DC and Malibu lost their presumably lucrative licenses to publish Star Trek comics in 1996, with Marvel pairing with Paramount on a line of comic books which were released under the studio’s own imprint, Paramount Comics.

Marvel had owned Malibu for a few years at that point, and in practice little really changed; current series were relaunched under the Paramount Comics banner, and others were freshly launched, with Star Trek: Untold Voyages being one of them.

Star Trek: Untold Voyages was a limited, five issue series which covered a gap in Trek history for its stories; namely, the immediate aftermath of the V’ger crisis, covered in 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture (which I’m not the biggest fan of, as you’ll know if you’ve read my review). By the end of the film, it feels as if Kirk’s temporary reassignment to once more become the Captain of the starship Enterprise may be a longer term thing; there’s a time skip of just over a decade between the first and second movies, however, which leaves fertile ground for stories to fill in the gaps.

In the first issue of Untold Voyages, readers are given a good summary of each main character’s current status quo, along with a breakdown of the main story beats from Star Trek: The Motion Picture; we’re then thrown straight into the action with a brief recreation of the final moments of the film, before continuing on the journey alongside the Enterprise crew.

Klingons are on their way to a summit for Starfleet to explain what happened to three of their ships (answer: V’ger happened), and have a run-in with the Enterprise. Immediately hostile towards our heroes, the Klingons decide to break their temporary truce with Starfleet to take down the souped up Enterprise, leaving Kirk to come up with a suitable plan to protect the crew and their ship.

It’s great stuff, and despite bearing the Marvel/Paramount banner, it feels exactly like the Malibu Star Trek comics in both style and execution. The art is fantastic; just about everyone (except Chekhov) is immediately recognisable without feeling photo referenced, and penciller Mike Collins even makes the hideous Starfleet disco uniforms look good (pretty much proving that the clothing designs in the film were perfectly fine, if only they hadn’t looked so 70s in their cut).

Writer Glenn Greenberg does a great job of making the story feel like a natural continuation of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and even uses the story to believably cement Kirk’s place as the Enterprise captain once more, alongside all of the other familiar faces in the crew. He totally gets the voice of each character too, perfectly nailing their quirks and relationships to each other.

I’ve long maintained that the story at the heart of Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a good one, just let down by being extended to feature length and with too much emphasis placed on its effects. Untold Voyages is great at making The Motion Picture feel like a natural starting point for more action based stories, and while that may clash somewhat with the often slower and more thoughtful nature of a lot of Star Trek, it’s a good fit for the comic book medium.

Shout out to the wonderful Dave’s Comics in Brighton, UK, where I picked up this issue of Star Trek: Untold Voyages.

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