A new artist, Hernan Gonzalez, brings an entirely new, more realistic aesthetic to Star Trek: The Last Starship in this seventh issue.

Though all hope seems lost for Sato, Kirk and their remaining crew, as Starfleet loses hundreds of worlds to the Emerald Chain, an intercepted message may be the key to the universe’s survival.

While there’s nothing wrong with exploring darker themes in the usually optimistic Star Trek universe, The Last Starship seems hellbent on making everything as dark and gloomy as possible. It’s a bit exhausting, to be honest; even the colourful retro aesthetic of the prior issues loses out to an oppressively dark look here.

I’m really not keen on big chunks of exposition continuing to be delivered in text form either; it feels like a lazy storytelling device in the comic book medium.

Neither am I keen on Captain Kirk’s continuing presence, in which he barely has anything to do, or any bearing on the plot at all. It’s long felt like a gimmick for Star Trek’s 60th anniversary, and nothing that happens here dissuades me from that view.

It even edges close to feeling more like Event Horizon than Star Trek at points in this issue, and again, though I don’t have any particular issue with exploring different themes or genres in Trek, the cosmic horror just didn’t gel for me.

If it weren’t for IDW releasing everything they publish on GlobalComix Gold on day one, I would have dropped this series several issues back, and I wouldn’t have missed it.

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