Star Trek: Year Four #1

The Original Series Lives On

Sep 16, 2008 Lydia Ballard

• Star Trek: Year Four #1
• Part of an Ongoing Series from IDW Publishing
• Writer: David Tischman
• Pencils: Steve Conley
• Colors: Leonard O'Grady
• Letters: Robbie Robbins

Without a doubt, Star Trek is one of the most enduring media franchises of all time. The original series, created by Gene Roddenberry and starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley (as Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy, respectively) is still a favorite with millions of people even though the Star Trek universe has gone through several updated incarnations.

Every Trekkie worth their salt knows that the original series was meant to last five seasons but was cancelled prematurely by the network, ending at three. Star Trek: Year Four from IDW Publishing picks up where the television show left off and continues the adventures of the original Enterprise crew in one of the most ambitious media tie-in undertakings in recent memory. Continuing the legacy of something as big as Star Trek is no small feat.

But the real question is, can they pull it off?

Where No Man Has Gone Before...?

Star Trek: Year Four picks up immediately after the end of the show's third and final season. According to the official press release, the plot is described thusly:

Space. The final frontier. This is the voyage of the Starship Enterprise. Her five-year mission to explore strange new worlds? It continues here, with the launch ofYear Four in the Original Series' five-year mission. Boldly going where no man has gone before are writer David Tischman (Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Space Between) and artist Steve Conley (Astounding Space Thrills). Up first, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise discover the Strand, the multi-planet construct of a dead civilization, run by a brilliant genetic scientist who's obsessed with repopulating it. When Kirk discovers the scientist's secret, his creations revolt, forcing Kirk to make a hard decision and pushing the Enterprise into the crossfire! Joe Corroney will provide variant covers for the entire series.

Plot wise, it reads very much like a Star Trek episode from days of yore; that plot in practice, however? Not so much.

Tech Specs and Final Verdict

One of the things about comic books as a storytelling format is that everything about the book must be solid for it to be considered a 'good' one. You can have great writing and mediocre art or mediocre writing and fantastic art and it will still be considered decent--but bad writing and bad art are a death sentence for any new title that is released. Comic book readers are a very discriminating group and Star Trek: Year Four lacks in more ways than its virtues can possibly make up for.

David Tischman gives us a largely forgettable story. The villain is dull, the heroine moreso and the storyline depressingly boring.

What's worse, however, is the terribly cliche, utterly predictable and rather stiff dialogue. All the wit that was present in Star Trek's original series and all the chemistry between characters is gone. Nowhere is there humor or a touching moral to the story. Captain Kirk sounds like Captain Kirk, but without his best qualities. His humanity doesn't shine through--every line is there to help push plot forward. His personality is gone, leaving a commanding officer and nothing more.

Still, if the story were terrible, good art could have made it bearable. Sadly, the art is lifeless. Star Trek was famous for its outlandish sets, costumes and general cheesy 60's charm, none of which translates to the comic page through Steve Conley's pencils. Every character looks like a posed doll. There's no emotion, no movement, nothing. The backgrounds are virtually nonexistent and, though that does somewhat follow the style of the original series, it looks absolutely ridiculous in comic form. Even the colors are washed out and lack the vibrancy of the original series.

All in all, Star Trek: Year Four #1 is a wholly lackluster resurrection of the original Star Trek franchise. The first issue should really be out to dazzle us and get us hooked on the new title--it should have been a relaunch of Trek's glory days. Instead, it's like a television pilot that's going to get the show cancelled all over again.