Advance Review: An Epic Space Battle In ‘Star Trek: Voyager — Homecoming’ #4

Star Trek has always been about exploration and bettering humanity — all while exploring the human condition. If you’re looking for big drawn-out space battles, there’s another space series for that.

Every once in a while, though, Trek delves into battle to teach us lessons about ourselves while firing phasers and photon torpedoes. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Dominion War expertly showed how the series could do both and still be true to what it was.

This latest issue of Star Trek: Voyager – Homecoming falls into that same category. From cover to cover, it features a battle between Voyager and Species 8472, beautifully drawn by Angel Hernandez. It features the aliens’ attack on the remnants of a rogue Borg cube that is stranded in the species’ native fluidic space with Captain Janeway and crew caught in the middle.

You can feel the battle’s tide turn multiple times, with Voyager’s shields and ablative armor dropping quickly and then the counterattacks that take out several Species 8472 ships. And has he has done throughout this limited series, Hernandez nails the look of the familiar Voyager crew while bringing life to the monstrous aliens.

Credit writers Susan Bridges and Tilly Bridges with crafting a strong story to drive the visuals. Since it is Star Trek, the scribes know that fighting alone can’t tell the whole story. So they infuse some romance between ex-Borg Seven of Nine and one of the rescued cyborgs. And, in the spirit of Trek, Janeway refuses to let these renegade Borg be sacrificed, so she endangers her crew to save as many as possible.

That is what Star Trek is about. You don’t have to agree with her actions, but if you truly call yourself a Trekkie (or Trekker), you understand and appreciate it.

Star Trek: Voyager – Homecoming #4 will be available Wednesday in comic book stores and digital platforms from IDW.