Advance Review — ‘Star Trek: The Last Starship’ #9 Suffers From Poor Character Development
by Tom Smithyman
Star Trek has always walked a fine line between militarism and diplomacy.
Despite its naval ranks — not to mention its phasers and photon torpedoes — Starfleet is supposed to explore, not conquer. Those weapons are for defense only. Recognizing when to go to Red Alert and go on the attack is a skill found in only the most experienced captains.
And no one is more experienced than James T. Kirk. Even the cloned version in Star Trek: The Last Starship knows that the Federation has been pushed too far in the aftermath of the Burn, which killed trillions and left warp drive inoperable. To add to the dilemma, the Emerald Chain is also wreaking havoc across the galaxy.
Writers Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly have created these dire circumstances — and now they have precious little time to figure a way out. Publisher IDW announced last week that the series will end with issue #12. That doesn’t give the scribes much time to wrap things up. But Jim Kirk was never one for taking things slowly.
Kirk has taken over the U.S.S. Omega and relieved Captain Sato of his command. Kirk and others deemed Sato as too soft on the Emerald Chain to be effective, given the circumstances. That may be true, but we haven’t really seen it in the pages of this series. Instead, the Omega has been investigating a space station. The Emerald Chain is nowhere to be found.
And we don’t really know Sato well enough to agree or disagree with Kirk’s assessment of the situation. Sure, he’s one to jump into the center chair with little provocation, but the writers haven’t done a good enough job of fleshing out the character. Instead, they have spent too much time on forgettable secondary characters.
The bright spot of this story arc continues to be artist Hernan Gonzalez. It’s his dark illustrations that set the real tone here. Space is a scary place and danger, not hope, lies around every corner. It may not feel like Trek, but it’s effective nonetheless.
This last issue of the story arc sets up the series’ conclusion. It’s going to be Kirk versus Sato. But given Sato’s shallow character development, it’ll be difficult to root for anyone other than Kirk.
Star Trek: The Last Starship #9 — written by Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, illustrated by Hernan Gonzalez, colored by Lee Loughridge, and lettered by Clayton Cowles — will be available Wednesday in local comic book stories and on digital platforms from IDW.
Overview
Some truly great artwork is largely wasted on a story that suffers from haphazard character development. We’re meant to care about characters who simply haven’t been fleshed out enough. And with the end of the series close at hand, most of us aren’t going to invest more time in these individuals.
