As far as Star Trek stories go, Star Trek: The Last Starship is a pretty big deal. Not only is it the follow-up to Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing’s critically acclaimed Star Trek comic, The Last Starship features nothing less than the resurrection of Captain James T. Kirk. And Kirk’s return couldn’t come at a more fortuitous time for the Federation. The first issue opens just as the phenomenon known as The Burn decimates intergalactic civilization and destroys nearly every working starship in existence.
IGN had the chance to speak with Kelly, Lanzing, and editor Heather Antos to learn more about how Kirk is resurrected in the 31st Century and what his return means for this series. Read on for a full breakdown of how Kirk is brought back to life.
Warning: This article contains full spoilers for Star Trek: The Last Starship #1!
How Captain Kirk Is Resurrected
Captain Kirk may have cheated death once in 1994’s Star Trek: Generations, but he only lived long enough to briefly team up with Captain Jean Luc Picard in the 24th Century before meeting his final end (unless you count the non-canon “Shatnerverse” novels that followed). The Last Starship, by comparison, is set in the 31st Century, a period only loosely explored in the Paramount+ series Star Trek: Discovery. So how and why does Kirk return? It’s all thanks to the Borg.
In the immediate aftermath of The Burn, the surviving leaders of Starfleet meet to figure out how to grapple with the immense tragedy that has just befallen the galaxy. Trillions are dead, and Starfleet no longer has the resources to maintain order, much less continue its mission of peace and exploration. Captain Delacourt Sato is given command of an experimental hodgepodge of a craft called the U.S.S. Omega - a lone ship that can still carry the torch for Starfleet. But with warp drives off the table (for fear of igniting a second Burn), the Omega has to rely on a far more dangerous and controversial technology - transwarp.
It’s here that a Borg emissary makes her presence known. She reveals that the Borg have evolved a great deal in the centuries since their original feud with the Federation. They’re no longer a collective hivemind, but a cooperative. The emissary even has a name, Agnes. She offers her new friends a transwarp drive on two conditions. The first is that she’s allowed to serve aboard the Omega as chief engineer. The second involves a very old biological specimen on the abandoned Daystrom Station.
The specimen in question is a blood sample of none other than Captain Kirk. It was taken as part of Project: Phoenix, an apparent attempt by the Federation to clone Kirk many centuries before. But as Agnes reflects, what they were attempting was nothing more than creating a copy of the real thing. But with the power of Borg nanotechnology, Agnes is able to rebuild Kirk’s body, cell by cell, complete with memories intact. Thus, Kirk is reborn, looking every bit his Original Series-era self.
“While cloning a new body from the remains of the old is more than possible in the 31st Century, replication of the mind is a dangerous and firmly unpredictable endeavor,” Kelly tells IGN. “So if our goal is to give a person new life, so-called biological resurrection comes with too many variables. A positronic body, on the other hand, risks a very different kind of mental break - one that finds the biological mind trying to fit inside the rigid structure of an unaging android with fully different capabilities to the original human.”
Kelly continues, “What Agnes - our resident Borg Queen - has created here is a third option: a fully new being, crafted from Borg nanites off the genetic sequencing of James T. Kirk. He is as changeable as the Borg themselves, made from their fabric from head to toe. Why they did this - and what kind of Kirk will inhabit this new man’s mind - remains to be seen… and sits at the center of the entire story of The Last Starship.”
Lanzing adds, “And in all honesty, this bit of plot is a tribute to the man whose face adorns our cover: William Shatner - who once returned Kirk to life in spectacular fashion with his novels The Return, Avenger and beyond. Those books were formative for me as a young Trek fan - and if we were going to bring Kirk into this new shattered world, it only felt right and respectful to bring some of the flavor of those novels into the character’s journey. Of course, our story is very different from that - but it felt really important to tip the hat to the legend.”
What Kirk’s Return Means for The Last Starship
Naturally, there are plenty of questions surrounding Kirk’s resurrection, not least of which being why this famous Starfleet captain means so much to the Borg Cooperative. It’s also unclear just how much the reborn Kirk remembers of his old life. If he looks like the youthful, TOS-era Kirk, does that mean that’s where his memories stop? When it comes to that question, Kelly and Lanzing tease that readers will have a clear answer by the first page of issue #2.
Kelly says, “Kirk’s struggle with his own memories and understanding of the world are the backbone of the first arc - and are going to take us to some really unexpected, wild places by issue #3.”
Lanzing adds, “Yeah, issue #3 is probably the single most ambitious, rule-breaking Star Trek comic we’ve ever written. And not just cuz of Kirk.”
Given the premise and setting of the series, fans might naturally assume that Kirk is destined to return to the captain’s chair, serving as a beacon of hope in the Federation’s darkest hour. But that’s not actually what’s happening here. Sato is Captain of the USS Omega. Kirk is facing a long, uphill journey to discover who he is and what he stands for in this unfamiliar new universe.
“Kirk is going through a journey of self-discovery,” Antos says. “Like Captain Sato and the rest of the members of the Omega crew, this era of the Federation post-Burn is going to challenge not only their ideals as members of Starfleet, but who they are to their very core. Who is James T. Kirk without the solidity of the Federation as he knows and loves? We’re about to find out.”
“Before we’re all-too-quick to put him back in the chair, it’s important for us all to ask: is that the right place for him?” Kelly says. “This is a new era, new circumstances - a universe that doesn’t need explorers, because there’s no frontier left to explore. There is only a universe that exists at the end of everything he once dreamed of…and it is, as you say, bleak. Ultimately, that’s why Kirk is in this story at all - because he’s the character who would find the Burn most hurtful, most disturbing, and most challenging to his worldview. That man has a lot to work out before he even thinks about command.”
With the Borg unexpectedly emerging as allies to the dying Federation, it’s up to Kelly and Lanzing to establish a different antagonist in this series. The final scene in issue #1 does just that. We see a rogue faction of Klingons led by a woman named Ha’Shet. Ha’Shet laments that countless Klingons have just died dishonorable deaths, a sign that the Klingon Empire has strayed too far from its roots in pursuit of peace. As she slaughters those she deems unworthy, Ha-Shet pledges to walk “a black path” and seek the final end of the Federation.
Captain Kirk alive, and the Klingons waging war against the Federation? It would seem that the goal here is to show that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
“We’re not showing so much as asking: what do we become when all bets are off?” Lanzing says. “When the old ways no longer constrain us? If the present is in ashes, do we fall back into the horror of the past or try to stand for an imagined future? For Sato, Kirk, and everyone else on the U.S.S. Omega, those questions will become key - after all, this is the first real violence that anyone in Sato’s era of Starfleet has ever encountered. To meet it and save the future, they may have to put a lot of faith in the ways of the past. But will the dream of the Federation survive that tug of war?”
Kelly adds, “That’s what the Last Starship is all about.”
Star Trek: The Last Starship #1 is available in stores now. You can find a copy at your local comic shop.
For more on IDW’s current Star Trek line, check out our massive interview with the creators of all four Trek titles.
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