Star Trek’s Prime Timeline (established by Star Trek: The Original Series in 1966) and Kelvin Timeline (established by 2009’s Star Trek movie) had their biggest crossover yet, and one timeline didn’t survive the experience. SPOILERS for Star Trek #26 by Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, Angel Hernández, Lee Loughridge, and Clayton Cowles follow. Star Trek #26’s story is part two of the “When the Walls Fell” storyline. In the previous story arc, Lore — Data’s twisted twin brother — managed to destroy reality as Star Trek’s character knew it and is now remaking it to his liking. The crew of the USS Theseus, captained by Benjamin Sisko, is barely ahead of Lore’s wave of reality changes and already managed to escape fluidic space in its attempts to return home.
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The Theseus‘ latest stop is the Kelvin Timeline, where the Star Trek reboot movies — Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Trek Beyond — happened. There, the Theseus encounters the Kelvin Timeline’s USS Enterprise-A, a meeting that does not end well for the Kelvin Timeline.
Two Star Trek Timelines Meet, but Only One Survives
It turns out that the Enterprise and the Theseus meeting isn’t a chance encounter. Those who have seen 2009’s Star Trek will remember that Spock of the Prime Timeline’s trip back through time is what created the alternate reality of the Kelvin Timeline. Prime Spock met the James T. Kirk of the Kelvin Timeline and helped put him back on track to becoming the Enterprise’s captain. Prime Timeline Spock later died in Kelvin Timeline’s reality but not before leaving a message for Kirk describing Theseus’ journey following Lore’s attack on reality.
As such, the Enterprise didn’t happen upon the Theseus. It was waiting for the ship from the other reality, as Spock had intended. It’s an interesting meeting seeing as Sisko once met a young Captain Kirk in a separate time-travel adventure (the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Trials and Tribble-ations”). It’s even more interesting for Montogery Scott since the Prime Scotty meets his younger, Kelvin Timeline self, the latter eventually realizing he achieved his greatest moment with indirect help from the Prime version.
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A victory in the Kelvin Timeline against Lore will be crucial to a broader victory that saves the multiverse. However, the two Starfleet crews only manage a partial victory. The Theseus crew returns home, but Lore’s reality wave destroys the Kelvin Timeline.
But this is all preamble to the next big Star Trek crossover event, “Lore War.” That event will see the Star Trek cast forced to live in a world created in Lore’s image as they fight to return reality to its rightful form.
Star Trek’s Prime and Kelvin Timeline Crossovers
This is not the first time Star Trek’s Prime and Kelvin Timelines have crossed paths. The existence of the Kelvin Timeline is predicated on Spock crossing over and causing the new reality to splinter off from the previous timeline. However, the Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek Kelvin Timeline crews met in comics in the two-part story “Connections,” which concluded IDW Publishing’s first ongoing Star Trek comic book series in 2016, the franchise’s 50th anniversary.
In television, Star Trek: Discovery revealed that a Beetlgeesuan Starfleet officer named Yor from the Kelvin Timeline had traveled into the Prime Timeline’s future, which confirmed that mortal beings cannot survive crossing both time and realities for long. Yor featured in OTOY’s latest Star Trek short, “Unification,” which saw Captain Kirk of the Prime Timeline crossing over into the Kelvin Timeline to be with Spock on his deathbed.
Star Trek #26 is on sale now.
