Star Trek: Year Five #23 - IDW Publishing

STAR TREK: YEAR FIVE No. 23, May 2021

Packed full of pulse-pounding phaser combat and seriously exhilarating spaceship shooting shenanigans, Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly’s script for Issue Twenty-Three of “Star Trek: Year Five” certainly must have struck many Trekkies as containing the perfect mix of action and adventure. Indeed, considering that this twenty-page periodical depicts the increasingly damaged Constitution-class starship single-handedly fighting off the entire invading Tholian fleet for the sake of the Universe, it is hard not to agree with the pre-publication press release by "IDW Publishing" that, alongside artist Stephen Thompson and inker Elisabetta D'Amico, the two “showrunners” have concocted “the biggest battle the Enterprise and her crew have ever faced.”

Disappointingly however, those same franchise fans were also probably shaking their heads in utter disbelief when at the climax of this major mission the vessel’s Captain suddenly invokes the little know Starfleet Order 104 and relieves himself of command so as to teleport himself back to Earth. This uncharacteristic decision, which conveniently puts the unrecognisably troubled Mister Spock in charge so as to force the half-Vulcan to face his misgivings about being a competent leader, comes completely out of the blue, and simply seems to have been predominantly penned to ensure James Kirk is able to swap verbal pleasantries with a wholly homicidal Gary Seven; “You’re the time traveller. If that’s what you say I’ll do, I’ll believe it.”

To add insult to injury though, this title’s writers also decide, presumably because they realised they may well have conjured up their own Kobayashi Maru by placing the lone Enterprise up against the “Tholian horde bearing down on Earth”, that the starship’s crew can now rewrite the code controlling the alien invaders’ biology, and thus easily pass through the extra-terrestrial’s supposedly unassailable blockade by creating "Potassium-Rubidium Quantum Gas!" As with Kirk’s shocking change in personality, this contrived solution appears from out of no-where, and is as unconvincing as Scotty’s ability to apparently “overclock” his warp engines to produce an all-too convenient miraculous super-speed.

Of course, such ‘liberties’ with established canon can usually always be forgiven if the storytelling warrants such a divergence for the sake of dramatic effect or just a 'gosh darn good yarn.' But debatably little of what takes place within this comic’s narrative can make any such claim, with even the motivations of Seven’s all-powerful Aegis to forever “lock the galaxy in a perfect stasis” partially being driven by their apparent disgust that all four quadrants will eventually militarise themselves so as to defeat the emotionally merciless Borg Collective in the future..?

Writers: Jackson Lanzig & Collin Kelly, and Artist: Stephen Thompson