IDW’s Star Trek: Year Five series, which tells the stories of the final year of Captain James T. Kirk’s five-year mission, begins its “grand finale” this week. Issue 22 begins a three-issue arc that wraps up the series. Year Five concludes with a special “oversized epilogue” in issue 25.
Star Trek: Year Five #22
Synopsis:
For five years, the U.S.S. Enterprise and her crew have journeyed to the edge of the known universe, tackling impossible challenges and menacing foes along the way. But the biggest challenge of all awaits them here at home… and no matter what happens, the lives of Captain Kirk, Spock, Sulu, Chekov, and the rest of the crew will be changed forever. The grand finale of Star Trek: Year Five begins here with a new issue from showrunners Jackson Lanzing & Collin Kelly (Gotham City Garage, Green Arrow) and artist Stephen Thompson (Satellite Falling, Dis Hard: Year One).
Covers:
Cover A by Stephen Thompson
Retail incentive cover by J.J. Lendl
Five-page preview:
Issue 22 Available Wednesday
Star Trek: Year Five #20 is available on July 7th. You can order and pre-order individual copies of Star Trek: Year Five at TFAW. Or pick up individual digital editions at Amazon/comiXology.
What’s next for Year Five
Here is a quick breakdown on the final three issues of the series coming this summer.
Issue 23
A Tholian horde bearing down on Earth, a time-traveling madman out for blood, a rot festering within the highest levels of the Federation that’s about to explode – and that’s just where we begin! The biggest battle the Enterprise and her crew have ever faced continues in part two of the amazing three-part finale of Star Trek: Year Five.
Cover A by Stephen Thompson
Issue 24
Their journey has taken them to the edge of the known universe and beyond. They’ve faced down impossible odds, conquered incredible enemies, and now, here in the shadow of home, their mission will come to an end… and nothing will ever be the same. The crew of the Enterprise will put it all on the line in the grand finale of Star Trek: Year Five.
Cover A by Stephen Thompson
Issue 25
The five-year mission may be over, but now it’s time for the next adventure to begin. Join the crew of the Enterprise for the end of an old chapter and the beginning of a new. This special, oversized epilogue from the entire Year Five writing team bridges the gap between the end of the five-year mission and the beginning of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Retail incentive cover by J.J. Lendl
Catch up on Year Five
The third trade paperback collection Star Trek: Year Five – Weaker Than Man which collects issues 13-19 was released on May 25th. You can order it at Amazon for $19.99, or get the Kindle/comiXology version for $8.11.
Keep up with all the Star Trek comics news, previews and reviews in TrekMovie’s comics category.
Interesting, but the split delta metal insignia Kirk hands to the Tholian new Ensign… seems odd to me.
It was a cadet pin introduced in Discovery. Presumably, since we never saw a dedicated pin during TOS, the illustrators decided to utilize that one here.
I agree it’s a bit jarring to have something of discovery showing up in TOS 60’s aesthetic.
And we’ve seen cadet insignia 2 times before. The ‘flower’ insignia was used on the cadet shown in Shore Leave and in The Cage they used the delta with a stylized C in the middle.
This has been a mostly fun series, but the writers interpretation of Gary Seven has been, well, not great. I know we only saw him in Assignment Earth, but he never one came across as a homicidal mad man in that episode.
Gary Seven has also been a major complaint with me in an otherwise enjoyable series. I much prefer John Byrne’s and Greg Cox’s take on the character.
I really just love how TOS never once depicted Earth, the Enterprise was just out there, doing its thing for 5 whole years. Every series that came since has felt so much more tied to Earth [Voyager excluded], visiting it fairly often, and with the much larger Federation and Starfleet of the TNG era, it just felt like a much more crowded and comfortable galaxy than in TOS, which was always exploring strange new worlds [with the exception of the parallel development and time travel episodes, I guess]. It just makes the journey of Kirk and crew seem that much more exceptional, that they completed their 5 year mission
….absolutely agree 100%. I actually think of, and appreciate that aspect of TOS, often.
I do not agree. While we did see more of Earth on the later shows, the idea that later shows had less an emphasis on exploring strange new worlds because we saw Earth a few more times is just silly… so let’s look at it.
According to Memory Alpha:
• Earth appeared on TOS in 3 episodes in 3 seasons.
• On TNG we saw Earth 7 times in 7 seasons, one of those being the 2-parter “Time’s Arrow.”
• On DS9 it was portrayed in 10 episodes, including a two parter (“Past Tense”), and one 3-parter.
• In VOY, we saw it surprisingly the most, in 11 episodes, including multiple 2-parters.
Now, if we parse down to just the episodes where the ship and crew travels to Earth in the “present” to visit Starfleet, or in Voyager’s case where a chunk of the story is set on Earth of they have significant communication with Starfleet)– for more than a brief glimpse, and eliminating time travel or parallel worlds as you suggest– we find:
• ZERO episodes of TOS.
• THREE episodes of TNG (Conspiracy, Best of Both Worlds, The First Duty, four if you consider the opening scene of Time’s Arrow, five if you consider Family)
• TWO episodes of DS9 (Homefront/Paradise Lost, four if you consider Sisko in New Orleans in “Image in the Sand” and “Shadows and Symbols” but Starfleet played no part, and neither the defiant nor any of the other crew returned with Sisko)
• THREE episodes of Voyager: Pathfinder, Inside Man, Endgame.
So in summation, I don’t think it’s at all fair to claim that Earth appeared so much in later shows that TOS has some kind of special place because the Enterprise “was just out there doing its thing.” The Enterprise D was out there doing its thing in 171 other episodes. Voyager was out there doing its thing in 169 other episodes. The crew of DS9 was doing its thing out on the frontier for 166 other episodes.
Besides, ENT was specifically about exploring new worlds, and it returned to Earth the most of any of them, appearing in 21 episodes. It was, I would argue, much more about exploration and being “out there doing their thing” than TOS was, successful or not.
I think the bigger difference is that in TNG/VOY/DS9/etc you feel that they can phone home or get help from 2000 other starships anytime they want, that Starbase 9483924 is just around the corner. Even in DIS, just holo comm the Admiral for help and the backup fleet will be there.
You contrast that with TOS where the starship commander has to respresent the entire Federation because the politicians are just too far away and its just too dangerous for them to be there and you are 1 of 12… er, 9 since we lost 3 last year.. while your on mission to find out just what happened to the other which went missing but must be recovered if possible.
This captured the whole ship of the line feeling of the age of exploration, one ship can decide the fate of the Pacific.
I argue that the best TOS movie was “Master and Commander” – you fight because this is ship IS England!
What TOS had was the feeling that the 1701 WAS Starfleet, that a Constitution class starship was hard to build and expensive that a capital ship ended up having to patrol a quarter of Federation space.
If the 1701 went down, half the sector would have to learn Klingonese! And that Captain pretty much was leading the Starfleet for the whole sector since messages from Command take days.
The 1701-D goes down, don’t worry, you have 2000 other starships ready to act as flying hotels. They’ll have to phone home for orders though.
One just comes off as way more exciting on a medium that can really only follow one crew in my opinion.
“I think the bigger difference is that in TNG/VOY/DS9/etc you feel that they can phone home or get help from 2000 other starships anytime they want, that Starbase 9483924 is just around the corner.”
A. Voyager was literally on the other side of the galaxy. It didn’t even ‘phone home’ to Starfleet/Federation until the sixth season of the show, so that’s really odd to even include it. It only bumped into one other Starfleet ship in the Delta quadrant with the Equinox. It formed a few alliances but those only lasted while they were still in a system. They didn’t have much help with any of the foes they met.
B. In TNG case, majority of the episodes the Enterprise was all alone in a sector and had to come up with its own solutions. It’s not like when they encountered the Romulans, 20 ships could show up in an hour. Most of the time help would be too far away. What episodes can you cite that showed the D getting help at a moment’s notice?
C. DS9 was literally at the edge of Federation space. It could take literally days for ships to reach them UNLESS a ship was already in the sector like what we saw in the episode The Jem Hadar. The first two seasons, you barely saw any Federation ships at all unless they were there on Federation business. It wasn’t until 4th and 5th season you saw more starships due to the rise of the Dominion threat. And of course anytime they went through the wormhole they were cut off from everyone. I always found it odd that the Federation never made ANY alliances in the Gamma quadrant to help fight the Dominion there.
In reality all the Star Trek shows basically did the same thing and had the ships basically be alone most of the time because it just makes for more drama. There is a reason no matter what century you’re in there always seem to be just ONE ship stationed at Earth (usually the Enterprise lol) to ward off the threat that’s coming to it.
Even in both second and third season finales of Discovery, they still found a way for that ship to basically fight the villains mostly on their own, although they did have help from Enterprise in the second season finale. But last season, the ship is literally docked at Federation headquarters with a plethora of more advanced ships and YET they still figured out a way for only Discovery to fight off the Emerald Chain in the finale.
DS9 I think did it ok on some episodes but is mostly remembered for 1000 starships running at 1000 starships with Admiral’s left right and centre. You def don’t feel alone there.
VOY I think had a great concept. It’s just hard to take them seriously as “out there” and in danger when they play on Earth in the holodeck all day powered by perpetual energy machines.
Watch the new Battlestar Galactica, then watch VOY – tell me which one “feels” alone in an unexplored part of the galaxy.
Agree with all of this. TOS showed off Earth several times, just via time travel. And it basically found ways to show off Earth not just via time travel, but also all the odd ‘parallel Earths’ societies they found over and over again. It’s pretty ludicrous just how many of those things they ran into.
My guess is they didn’t show present day Earth because they probably wanted to keep some mystic but also because they just didn’t have the budget to show off a truly futuristic Earth. I point out the fact once you got to the movies where they DID have a budget, 23rd century Earth was shown in literally every film, even if just in a few scenes.
And I also agree, Enterprise visited Earth the most out of all the shows but it probably was the one that actually spent exploring the Alpha Quadrant the most out of all the shows since there was no Federation bureaucracy to deal with. Voyager explored the most out of all the shows obviously but Enterprise actual mission was about pure exploration that none of the other shows really did although they pretended to.