Star Trek: Year Five #24 - IDW Publishing

STAR TREK: YEAR FIVE No. 24, June 2021

Considering that co-writers Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly rather neatly conclude the first five-year voyage of the U.S.S. Enterprise with a miraculous victory against a formidable Tholian invasion force, many readers were probably quite pleased with their narrative for Issue Twenty Four of “Star Trek: Year Five”. But despite giving Captain James T. Kirk plenty of opportunity to physically punch his way out of a problem, and for Mister Spock to display a similarly impressive demonstration of pure logic, the “showrunners” script is arguably far from convincing in its storytelling.

For starters, having ferociously fought their way through an entire armada of alien space vessels single-handedly, and somehow along the way developed a super-weapon which can alter the very environment of the crystalline entities, the Enterprise’s half-Vulcan acting captain decides to just politely ask his opponents to rethink their successful conquest of all Federation territory rather than make a fight of it. Admittedly, there is little doubt the badly battered Constitution-class starship is absolutely no match for the Tholian Shardship confronting it, as the vessel “outguns us by several orders of magnitude.” But considering the non-humanoid assembly has already won, the fact they then decide to simply return to their part of the Alpha Quadrant because they’ve been ‘asked to nicely’ seemingly makes no sense at all.

Likewise, Kirk’s sudden ability to miraculously jump about his own timeline in an effort to repeatedly thwart Gary Seven from murdering him before he “became Starfleet's youngest starship captain” is inexplicably meant to have been bestowed upon Jim by a near-future version of Supervisor 194 himself. Caleb Howell has spent the best part of this title’s entire run desperately attempting to cold-bloodedly kill the Federation officer, and yet in a moment of “wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey” madness this book’s audience are told that the homicidal maniac suddenly experiences a complete change of heart; “And it’s the moment you return, to make sure I can follow you. And stop you. You gave me the pen. As you’ll give it to me now.”

Disconcertingly, even some of this comic’s less notable cast are debatably imbued with a distinctly dire grasp of reasoning as well. The Presidential candidate Renei has previously been depicted as a ruthless leader of the Andorians, so her decision to oppose the Tholian conquest by sacrificing countless populations via atmospheric detonations on a planetary scale possibly isn’t too shocking. However, having made the callous choice to decimate half the Federation of Planets’ electorate, the Originalist politician is perturbingly still shown as being one of the two front-runners for the forthcoming election..?

Writers: Jackson Lanzig & Collin Kelly, and Artist: Silvia Califano