David's Reviews > Star Trek, Vol. 1: Godshock

** spoiler alert ** “Star Trek Volume 1: Godshock” Hardcover (IDW, 2023). Writers: Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing. Artists: Ramon Rosanas, Oleg Chudakov, Joe Eisma, Erik Tamayo. Color art Lee Loughridge. Reprints: “Star Trek #400” (“A Perfect System” story, September 2022) and Star Trek #1-6 (October 2022 to April 2023). Read: 08/19/23 to 08/21/23. Opinion: Very good. This is the start of a new ongoing “Star Trek” series featuring a combination of characters from several separate series: Captain Benjamin Sisko from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”, Data and Doctor Beverly Crusher from “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, and Tom Parris from “Star Trek: Voyager” (plus, at least for awhile, Worf, from “TNG” and “DS9”). Oh, yeah, and a certain chief engineer with a Scottish accent. Plus a couple (younger) new characters. The time frame is, I believe, 2378. Soon after the crew of the U.S.S. Voyager made it safely back to Earth in the same year, and three years after the events of the TNG film, “Star Trek: Insurrection” and the end of the “Deep Space Nine” series. Something very powerful is killing the known “god like” beings of the galaxy. (The teaser short story from the “Star Trek #400” special issue shows this happen to Gary Mitchell, James Kirk’s friend from the original series second pilot episode, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”.) The Prophets return Benjamin Sisko to his corporeal form to stop this. He goes to Captain Picard for a ship and Picard sets him up with a brand new experimental ship, the U.S.S. Theseus. He insists that Sisko take Data on as his first officer on this mission (and Dr. Crusher eagerly volunteers to go along too as Sisko’s return is a medical mystery). The others I mentioned are already part of this new crew or join up along the way. I really liked this. It’s very “comic booky” in all the right ways: the whole “crossover” element of blending characters from the separate series, and the universe threatening circumstances and powers that are much larger than life. The art (a tag team of alternating artists to keep the book on its original monthly schedule) is very appropriate for the type of story being told here. (My one real gripe is that the artist who draws the issue where Worf comes aboard apparently either cannot draw a Klingon that looks anything even remotely resembling Michael Dorn, or perhaps didn’t get the memo that it was supposed to be him. I swear, when we see him I immediately thought Sisko was meeting an entirety different Klingon character and was somewhat shocked when Sisko called him Ambassador Worf. The artists in the following issues do manage to draw him better though.) These first six issues (plus the teaser) did exactly what it should do, which is make me look forward to the next collected edition later on this year. (Worf goes on his own part way through the story, by the way, leading into a second series titled “Star Trek: Defiant”, which has its own “all star” blending of characters: Worf, Spock, Lore, and Ro Laren. That will also be getting its first collected edition soon, as well.) I gave “Godshock” four out of five stars on GoodReads.