Star Trek: Lower Decks is in the midst of its fifth and final season on Paramount+. However, anyone familiar with Star Trek’s multimedia history knows that a show’s season finale isn’t necessarily the final adventure for its crew. Star Trek: Lower Decks already made its debut in comics with a three-issue miniseries published by IDW Publishing in 2022 from writer Ryan North and artist Chris Fenoglio. Those issues were received well enough for IDW Publishing to greenlight a new ongoing series that will keep the U.S.S. Cerritos flying for the foreseeable future. North returns to write with Derek Charm taking over art duties (Fenoglio was presumably busy working with North on the excellent Star Trek: Lower Decks — Warp Your Own Way interactive graphic novel), and the debut issue suggests that the comics will be a worthy successor to the beloved show that spawned it.
Star Trek: Lower Decks #1 finds the Cerritos‘ Lower Deckers, especially Beckett Mariner, struggling with a series of mind-numbingly safe and efficient (boring) missions. Right as Mariner is reaching her breaking point and ready to turn to the holodeck for distraction, a real adventure materializes along with a mysterious, mostly forgotten Starship from Starfleet’s earliest days. She and her usual group of friends and colleagues — Brad Boimler, D’Vana Tendi, Samanthan Rutherford, and T’Lyn — volunteer to take part in the away mission to investigate and discover a mystery dating back to Kirk and Spock’s days on the Enterprise.
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The issue hits all the comedic beats fans expect from a Lower Decks story. The rapid-fire use of opening establishing shots with episode titles overlain to emphasize the monotony that has recently overtaken hits exactly the balance of reverence for and subversion of Star Trek tropes that have come to define the show. North has shown a love of science in his other comics work, particularly his current run on Fantastic Four, and that same passion is on display as he crafts pseudo-scientific challenges and solutions for Tendi and Rutherford to gush about. Elsewhere, the issue pokes fun at certain uninterrogated assumptions of the Star Trek universe, such as humans overusing metaphors that wouldn’t make any sense to anyone without an Earth-based frame of reference, to equally hilarious effect, as well as the monumental discoveries that tended to be forgotten, due to early Trek’s episodic storytelling structure.
[RELATED: Star Trek: Lower Decks #1 Preview Reveals the Cerritos Crew’s Next Mission]
North punctuates nearly every page with asides from a faceless voice written in the gutter at the bottom. These comments exist outside the narrative but comment on whatever has transpired on that page’s panels. They’re funny but can interrupt the book’s flow and may diffuse a reader’s immersion in the story. It’s like watching an episode of television with a friend who can’t help interrupting with their amusing observations and commentary. In this case though, while I found the notes worth reading while progressing through the story, the reader may ignore them without worrying about coming off as rude and revisit them later to see what they missed.
Like Fenoglio before him, Charm does an excellent job of matching the style of Star Trek: Lower Decks. Complimenting mimicry may sound like faint praise at best. However, it’s a credit to Charm’s storytelling skills that while yes, the characters are on-model, the visual beats all allow the jokes to land with the right timing, and the framing and character expression perfectly telegraph whether the dialog should be received as setup, punchline, or just plain absurd. It all goes a long way toward inviting the reader to lose themselves in the misadventure.
Despite many being apprehensive of Star Trek: Lower Decks given how far it seemed to venture from what Star Trek had always been until then, fans have come to embrace the show and will lament its ending after five seasons. Those fans should take heart in the existence of Star Trek: Lower Decks #1, which promises future adventures that successfully translate the charm, heart, and humor of Lower Decks into a new medium.
Published By: IDW Publishing
On: Wednesday, November 13th, 2024
Written By: Ryan North
Art By: Derek Charm
Letters By: Clayton Cowles
Cover by Derek Charm
