We have seen three other formats in which the original 5-year mission of the legendary Captain James T. Kirk and crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 continued their voyages, cut short on television after only 3 years into fulfilling their Starfleet orders — novels, an animated series and the highly successful online series “Star Trek: New Voyages,” now called “Star Trek: Phase II.”
There is a successful fourth venue for those voyages to continue — in comic books!
As we mentioned in January 2007, IDW publishing announced that it was going to do the series in the comic book format and the stories will pick up right where the original Star Trek television series ended, with a chronicle of the Starship Enterprise’s untold fourth year, the company said in a press release. “Star Trek Year Four: The Enterprise Experiment” is to be co-written by the great Star Trek author and screenwriter D.C. Fontana. She bit her creative teeth with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry over 40 years ago as his assistant and has since become one of the formost authorities on that universe with several novels, some of the best TOS Trek episodes on record, movie screenplays and even some script work for James Cawley’s “Star Trek Phase II.”
For this new 5-part series IDW has also signed on veteran Star Trek artist Gordon Purcell, Terry Pallot on inks, with Derek Chester, from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and Star Trek video games, and finally, for illustrations the Sharp Bros.
This new series will include a sequel to Fontana’s celebrated episode “The Enterprise Incident,” in which Kirk famously posed as a Romulan to capture a new state-of-the-art cloaking device, according to SCI FI Wire. “In this all-new story, Federation efforts to fully adapt the cloaking device to Starfleet ships leads to an experiment gone awry, trapping Kirk and Spock on an Enterprise out of phase with space itself,” the article stated. “At the same time, Romulan forces close in on the starship, intent on claiming revenge for their stolen technology.”
References to the first two issues, in which the Klingon Empire suddenly enters the fray with its own agenda, will get a followup in this new series of comics.
The cost for the first new issue, available in April, will be $3.99 (USD).
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