st_boldlygo_02_coverWritten by Mike Johnson

Art by Tony Shasteen

IDW, out now

Resistance is futile…

Okay, the cat’s out of the bag now, and it’s common knowledge that the first foe that the separated former crew of the USS Enterprise is facing is the Borg. Quite how they got to the Alpha Quadrant this early in the timeline isn’t yet fully explained (although there’s a few hints) but they’re here in all their glory, carving up starships, attacking planets, assimilating people and generally behaving in a distinctly un-Starfleet way! They’ve even got a starship captain converted and acting as their mouthpiece – although obviously some cosmic force has got it in for poor Captain Terrell, as in this universe he’s not infected with one of Khan’s Ceti Alphan worms but instead Borgified.

I really hope someone at IDW fixes the introductory text before issue 3 goes to print– the events of Star Trek Beyond aren’t months ago, because that implies the whole of the movie, and these stories are set (as is made explicitly clear in dialogue on New Vulcan) during the creation of the Enterprise-A. It means that we know that things aren’t going to get to the cataclysmic level of The Best of Both Worlds or the Destiny trilogy of novels (because both had severe repercussions on the Federation), but by the end of this instalment, yet another conflict with the Romulans seems possible…

Both script and art are strong in this issue, and there’s a particularly impressive double page spread showing the Borg in action. We’ve had hints of their presence in the Kelvinverse before (the first YA novel, The Delta Anomaly) but this is the first full blown appearance – and Johnson and Shasteen make it a good one.

Verdict: The Borg make their mark on the Kelvinverse. 8/10

Paul Simpson