Star Trek: Year Five
Captain's log. Final entry.
I don't honestly know if anyone will ever find this recording, never mind understand it. According to Mr Spock, the odds are over seven hundred million to one that in another ten seconds, this entire record will be dust.
Along with the man recording it.
But I've never been one for odds. So if you somehow did find this, distant listener, know this.
These were the voyages of the starship Enterprise...
. . . . . . .
All good things come to an end, they say... but of course no ending is really the end. The close of one story is merely the prelude to the beginning of the next. The original 1960s Star Trek TV show was the tale of the Enterprise and her five-year mission, but that mission was never completed on screen. Since the end of the TV series there have been many more adventures written about Kirk and his crew, but they take place in the spaces between the broadcast episodes, thereby preserving continuity with the original material. In Star Trek: Year Five by writers Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly and artist Stephen Thompson we jump to the final chapter.
The mission is coming to a close and the crew is headed home, but here is a group of people who have not only travelled to worlds where no-one has gone before, they have also been through experiences that have changed them profoundly. They have explored not only the far reaches of outer space but also the equally vast and mysterious territory of their own hearts and minds.
For all that terror and joy and wonder to suddenly be called to a halt raises the question: How does the journey change you? To abruptly return to a life more ordinary, how do you learn to once again define yourself by the standards of your familiar culture? These brave adventurers sailing back to base are not the same people they were when they first ventured out into the unknown. Who are they now? What are they now?
For Kirk, at least, that eventuality has been covered: his new role as an admiral awaits him... a role that he is quite certain he does not want.
For Kirk, at least, that eventuality has been covered: his new role as an admiral awaits him... a role that he is quite certain he does not want.
Our story opens with the Enterprise overseeing a very important and extremely dangerous assignment: approaching a gigantic star that is about to undergo hypernova, the crew must accomplish the placement of a device that will harmlessly harness the escaping energies... but they then receive a very unexpected distress call.
The message is Tholian.
The Tholians - crystalline non-humanoid beings that live in extreme heat - once almost destroyed the Enterprise, trapping it in their energy-sapping web in space. Responding to the call for help, the crew find a Tholian colony almost totally wiped out. But by who?
They then discover a survivor... a frightened Tholian child. Kirk decides to bring the youngster aboard in the hopes of establishing a means of communication and discovering what had happened to the colony.
That is when a Tholian ship appears and demands the return of the child... prompting Kirk to believe that the Tholian colony below was attacked by none other than their own people.
So begins a saga that takes in Klingons, aquatic alien kingdoms and mysterious (but familiar) time travellers. This is a finely-crafted piece of nostalgic hommage: the spirit of the original Sixties show is vibrantly alive here, in both the subject matters, the designs and the progressive, optimistic vibe. The images recreate the familiar details of the Enterprise, its interiors and its crew, yet with a freshness that evokes the same idealistic visions. The likenesses of the characters are beautifully on point, and are brought to life with great expressiveness.
There is much to delight the Trekkie faithful here, bringing in elements of subsequent incarnations of the franchise... The Klingons are of the ridged-forehead variety first seen in the 1979 Motion Picture, furthered developed in The Next Generation. Characters from the Animated Series also make an appearance, foreshadowing the developments of the Star Trek legend that followed the end of the original TV show.
In the great spirit of expansiveness and inclusiveness that typified the original series (featuring black, Japanese and Russian bridge crew at a time when racial segregation and post-War xenophobia were still very much a part of life in the US), this story also explores diversity in its dealings with new life and new civilisations. Tholians appear to be asexual; an aquatic humanoid race is literally gender-fluid, both necessitating the use of 'they/them' pronouns. The differences encountered are far from unsurmountable; a certain crewmember finds himself in a very unconventional romantic relationship...
This is a long-arc saga (currently at 22 issues) and the 'big picture' is still unclear, but the interventions of a pair of time travellers seems to threaten the whole Federation, if not the galaxy itself. Facing enemies with powers and technology far more advanced than their own, is there any hope that one ship, one crew, can make a difference as the final frontier approaches?
Zak Webber
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