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STAR TREK: THE STARDATE COLLECTION

Editorial Assistance and Annotations by Scott and David Tipton Collection Edits by Justin Eisinger
and

Alonzo Simon Collection Design by Tom B. Long

Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry Special thanks to Risa Kessler and John Van Citters of CBS Consumer Products for their invaluable assistance.

ISBN: 978-1-61377-711-4 16 15 14 13 1 2 3 4
IDW founded by Ted Adams, Alex Garner, Kris Oprisko, and Robbie Robbins

Ted Adams, CEO & Publisher Greg Goldstein, President & COO Robbie Robbins, EVP/Sr. Graphic Artist Chris Ryall, Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-Chief Matthew Ruzicka, CPA, Chief Financial Officer Alan Payne, VP of Sales Dirk Wood, VP of Marketing Lorelei Bunjes, VP of Digital Services

STAR TREK: THE STARDATE COLLECTION, VOLUME 1. OCTOBER 2013. FIRST PRINTING. & 2013 CBS Studios Inc. STAR TREK and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc. 2013 Paramount Pictures Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Photos courtesy of CBS Consumer Products. IDW Publishing authorized user. 2013 Idea and Design Works, LLC. All Rights Reserved. IDW Publishing, a division of Idea and Design Works, LLC. Editorial offices: 5080 Santa Fe Street, San Diego, CA 92109. Any similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental. With the exception of artwork used for review purposes, none of the contents of this publication may be reprinted without the permission of Idea and Design Works, LLC. Printed in Korea. IDW Publishing does not read or accept unsolicited submissions of ideas, stories, or artwork. Originally published by IDW Publishing as STAR TREK: CREW issues #15, STAR TREK ALIEN SPOTLIGHT: VULCANS, and by Marvel Comics as STAR TREK: EARLY VOYAGES issues #16.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction by Scott and David Tipton .....................................4 A Change In Command .............................................................6

Crew .............................................................................................8 Written and Illustrated by John Byrne Colors by Lovern Kindzierski and Mario Boon Letters by Neil Uyetake Edits by Chris Ryall Alien Spotlight: Vulcans ................................................128
Written by James Patrick Art by Josep Maria Beroy Colors by Mario Boon Color Assist by Andrew Elder Letters by Chris Mowry Edits by Andrew Steven Harris

Early Voyages #16 .........................................................152

Written by Dan Abnett and Ian Edginton Pencils by Patrick Zircher Inks by Greg Adams Colors by Marie Javins Letters by Janice Chiang Edits by Bobbie Chase

Interview with John Byrne ..........................................316

HAILING FREQUENCIES OPEN

For nearly as long as there has been Star Trek, there have been Star Trek comic books. Just before the original series second season in the fall of 1967, the first Star Trek comic hit newsstands, from publisher Gold Key, a division of Western Publishing. Since then, Star Trek comics have been published nearly continuously from a variety of different publishers, whether it was Gold Keys inaugural series, the relatively brief tenures by Marvel and Wildstorm, or the much longer and better-known series from DC Comics and IDW Publishing. The simplest thing to do would be to reprint them all in order of publication, starting with that first Gold Key issue and ending with the most recent release from Star Treks current home here at IDW. So naturally, were not going to do that. Instead, were going to try something a lot more challenging, and certainly a lot more fun, and more in the spirit of the amazing shared universe created by Gene Roddenberry and the cadre of writers, directors, actors, and technicians responsible for the six television series and 12 feature films that make up the world of Star Trek. Our intention with the Stardate Collection is to reprint all the TREK comics not by publication date, but by stardate . Meaning we present these stories in the order in which they really happened. Because whats the point of inventing your own history if you cant put it to the test? Will it all line up perfectly? Well find out together. Everybody to your stations, now; full impulse power.

Scott Tipton David Tipton May 2013

A CHANGE IN COMMAND
It was all just to save money, really. But it wound up being one of the most important things to happen early in the development of the Star Trek universe. Lets go back a step. By this point, most Star Trek fans have heard the story: how NBC looked at the first pilot for the series, The Cage, starring Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike and Majel Barrett as his first officer Number One, and concluded it was too cerebral, and refused to greenlight the series.

However, recognizing the quality of the pilot, and acknowledging that they themselves had chosen which script to produce, NBC gave producer Gene Roddenberry a second chance at a pilot (something thats practically unheard of even today, some five decades later). Roddenberry recast everyone except supporting player Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock and introduced William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk in the second pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before, which was met with a much more positive reception by NBC, who promptly approved the pilot to series. That left Roddenberry with the first, tremendously expensive pilot episode The Cage lying on the shelf, presumably unusable, since it featured an almost entirely different cast. But rather than abandon it, Roddenberry cannily repurposed the majority of the footage from The Cage into Star Treks only two-part episode, The Menagerie, which utilized the material in
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flashback as Mr. Spock is court-martialed for stealing the Enterprise in order to return his now horribly crippled former captain Chris Pike to the mysteriously forbidden planet Talos IV. From a strictly budgetary standpoint, this was a great idea. But what Roddenberry couldnt have anticipated was the narrative power this story would have. For the viewer, The Menagerie was incredibly powerful because it gave Star Trek a very tangible sense of history. Suddenly, thanks to the footage of a young Captain Pike on a slightly different but still recognizable Enterprise, viewers had the sense that the world of Star Trek had gone on long before the episodes they watched day to day, that the ship and the fleet it was a part of had a long life of its own before it was given to Captain Kirk to command. Who was this mysterious original Enterprise captain, who lacked Captain Kirks wit and charm but brought his own brooding, tense charisma to the series? And then there was Spock; similar to the Spock we knew, but younger-seeming, more impulsive, less composed.

The other thing The Menagerie brought to the forefront? Tragedy. Tragedy and risk. The sight of the terribly scarred and crippled Captain Pike, trapped and frozen forever in his chair, compared to the images of the young, vital, powerful captain on the screen, only highlighted that voyaging through space was not an entirely safe proposition, and even Starfleet captains werent immune from the horrible vagaries of fate. But most of all, it made viewers want to see more. More of a younger Spock finding his way, and more of the brave and occasionally belligerent Captain Pike and his gallant crew. And thanks to the stories in this volume, they can.

STAR TREK: CREW #1

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