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.
112: Online Webstrip, 2013–Present
This column has primarily discussed licensed comics, but every now and then we’ve explored stories produced without official authorization. Unlicensed stories vary in quality, and those worth reading are the ones from writers and artists with a passion for the material. This week’s column will examine one such venture. Scripted and illustrated by Mark Farinas, with a few storylines cowritten by Ryan T. Riddle, Star Trek—The Webcomic debuted in March 2013 and has been running steadily ever since. For the purposes of this column, which focuses on prequels, sequels, and tie-ins to onscreen Star Trek, the strips are a treasure trove.
Years ago, Farinas created the fan film Klingon Propaganda to demonstrate the viability of a Star Trek animated series, for which he wrote several scripts. That show, had it been produced, would have featured a few recurring characters but no consistent cast. Nothing came of the project, and so his scripts remained untouched for seven years until Farinas turned them into the serialized webcomic. He also created a video guide to Star Trek onomatopoeia that gets funnier with every viewing.
As Farinas explained at his website, he considers The Original Series “the Constitution,” with other Star Trek shows, the films, and licensed literature as “local statutes” he’s free to follow or ignore. In the Star Trek multiverse, the strips represent a reality in which the history of the Federation and its enemies sometimes diverges from established canon. Intriguingly, Farinas treats Gene Roddenberry’s pilots Genesis II, Planet Earth, and The Questor Tapes as Star Trek prehistory, making The Webcomic a unique approach to the franchise—but in true Trek fashion, it’s still unafraid of tackling societal and ethical issues head-on.
Some storylines are standalone, while others delve deeply into episode and film continuity. The first arc, “No Good Deed,” revolves around the Earth-Romulan War, cited in the episode “Balance of Terror.” The story is set in 2161, with Captain Kyle Madison of the USS Stalwart suffering battle fatigue over the massive losses on both sides of the conflict. Madison has grown wary of war, and when his starship finds a disabled Romulan vessel, he renders assistance—for which he’s jailed as a sympathizer.
The events culminate in the death of Commander Stiles, an ancestor of the Enterprise’s Lieutenant Stiles from “Balance of Terror.” According to the comic, the past Stiles died after her body was either incinerated or sucked out a hull breach. The United Earth Defense Force oversees the war effort, which is fascinating since Star Trek: Discovery would introduce a governing body by that same name in “People of Earth.”
The subsequent arc, “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” is a sequel to “The Doomsday Machine,” offering commentary on the morality of weapons research. A team of Vulcan scientists studies the deactivated Planet Killer to create a smaller such device, but upon realizing the death toll that could result from their work, they have a crisis of conscience and arrange for its theft and destruction. The lead researcher hires pirate captain Quetzal Brody to help her, and Brody pays Harry Mudd to procure phasers for the mission. The rogue returns a few storylines later, which we’ll get to in a moment.
There are tie-ins aplenty here. Brody mentions a Dimorusian chipmunk, referencing the “rodent things on Dimorus” that attacked Gary Mitchell (“Where No Man Has Gone Before”), which DC Comics alternately dubbed a Dimorian water rat. Her crew smuggles artifacts off Altair VI, which inaugurated a new president in “Amok Time.” Mudd’s colleague obtains the phasers for him by killing their owners on Argelius (“Wolf in the Fold”), and in a shoutout to The Animated Series’ “The Jihad,” Mudd demonstrates the weapons’ effectiveness by destroying a Skorr statue made of indurite.
Storyline #3, “Peace in Our Time,” stars Starfleet officer Jin Mirai, whose adventures continue in a later arc. While testing time-travel technology, Mirai’s ship collides with a satellite and crashes on Earth in 2005, where future visitors from the Museum of Ancient Technology abduct Jin and bring her to their era (it’s unclear when that is, as a timeline at The Webcomic’s website specifies 2986, yet an in-story caption mentions the 31st century). The abductors resemble the Pax, featured in Genesis II, Planet Earth, and the non-Roddenberry follow-up Strange New World (not the Star Trek series Strange New Worlds), providing a clever tie-in with those rejected pilot films.
War protestor Lydia Bukin, an ex-soldier who’d accidentally killed children while searching for Khan Noonien Singh during the Eugenics Wars (“Space Seed”), finds Mirai’s ship. She then uses Jin’s weapon and transporter to assassinate the Vice President, as the protestors have deemed President Cartwright a war criminal. The tragic parallel to the innocent casualties of modern-day warfare are all too clear.
Readers might assume the politician to be an ancestor of the treasonous admiralfrom Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, though this Cartwright primarily pays homage to the TV Western Bonanza, with the President resembling actor Lorne Greene. Bukin calls him a cowboy, and his guards are named Hoss and Joe, recalling Greene’s sons on Bonanza. That, of course, doesn’t preclude his also being related to the admiral. They could simply be a multiracial lineage of fascist warmongers.
The fourth arc, “Basis of Proof,” brings back Number One from “The Cage” and “The Menagerie,” who has been promoted to captain of the USS Hood following her predecessor’s demise. Her name here is Isadora Barrett, after Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, though modern-day Star Trek shows have officially christened her Una Chin-Riley. The Hood pursues a vessel that attacked a Federation science outpost, but an explosion leaves the starship crippled, and several dissatisfied officers disobey orders to destroy a ghost ship they can’t prove exists. Barrett’s crew features species introduced in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, including Zaranites and Deltans.
It’s the fifth arc, “Time’s Refuge,” that provides the most ambitious sequel, as it takes a scathing look at governmental hypocrisy by revisiting “By Any Other Name.” In that episode, Jim Kirk faced the extragalactic Kelvans, whose home galaxy Andromeda was becoming uninhabitable due to radiation. Five Kelvans—Rojan, Tomar, Kelinda, Hanar, and Drea—commandeered the Enterprise, but then accepted Kirk’s offer of friendship, and a robotic envoy was dispatched to their dying empire by the episode’s conclusion, offering peace overtures.
The Kelvans’ fate has never been revealed onscreen, though Worf mentioned having fought a Kelvan in Deep Space Nine’s “Time’s Orphan,” implying the aliens made it to the Milky Way. “Time’s Refuge” sees 500 billion refugees showing up in the 29th century, their ships crippled by the galactic energy barrier. This is where the hypocrisy kicks in, as the Federation gives them menial jobs but denies them citizenship. They become a badly mistreated underclass, like Alien Nation’s Tenctonese, so Jin Mirai helps them alter history by warning the fleet about the barrier’s existence. This results in a new timeline in which Kelvans not only are treated fairly but are honored with a pride parade—a parallel to present-day gay-pride parades.
Before Discovery introduced multiple LGBTQ characters, the franchise often faltered when it came to representation. But Farinas’s stories feature many queer characters and suggest future citizens will be pansexual—and quite horny, pursuing plenty of sex of all varieties. The population receives neurosynaptic implants, for example, and during the procedure their minds are distracted with stimulating simulations, such as romantic encounters. The available partners are quite diverse and include a Ferengi, a Horta (“The Devil in the Dark”), a Cheronian (“Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”), a Binar pair (“11001001”), and even a Phylosian (“The Infinite Vulcan” and “The Time Trap”). It sounds fun, sure, but sex with an acid-spewing rock is not something I’d ever advise.
The strip shines a light on how far mankind still needs to go in terms of acceptance and representation. It’s an important message at a time when the LGBTQ community faces hatred from many sides, and it’s one that Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds, and the J.J. Abrams films have all embraced. One scene might raise a few eyebrows, as “Time’s Refuge” implies Jim Kirk and Gary Mitchell were lovers; although neither man’s surname is mentioned, Gary is drawn to resemble actor Gary Lockwood as the two relax in bed. (So you’d think he’d know Jim’s middle initial isn’t “R.”)
Farinas presents a utopian 31st-century Federation that has since been negated by Discovery’s 32nd-century third season, which had yet to air when this storyline was released. Still, the webstrip constitutes an alternate reality—or many realities, as this arc’s conclusion changes the outcomes of multiple episodes—so one can easily enjoy it without worrying about continuity. Be that as it may, “Time’s Refuge” features a ton of callbacks, with future Federation citizens including not only Ferengi, but a Phylosian, a Talosian (“The Cage”), and a Vendorian (“The Survivor”), species that have all returned on the modern shows as well.
In the final panels, Mirai’s abductors steal artifacts from throughout the centuries, altering history in enormous—and often hilarious—ways. Gary Seven (“Assignment: Earth”) finds his servo missing and is thus unable to rewire the nuclear missile, no doubt leading to mankind destroying itself. Flint (“Requiem for Methuselah”) creates Rayna 617 as his latest android companion, but the time travelers help her escape a life of sex slavery, leaving Flint frustrated. And DaiMon Bok (The Next Generation’s “The Battle”) is arrested before carrying out his headache-inducing revenge plot against Jean-Luc Picard, after the Pax-like travelers steal his thought maker.
The future travelers exhibit a fascination with computer games, providing even more callbacks. They steal the Minos weapons systems, including the Echo Papa 607 and the holographic pitchman (“The Arsenal of Freedom”), as well as the addictive gaming system Wesley Crusher plays in “The Game.” Amusingly, Sirna Kolrami (“Peak Performance”) realizes he’s sick of Strategema and gives them his game voluntarily. They also abscond with Dr. Nichols’ keyboard before Scotty can give him the transparent aluminum formula (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home), along with a handheld computer from Captain Styles’ quarters (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock). A collection of sadomasochistic sex toys hangs on Styles’ wall, befitting his onscreen riding crop affectation.
Harry Mudd returns in “Mudd Slide,” in which the scoundrel awakens aboard a colony ship and claims to be space trader “Isaak Ozimov” (if you need that literary allusion explained, please hand in your geek card at the door). When some of the colonists fall ill, he fosters bigotry to play the infected against the uninfected, never realizing he himself has been manipulated by a far-right genocidal bigot.
“Mudd Slide” portrays Harry as a Donald Trump analogue, satirizing his amorality, his tactic of enraging identity politics for political gain, his history of blatant misogyny, and his status as someone both string-pulling and string-pulled. The story features the silly humor one would expect from a Mudd tale, while simultaneously spotlighting how opportunists and conmen profit from suffering, and how easily the manipulated masses will embrace racism and fear. IDW’s Star Trek: Year Five did something remarkably similar with Mudd, which we’ll discuss in the coming months.
Storyline #7, “The Word of God,” continues this theme, as an onslaught of refugees from Trova II causes many Federation worlds to embrace xenophobia, mirroring the anti-immigrant and anti-refugee attitudes that have grown prevalent in the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere. This storyline also introduces the first New Human to attain the rank of captain.
As revealed in Roddenberry’s novelization of The Motion Picture, as well as in the novel Triangle by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath, the New Human movement saw higher-evolved humans living in peace, striving to better themselves, and developing telepathic and extrasensory abilities. This led to group minds and enhanced intelligence, but it made New Humans unsuitable for space exploration since encounters with aliens proved uncomfortable. In this story, Afshar represents the next generation of New Human evolution, as his kind have learned to adjust to life among the stars.
The brief but imaginative eighth arc, “The Motion Picture Redux,” reimagines the film’s conclusion. V’Ger merges with Kirk and Spock instead of Will Decker and Ilia, as they choose to explore the universe as t’hy’la rather than returning to unfulfilling lives on Earth and Vulcan. The Vulcan term, meaning “friend,” “brother,” and “lover,” was introduced in the film’s novelization and was central to the final issue of Marvel’s first Star Trek line. Stephen Collins’ likeness as Decker is here replaced with that of actor Glynn Turman, possibly in reaction to Collins’ highly publicized 2014 sex scandal.
V’Ger releases Ilia’s mind before vanishing, enabling her to return to duty in the body of her android avatar. Lieutenant Xon serves as science officer, per the intent of the aborted TV revival Star Trek: Phase II. In addition, the V’Ger threat interrupts not Spock’s attainment of Kolinahr, but rather Leonard McCoy’s trip to New Fabrina. According to several novels, the Fabrini people of the worldship Yonada (“For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky”) chose this planet as their new homeworld, and McCoy sometimes travels there to be with his wife Natira. New Fabrina was name-checked in The Next Generation’s “Inheritance,” in fact, on an Okudagram display.
As of this article’s writing, the ninth arc, “Red Meat,” is the last one published to date. This tale focuses on Vu Troung, the security chief of the USS Potemkin, who suffers disturbing nightmares due to a suppressed traumatic memory and thus has trouble carrying out his job. After a neural neutralizer (“Dagger of the Mind”) fails to improve his mental health, his Orion boyfriend Lar helps Vu go AWOL so they can return to the distant station where he’d been captured and tortured, in the hope of gaining insight into what happened to him there.
This storyline, set at Starbase 11 (“Court Martial” and “The Menagerie”), features the return of Lieutenant Shea, from “By Any Other Name,” who attends redshirt therapy with Troung to deal with the trauma of the Kelvans having turned him and Leslie Thompson into cuboctahedrons. It also shows a Tiburonian (Doctor Sevrin’s species in “The Way to Eden”) in Starfleet, while female Catullans (Tongo Rad’s species in that same episode) serve in Starfleet in storylines #6 and #9. That’s one of the joys of Star Trek—The Webcomic: as with Lower Decks, there are callbacks around every corner, even to some of the franchise’s silliest moments.
The allusions are not just to Star Trek, however. Dylan Hunt has an amusing cameo in the likeness of actor Alex Cord, who’d portrayed him in Genesis II (John Saxon and Kevin Sorbo played other versions of the character in Planet Earth, Strange New World, and Andromeda). The Questor Tapes’ titular android appears as well, alongside a Soong-model android, as does the classic Spock helmet toy, recently featured on Lower Decks.
One storyline contains visual nods to Forbidden Planet, a film that majorly influenced Star Trek’s development in terms of spaceship design, the characterization of the captain and doctor, the focus on space exploration, the repurposing of a William Shakespeare play’s premise, and the fact that it took itself seriously when a lot of science fiction in that era did not. Reviewers often note how Lower Decks owes a lot to The Next Generation, but when it comes to Easter eggs, perhaps it mirrors The Webcomic, too.
Star Trek—The Webcomic’s nine storylines to date spanned around 700 installments. For context, that’s half the number of Trek strips produced by the L.A. Times Syndicate—but The Webcomic is an independent project, so that level of output is impressive. The stories are intelligent, witty, and absorbing, and though the series is unlicensed, it merits discussion due to its longevity and professional quality. Plus, how many other comics can you name that include QR codes to provide musical accompaniment? IDW, take note: if any fan-made comic has ever deserved print publication, it would be this one.
Next time, the Enterprise crew once again encounters Spandex-clad superheroes as we explore IDW’s Star Trek/Green Lantern: The Spectrum War. In brightest day, in blackest night, they’ll meet right here on the final frontier.
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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