Star Trek Week: Boldly Going Into Other Universes — Our Favorite ‘Star Trek’ Crossovers
by Tony Thornley
Our celebration of the 60th anniversary of Star Trek continues as we go back and take a look at some of our favorite crossovers. And trust us, there’s some crazy ones.
After years of the Star Trek universe being its own thing, in the 1990s, Marvel Comics got the license back from their Distinguished Competition, and immediately crossed over with their biggest property. That’s opened the floodgates into some truly fantastic — and crazy — crossovers.
So before we get into our favorites, we do have to acknowledge how vast the crossovers are. Beside these below, Trek has crossed over with the Planet of the Apes, Transformers, Green Lantern, and, in one particular story, every other property that IDW had licensed at the time except My Little Pony (just go Google IDW’s Infestation). But which were our favorites?
Star Trek/X-Men
Yeah, this might seem like one of the weirder entries, but the craziest thing about this crossover is that it happened three times. Starting with 1996’s Star Trek/X-Men one-shot and followed by another one-shot Star Trek The Next Generation/X-Men: Second Contact and novel Star Trek The Next Generation/X-Men: Planet X, Marvel’s Merry Mutants and the crews of the Enterprise and Enterprise-D faced the likes of Gary Mitchell, the Shi’Ar Empire, Kang the Conqueror, and Q. Oh, and racism.
They’re fun, they’re weird, and they strain the concept of a crossover, but they’re memorable as hell as well, and that makes it all worth it.
Oh and Planet X predicted Patrick Stewart would play Charles Xavier about a year before he was actually cast.
Star Trek/ Legion Of Superheroes
Of the two DC Comics/IDW crossovers, Trek/Legion by Chris Robinson, Phillip Moy, and cover artist Phil Jimenez is by far the better one. By taking the crew of the Enterprise and putting them face-to-face with pop culture’s other ultimate Utopian science fiction franchise, we got an incredibly fun meeting between the two, which share so many similarities and so many differences.
Trek/Legion also supposed that the DC Universe and the Trek universe were actually twin divergent timelines that were split based on whether Vandal Savage chose good or evil. Then they were merged, leaving the crew of the Enterprise and the Legionnaires to split their worlds and save the day.
Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who — Assimilation Squared
David & Scott Tipton, Tony Lee and JK Woodard created one of the grand-daddies of science fiction crossovers, as the Eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory crash into the Enterprise-D. What followed was an eight-issue epic involving the Doctor teaming with Picard and the crew to save the galaxy after the Cybermen crossed universal borders and allied with the Borg.
The story could have spiraled out of control, especially given its length, and basically thrown every bit of figurative spaghetti at the wall to see what would stick. Instead, the creative team kept it tight and focused on the crew’s interaction with Eleven and the Ponds, and what the Cyber-Borg alliance could mean. Although, they also revealed that this story wasn’t the Federation’s first brush with the TARDIS, as Kirk and crew also had an adventure with the Fourth Doctor.
It’s epic and exactly what a crossover should be, indulging the best of both franchises, and showing why they’re great.
Star Trek/Star Wars
Hah! Just kidding. Never happened. Probably never will. But hey … maybe, one day the last shark to be jumped will be ready…
