Today's the 60th anniversary of the premiere of
Star Trek--unless you're Canadian, in which case you
got it two days early! But it also feels like a weird time for the franchise: barring any secret projects, for the first time in almost a decade, there
is no new Trek series in production. The current shows were either ending or not renewed, and the only thing left was the preschool-aimed
Star Trek Scouts on YouTube. (I'm personally behind on both
Strange New Worlds and
Starfleet Academy, since Paramount/CBS sucks, and I don't want to give them money right now. Also, even the best of times that channel had
Star Trek and maybe the occasional
Spongebob rerun for me, and little else.) IDW is your best bet for
Trek material right now, since they have two
new series out shortly; one of which features Captain Seven of Nine and the
Enterprise-G, which was set up after
Star Trek: Picard and should've got a new show
immediately. But with those series beginning, another is ending, and while I'm not sure if its run has been truncated, or if it was only intended as a short run, I wish it had gone further: from 2025,
Star Trek: The Last Starship, written by Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, art by Adrián Bonilla and Hernán González. Covers by Francesco Francavilla.
This series was set during a time mentioned but not seen on-screen, called
the Burn. In 3069, most of the dilithium in the universe went inert, causing massive, simultaneous explosions of reactors both in starships and on planets. (I know I've seen the
Star Trek: Discovery episodes involving, and later revealing, the cause of the Burn: I don't want to seem like I'm agreeing with a common criticism of that series, but the cause and the solution are both pretty much 'feelings.') Millions were killed during the disaster--a trillion dead is sited at one point, three trillion the next issue--and Starfleet was absolutely decimated, as every active ship in the fleet was destroyed, most with all hands. Captain Delacourt Sato of the
Sagan was on the verge of finally bringing the Gorn into the Federation when both their ships were destroyed: only Sato and three other crewmen were saved, by the ship's Tholian engineer, who had felt the disaster coming but too late. The Federation is on its back foot all the way, as without dilithium, warp travel was lost; sociologists predicted the dissolution of the Federation within a year. Sato refuses that answer, arguing Starfleet needed to get a flagship out there, to show everyone the Federation still stood. How, though? Maybe with transwarp, a banned technology, that of the Borg: Sato enters into a partnership with
Agnes Jurati from
Picard, the last queen of the Borg. With her technology, Starfleet is able to field one ship, the
U.S.S. Omega. Agnes says she's trying to repay a debt, but one of her conditions was access to a decommissioned and quarantined science project on Daystrom Station...
Agnes had been human once, but had crunched all the numbers, and the situation was not mathing out for the Federation, or anyone: every possible outcome was an unmitigated and extended disaster, so she went for a hail Mary. Project Phoenix had attempted to resurrect one of Starfleet's greatest captains but had stalled, but with Borg technology, Agnes was able to reach into the past (figuratively) and bring back James T. Kirk. Agnes felt the situation "couldn't be left to some Starfleet stuffed shirt who thinks he's living at the end of history," which may or may not be directed at Sato. Sato initially balks at involving 'Kirk,' since he had studied his career and felt he was a man of war. But, like it or not, war was coming: the Klingons had also suffered the burn, and feeling betrayed by the Federation and perhaps the concept of "peace" itself, the Blackest Fleet, of older Klingon ships, attacks earth, dropping their warp cores on several cities. Sato is forced to challenge and kill the Black Mind captain, then orders them back to Klingon space...where, in a fit of nihilism, the Klingon empire mostly kills itself. (Millions of Klingons had died in the Burn, without battle or honor, meaningless deaths; that largely broke them as a society.)
After that hit, Earth secedes from the Federation, and I found
issue #4 insanely depressing: Sato's first officer, Wowie Carter, visits his family at different times, and watches the entire planet fall into a xenophobic siege mentality. Here feels like a cheat: Agnes explains, the Borg's transwarp broke lightspeed by "brute force," so their next mission to gather delegates for a new Babel conference would take four months on the
Omega...and twenty-three years in real time. That handicap takes the mission from a risky gamble to doomed-from-the-start: it would be like taking them off the board for years; and I don't see how any peace conference would work for the delegates, since they would have to adjust to how their planets had been changed during the time they were travelling. (This was somewhat the opposite, perhaps an overcorrection, of why the Burn happened narratively: although
Discovery was initially set before the original series, the ship would end up in the year 3189.
Discovery's gimmick was the ship's teleportation "spore drive," and other ships had to be taken off the table to keep it special and plot-central.) The new Babel conference fails miserably: with too many worlds demanding the return of dilithium use, either for comfort or security or survival, it's the perfect opportunity for the Emerald Chain to move in. Moreso than they were on
Discovery, the Ferengi are a large part of the Chain's forging here--I can see why they weren't on the show, as this massively undercuts Rom's efforts to change Ferengi society in
Deep Space 9. But here they're needed to fully sell the Chain's argument: the 'soft' values of the Federation had failed everyone, and the universe would only be saved by capitalism. Sato's Ferengi doctor, the drug-enthusiast Zed, calls it out immediately as a protection racket; but the Chain had dilithium and was using it, the risk of another Burn or not.
Kirk nearly sacrifices himself, to stop the Chain, but is saved by Sato; who is able to convince an old friend to trust him momentarily, but not enough to return to the Federation. Feeling like there was little left to him but rage, Kirk offers to leave, but Sato stops him, since they might be all the Federation had left. By issue
#7, only a year had passed for the crew of the
Omega but it was fifty-seven years since the Burn: long enough to "watch the galaxy dissolve in fast-forward." Starfleet was all but gone, and while some worlds (like Bajor!) stayed Federation, many were lost; and the Emerald Chain exploited and enslaved more and more. But, a transmission from Deep Space Hope, might have found something, as they send a broadcast saying only "come and see the miracle." Unsurprisingly, it isn't: the Vulcans and Romulans there had lost it, and were feeding themselves into a black hole, as a noble and peaceful suicide. Worse, that situation causes Agnes to doubt her longshot with Kirk, and decide to go with the numbers: another "brute-force" situation, the reset of assimilation.
Confronting Agnes on her seeming betrayal, Kirk is let in on her new plan--assimilate everything, with Kirk as a Borg King--but he rejects it, saying he was a captain. But, they had to change the variables: Sato was locked in on playing defense, when Kirk felt the time had come to "fight for what's left." Diplomacy had been tried, but wasn't cutting it, and Kirk thought Sato was fading. Kirk commandeers the
Omega, although I'm not sure how much of the crew sides with him: by
#10, another twenty-five years later, a now more Borgish Kirk seems to have Agnes and a Klingon officer, Valqis, but that might be it. And Sato, in the new
U.S.S. Challenger, was hunting him: partly stung by the perceived betrayal, but also to appease the Emerald Chain, who routinely murdered thousands to punish the Federation for Kirk's actions. Zed stops Sato before he finishes Kirk--correctly calling Sato's actions out as appeasal, and futile--arguing that they may never be a crew again...maybe they could be a fleet. If they can work together, before the Chain's final retaliation...
There are only two issues of this left, and I'm almost positive it'll end with nu-Kirk dead; but I hope they prove me wrong. (He'll also probably have to lay down the phaser and go back to diplomacy, for reasons.) I also have a suspicion that this series, being a little grimdark for Trek, was being phased out early to make room for the more optimistic times of the early 25th century. And I'm disappointed, because I feel like there was still a lot to explore here: we see the broad strokes of the appeal of the return of capitalism, but not specifics; nor do we see the Emerald Chain speedrun to new heights of capitalism's worst applications. There's also not enough room for hope, for people to relearn how to not just circle the wagons in times of trouble, but also reach out, to help others and be helped in turn. And I wanted to see more of the optimism of the last chance: where everything is against you to the point that death seems like the only option, unless...
Read more!
"The Thing With Claws" is based on 50 Berkeley Square in London, which may to date still be considered the most haunted house in that city. Again, all the stories about it may be lies, but there were stories. This one reminds me of the Hammer classic, Quatermass and the Pit, or Five Million Years to Earth.
I did not find anything for "Hounds of Death," at least in a brief search: a farmer, fed up with the neighbor's hounds tearing through his fields, poisons them, then is later chased to his death by their ghosts. (At least, that's what rescuers said his wife said, so...) "The Haunted Villa" is based on a fairly well-known story, from Roman Pliny the Younger. A man stays in said villa, that had already supposedly driven several previous renters to madness and death; and he follows the ghost to his grave, where he had been buried in chains. The body is unchained and buried properly, seemingly freeing the ghost. ("The Haunted Villa" art by André LeBlanc.)
Finally, "The Lady in White" would have been another 'known' ghost, of the Hohenzollern castle, that allegedly appeared before the death of King Frederick William. The king did appear to be handier than most monarchs, as he built coffins for himself and his queen; which I'm pretty sure was a King of the Hill episode. (Art by Al McWilliams.) 
