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.
129: IDW Publishing, 2017–2018
When it comes to Star Trek, John Byrne’s photocomics were among the great joys of IDW’s time at bat. Byrne recombined episode images, modeling the comics after a series of 1970s digests called Star Trek Fotonovels—but one-upping them by innovatively crafting new storylines from existing images rather than merely adapting episodes. The Fotonovel homage, titled Star Trek: New Visions, ran for 22 monthly issues, plus a few one-shots. This week’s column will examine how the final batch of stories offered prequels, sequels, and tie-ins to onscreen lore.
The first few issues in this batch are primarily standalone, with few direct episode connections aside from the obvious: the reuse and manipulation of photo stills. Issue #17 sees the USS Enterprise investigating the disappearance of a team studying a frozen world, with James T. Kirk and Spock transported to a facility where a holographic guardian protects a computer-preserved civilization. The following issue shows something one might not expect to see on Star Trek: the entire Enterprise flooded, with crewmembers drowning, as the ship is engulfed in a sentient liquid.
Both tales provide beautiful visuals, but neither offers many tie-ins. A backup story in issue #18, however, calls back to “Balance of Terror” and “Shore Leave.” Pavel Chekov is promoted to lieutenant and given quarters of his own, which were previously occupied by Angela Martine-Teller, a crewmember from both episodes. It’s unknown why Angela’s quarters are available, though perhaps she has left the crew. Given her onscreen experiences—losing her husband on their wedding day, then being temporarily killed by a recreational computer—it’s no wonder she’d seek out a less deadly assignment.
In issue #20, a pan-dimensional alien isolates the crew, leaving them unable to see or hear each other, so it can study them individually and subject them to disturbing visions. Kirk experiences visits from Edith Keeler (“The City on the Edge of Forever”), Commander Kang (“Day of the Dove”), and his Gorn adversary (“Arena”), but the illogic of the situation—particularly Kang killing Edith in an Enterprise hallway—enables him to see through the illusions.
A backup tale in that issue recalls “The Practical Joker,” an Animated Series episode that introduced holodeck technology on Kirk’s Enterprise before its live-action debut on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Starfleet installs holo-pods, which employ transporters and holograms to create entertainment diversions. It’s not clear how that works… to where, exactly, do the pods transport users? Naturally, McCoy opts not to use the new tech once he learns it scrambles his molecules for fun. (I probably wouldn’t either. I’m just a plain ol’ country columnist, Jim.)
The penultimate issue, #21, is split into two stories, each spanning half the page count. The first, a sequel to “Errand of Mercy,” features Commander Kor, Star Trek’s go-to alien baddie. Kor tends to come back more often than acne on a teenage face, and he and Kirk are here captured by the warlike Vrotii, who discourage prisoners from escaping by making them believe chips implanted in their hearts will explode if they separate. Despite a desire to kill each other, the two men thus cooperate to steal a Vrotii vessel.
Byrne adeptly channels actor John Colicos’s speech patterns, and he employs a clever technique in depicting the Klingon, who looks like he did in “Errand of Mercy,” but with a hint of the cranial ridges present in Deep Space Nine’s “Blood Oath.” This implies Kor’s body has begun to shed the Augment virus that, according to Enterprise’s “Affliction” and “Divergence,” had eliminated Klingon head bumps until the era of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Discovery notwithstanding). Given Kor’s cooperation with Kirk, McCoy ponders whether the Organians were correct when they’d predicted the Empire and Federation would become friends. As The Next Generation demonstrated, they were indeed.
The second tale mines Star Trek’s two pilots, “The Cage” and “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” During Christopher Pike’s tenure as captain, the Enterprise finds something astounding: a time-displaced explorer from 1901, adrift in a spacesuit. Among Pike’s crew are characters from “The Cage” (Spock, Number One, and Garison), along with Lee Kelso and Mark Piper from “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” and Montgomery Scott. The pilots had utilized sets and uniforms that differed from those later used on the weekly show, enabling Byrne to mix and match the crew, effectively bridging the captaincies of Pike and Kirk. Strange New Worlds has since rendered all of this apocryphal, but hey, such is the nature of licensed fiction. It’s still a fantastic read.
In a neat twist, the time-displaced scientist, Cavor, had inspired H.G. Wells’ The First Men in the Moon, which featured a same-named protagonist. Apparently, Wells had known this Cavor and had embellished his exploits when writing the novel. By story’s end, Cavor sets out to explore this future century in a one-man vessel, and Scotty envies him, deeming it “a bonnie way t’end out me days.” This, of course, presages the engineer’s own time-displacement in The Next Generation’s “Relics.”
Finally, issue #22 closes out New Visions with simultaneous sequels to “Space Seed,” “The City on the Edge of Forever,” “Who Mourns for Adonais?” and “Assignment: Earth,” by combining two staple Trek tropes: time travel and alternate universes—both of which Byrne frequently employs in his writing. The Enterprise visits the Guardian of Forever’s planet, where a science team studies the portal. The animated “Yesteryear” had also shown scientists studying the Guardian; different personnel populate each story, though one can assume the cartoon’s historians, Grey and Aleek-Om, are likely attached to this team.
Among the scientists is an Arcadian named Tahn Alu, one of the few times a comic has featured that species, introduced in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and also appearing in Lower Decks’ “An Embarrassment of Dooplers.” In addition, Byrne created the character of Commander Willis Keloway using images of actor Jason Evers, who portrayed Rael in the episode “Wink of an Eye.”
When the time stream is altered, Kirk and Spock travel back to the 21st century but end up in a reality in which the Eugenics Wars never occurred. Instead of the war-torn society they expect, they land in a metropolitan U.S. city that looks much like what one would see today. That reality’s Gary Seven helps them thwart sub-dimensional entities with ill intent, after which they return to their own universe. Byrne has utilized Seven often, so it’s fitting that his final work for IDW’s Star Trek line would once again spotlight the time-traveling Supervisor 194 and his shapeshifting cat, Isis.
In addition to Byrne’s Assignment: Earth miniseries, the writer had utilized Seven, Isis, and their human companion Roberta Lincoln in Star Trek: Crew, in Leonard McCoy, Frontier Doctor, and in a prior issue of New Visions. This time, it isn’t the Seven with whom we’re familiar—he’s from the other reality, and he’s never met Kirk and Spock since “Assignment: Earth” hasn’t happened. Lincoln is nowhere to be seen (it’s sad to think they may not have met in this iteration), and Gary now has a Beta 12 computer that is presumably just as snobby as its Beta 5 predecessor.
Along with Seven and Isis, this issue features the return of Carolyn Palamas (Scotty’s lover from “Who Mourns for Adonais?”), assigned to the orbital station studying the Guardian. She has her toddler with her, making this a sequel as well to New Visions #11, in which Palamas had learned she was pregnant with Apollo’s son. Carolyn chose to leave the Enterprise and Scotty after that ordeal, and she and her child now live on the station. The boy is exceptionally smart (naturally, given his half-Olympian nature). One might wonder how smart Palamas is, though, as she has given an immature demigod access to a galactic time portal. Be that as it may, she and Scotty rekindle their fling when the engineer takes a few weeks off to stay with her.
In 2019, IDW collected the final issues in the trade paperback Star Trek: New Visions Volume 8. Exclusive to that edition was a fourth-wall-dropping story from John Byrne… starring John Byrne! While trying vainly to come up with new ideas for IDW editor Chris Ryall, Byrne falls asleep and dreams of helping the Enterprise avoid destruction by a Klingon-Romulan fleet. Having penned two dozen issues of New Visions, only Byrne can help Kirk and crew get out of this impossible scenario.
However, the scribe awakens before solving the problem, and when McCoy materializes a moment later in his living room, Byrne realizes it hadn’t been a dream—it had actually happened. Amusingly, the good doctor says he’d left his communicator behind in Byrne’s home, just as he’d done in “A Piece of the Action,” and he sheepishly comments, “Seems like I do that a lot.” Thankfully, Byrne is not a 1920s Chicago gangster mimic. At least, I presume he’s not. I’ve never met the man.
That’s it for the photocomics. What a wild ride. Next week, this column will explore some equally innovative tales published in a pair of Waypoint Specials and in the one-shot Star Trek: Deviations. 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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