An anthology of stories featuring characters and settings plucked from the now-six decade history of Star Trek sounds like a fantastic idea, and it should have been a home run for IDW.

Yet this collection of short stories is hit and miss, and it’s unfortunately more miss than hit. There’s some glaring omissions in terms of subject matter too; the original Star Trek is well represented with multiple stories, The Next Generation and Picard get a look in, as does Lower Decks, Enterprise and even Starfleet Academy. Yet nothing for Deep Space Nine or Voyager, still two of the most popular Trek shows ever?

It’s also frustrating that the two final stories are basically just lead-ins to IDW’s imminent, new Star Trek ongoing series (simply titled Star Trek, with no fancy naming convention). So this ends up feeling frustrating in more ways than one.

There are positives; though the art is also inconsistent (the Michael Gaydos art on the Brian Michael Bendis story focusing on Sulu is dreadfully stiff and obviously photo referenced), the good stuff is genuinely excellent. The story about Worf’s childhood was the overall highlight for me, but I enjoyed the Lower Decks story too, and the Picard/Crusher story was both well written and gorgeously illustrated.

It just feels overall like a bit of a missed opportunity, especially given how many of the franchise’s characters appear on the cover, but not within the comic itself.

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