An ongoing discussion of how the comics provide prequels, sequels, and tie-ins to the Star Trek episodes and films, soon to be a book from BearManor Media. Click here to view an archive of this article series.
107: IDW Publishing, 2014
When WildStorm Comics published Star Trek: All of Me more than 20 years ago, writers Tony Isabella and Bob Ingersoll included a cameo from Captain Jane T. Kirk, who was said to be James T. Kirk’s female counterpart from another universe. That claim turned out to be false, as she’d been created by an unscrupulous scientist and an Islamic djinn, which is not the wackiest thing ever to happen in a Star Trek comic.
Thus was the end of Ms. Kirk’s all-too-brief tenure in the Star Trek universe… until 2014, when writer Mike Johnson introduced another Jane T. Kirk—T. for Tiberia—in his ongoing comic set in the Kelvin timeline of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek films. Unlike WildStorm’s Jane, this one really was from an alternate reality. This week, we’ll examine that two-part storyline along with two others, presented in issues #29–34. Illustrated by Yasmin Liang, Erfan Fajar, Yulian Ardhi, Joe Corroney, Victor Moya, and Rob Doan, these six issues featured covers from Corroney, Fajar, Cat Staggs, Garry Gastonny, and Craig Rousseau.
This Jane Kirk and her crew, featured in issues #29–30, hail from a universe in which everyone’s gender is reversed. In that dimension, Nero’s destruction of the USS Kelvin had resulted in the death of not Kirk’s father, but her mother, who’d died under the same heroic circumstances as Jim’s had in Abrams’ reality. This Nero’s gender is not specified, but it’s safe to assume the Romulan was female, given that a flashback to Khan Noonien Singh’s Qo’noS battle in Star Trek Into Darkness is retold with Khan as a woman (a white woman, no doubt portrayed by Beatrice Cumberbatch).
This reality’s Enterprise officers—the other-gendered counterparts of Abrams’ versions—include a female Spock, as well as Lea McCoy, Marjorie Scott, Nnamdi Uhuro, Pavlovna Chekov, Hikari Sulu, Chris Chapel, Jason Rand, Carl Marcus, and even Keensera. The story is innovatively told from the perspective of the gender-reversed officers, with the Chris Pine crowd not showing up until the end of part one. As Jane’s crew investigates a quantum storm caused by the temporal entanglement of infinite realities, they come face to face with their Kelvin timeline doubles, and the two crews must band together to return to their respective homes.
Regrettably, this “opposite gender” aspect has not aged well. Why? For the same reason as with Marvel’s Star Trek: Voyager #14–15: because there is no such thing as an “opposite” gender. Human sexuality and gender represent a spectrum—we’re not all just male or female. As with Marvel’s gender-centric Voyager tale, Johnson’s script entirely overlooks the LGBTQ community.
Consider, for instance: How would transgender or intersex individuals appear in that reality? How about those who identify as agender, bigender, omnigender, genderfluid, or other nonbinary classifications? What would the “opposites” of these genders be? On the surface, it is a fun tale, but from a gender-identity perspective, it’s problematic. Still, I must admit I’m intrigued by the idea of a reimagined “Turnabout Intruder” featuring Jane T. Kirk being possessed by the mind of (wait for it) Doctor Lester Janice. I almost wish someone would write that story.
Despite some inadvertent gender insensitivity, there are moments in this arc sure to bring a smile to a reader’s face. As the anomaly expands, for instance, other realities become involved in the mix as well, with the rift pulling in the evil James Kirk from the mirror universe’s ISS Enterprise (“Mirror, Mirror”). This offers the artist a rare opportunity to draw William Shatner’s Kirk alongside Chris Pine’s take on the captain, and to feature established characters from outside the Abramsverse.
Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Geordi La Forge drops in from the prime timeline, implying a temporal aspect to the quantum storm in addition to its dimensional nature, though this isn’t explored beyond a single, humorous panel. La Forge briefly encounters Marjorie Scott but has no interest in sticking around to converse with her since he just wants to get back to his engines, perhaps referencing Geordi’s rather brusque dismissal of Montgomery Scott in The Next Generation’s “Relics.”
The most intriguing doppelgängers hail from a reality in which Starfleet ships are crewed by Klingons—and not those who look like Worf, mind you. These Klingons resemble a cross between those introduced in Star Trek Into Darkness and the more recent iteration on Star Trek: Discovery, which hadn’t yet aired at the time of the comic’s release. It would be fascinating to learn more about this Klingon-centric Starfleet. Are they all Klingons, or only these three officers? Is there a token human officer analogous to Worf? Alas, readers may never know.
A character introduced in Star Trek Into Darkness takes center stage in issues #31–32, which provides a backstory for the cybernetic officer known as 0718. The character was portrayed in the movie by muscular model Joseph Gatt, which is why early set reports had indicated he’d be called GATT2000 or GATT5000. Apparently, 0718 (so named since he was the 718th crewmember, which is almost double the prime crew complement) wasn’t just a crewmember aboard the Enterprise. He was the Enterprise.
As readers learn through 0718’s narration, the starship had discovered a sentient spheroid, contact with which had caused the starship’s computer to gain sentience. The self-aware Enterprise mind had then formed itself a humanoid avatar using a sickbay regeneration unit so it could better interact with the crew. The grisly depiction of this formation recalls Jonathan Osterman’s attempts to reconstitute his body in Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Zack Snyder’s film adaptation of same, culminating in Jon becoming Doctor Manhattan.
The spheroid, however, had perceived the crew as contaminants and had attempted to eradicate them so the ship’s sentience could thrive. Unable to stop it from doing so, the avatar had sacrificed itself to sever the connection between starship and planet. Later on, Spock had managed to reboot the avatar as a being separate from the Enterprise, after which he’d joined the crew as a science officer. Thus, 0718 had become Starfleet’s only humanoid mainframe interface, since his body had been designed to interact with starship systems at the speed of thought—which is such an intriguing concept with a great deal of story potential, so it’s too bad Gatt didn’t return in Star Trek Beyond.
If the entity’s backstory sounds familiar, it’s because the two-parter riffs on Star Trek: The Motion Picture. In both tales, the Enterprise encounters a machine intelligence (V’Ger vs. the spheroid) that misperceives its crew as inhibiting starship functions (deeming them “carbon-based units” vs. “contaminants”). A space vessel in each telling (the Voyager 6 vs. the Enterprise) attains sapience due to contact with a machine planet. A bald avatar (the Ilia probe vs. 0718) is created, which walks among the crew and embraces its humanity. Each avatar is an impressive physical specimen who shows up naked, and both tales end with an individual (Will Decker vs. 0718) self-sacrificing for the greater good, only to evolve into something more and embark on a human adventure.
Issues #33–34 contain no sequels or prequels to onscreen Star Trek, though one could argue the story constitutes a prequel to the entire Abrams trilogy since it begins in 1970, with NASA astronaut Steve Cory being chosen for a secret mission aboard Apollo X, which launches into deep space from the dark side of Earth’s moon. Cory’s mission is supposed to bring him home again, but instead he crashes on a far world. This is never explained, as a 1970s NASA spacecraft could not have reached a distant star after only 300 years (at least Voyager 6 had the advantage of falling into a black hole and, according to some sources, encountering the Borg).
The Enterprise finds the wreckage three centuries later, and the landing party comes under attack by a vicious predator who turns out to be Cory, transformed into a beast by the planet’s atmosphere. The astronaut’s story is a tragic one, and since the Kelvin timeline was created by Nero’s temporal incursion, it’s quite possible the same thing happened to him in the prime timeline. Perhaps Shatner’s Kirk discovered his crash site in some adventure fans never got to see. Or maybe it was Jane Kirk.
Next week, we’ll visit yet another universe, one in which Harlan Ellison’s script for the immortal classic “The City on the Edge of Forever” played out as he’d originally written it. We’ll also dissect Flesh and Stone, one of the few IDW titles ever to utilize characters from Star Trek: Enterprise. See you then.
Looking for more information about Star Trek comics? Check out these resources:
- My ongoing column for Titan Books’ Star Trek Explorer magazine
- The Complete Star Trek Comics Index, curated by yours truly
- The Star Trek Comics Checklist, by Mark Martinez
- The Wixiban Star Trek Collectables Portal, by Colin Merry
- New Life and New Civilizations: Exploring Star Trek Comics, by Joseph F. Berenato (Sequart, 2014)
- Star Trek: A Comics History, by Alan J. Porter (Hermes Press, 2009)
- The Star Trek Comics Weekly page on Facebook
Rich Handley has written, co-written, co-edited, or contributed to dozens of books, both fiction and non-fiction, about Planet of the Apes, Watchmen, Back to the Future, Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Hellblazer, Swamp Thing, Stargate, Dark Shadows, The X-Files, Twin Peaks, Red Dwarf, Blade Runner, Doctor Who, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Batman, the Joker, classic monsters, and more. He has also been a magazine writer and editor for nearly three decades. Rich edited Eaglemoss’s Star Trek Graphic Novel Collection, and he currently writes articles for Titan’s Star Trek Explorer magazine, as well as books for an as-yet-unannounced role-playing game. Learn more about Rich and his work at richhandley.com.
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