony: And don’t forget, in Star Trek #400, these guys already got Gary Mitchell.

Stepping backwards just a touch- just before the crystalline entities were destroyed, we also got two things confirmed. The first is that the destroyer is a ship of some kind, not another god-like entity. Okay, terrifying.

But then we are able to see a silhouette of the ship thanks to the Theseus’s advanced sensors. It’s a MASSIVE saucer. Like orders of magnitude bigger than the Theseus. Did you recognize the shape? It reminded me of two things- either Star Trek 2011’s Narada, or, the more terrifying option the Doomsday Machine from that infamous TOS episode.

Mark: Maybe the Klingons are behind it! We know Worf is joining the gang next issue, and famously, the Klingons killed their gods, as “they were more trouble than they were worth.” 

In all seriousness, I don’t know if I’d be more surprised if it were something new, or something old in a new light. This new Trek series has set a new high bar for what to expect from a Trek comic, and that’s a great gift.

Prepare Yourself for Warp 10 Excitement!

• One section of the Theseus is marked CLASSIFIED. A true Chekhov’s gun! Could it be Pavel Chekov himself?!
• Why are all the starships on the various covers- except one- the Enterprise? Francesco Francavilla’s is the only one to feature the Theseus!
• The Theseus is Discovery Class, but with the Discovery classified due to the time travel stuff I wonder where that came from. And would the bones of the ship look like the McQuarrie design? [TT]
• The Discovery is a Crossfield class ship, so I don’t think it shares anything with the Discovery class, aside from the name. [MT]
• The Theseus’ registry number is NX-1987, commemorating the year that TNG premiered, reviving Star Trek and launching the era that this comic is a celebration of. 
• While Ensign Sato refers to the deaths of the crystalline entities as a genocide, at least some have survived elsewhere in the galaxy, as the USS Cerritos encounters a few in Lower Decks’ “I, Excretus,” set two years after this issue.

Mark Turetsky

Mark Turetsky is an audiobook narrator and voice actor who sometimes writes about comic books. Originally from Montreal, Canada, he now lives in Northern Louisiana.

Tony Thornley

Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.