Advance Review — ‘Star Trek: Resurgence’ TPB Is Anything But

With the success of new streaming series like Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Star Trek has seen a resurgence in the last few years. Oddly enough, the comic book series Star Trek: Resurgence has nothing to do with it.

Perhaps it’s too much to ask for a comic book based on a video game to be good. Based on the reviews for the game though, it seems to be much more successful than its printed counterpart. It’s a pity because the story starts off well enough, has a decent ending and features some minor characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation. But the middle is so poorly thought out and executed that it ruins the entire project.

Publisher IDW has collected the limited series written by Andrew Grant and Dan Martin and illustrated by Josh Hood into a trade paperback.

Set on a new ship – the USS Resolute – with mostly new characters, Resurgence tells the story of a stealth Starfleet mission to rescue a missing scientist. The issue with the story begins thanks to a painstaking introduction of characters we really don’t care much about. We’ve been through so many bridge crews over the past few years, that the Resolute’s just don’t seem that exciting. Then the captain starts acting out of character for a Trek commander. Unfortunately, it’s not due to mind control, but rather some very questionable writing.

Hood provides some of the book’s few lone bright spots. He nails the look of Next-Gen era starships and paints the villainous Talarians – particularly their melted-face commander – as menacing foes. But then other pages and panels seem rushed, leaving us to try to figure out who these characters are. In one panel, it’s impossible to tell whether one of the crewmen is an alien or just an ugly human.

So if you’re looking to get a consistent quality story around Resurgence, stick to the video game.

Star Trek: Resurgence TPB will be available for purchase on September 13, 2023.