Star Trek has always been about hope — about the dream that logic, diplomacy, and cooperation could overcome any conflict among the stars. But Star Trek: The Last Starship, the new ongoing series from writers Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing (Star Trek: Year Five, Guardians of the Galaxy) and artist Adrián Bonilla, dares to ask a question Gene Roddenberry’s utopia rarely has: What happens when hope isn’t enough?
Set hundreds of years beyond the Trek we know, The Last Starship opens in a galaxy where the Federation is no longer a beacon of unity, but a relic of better days. The Burn has destroyed dilithium and crippled warp travel, reducing exploration to memory. The ideals of peace and progress that once defined the Federation are now hollow — beautiful, but impractical in a universe ruled by chaos, desperation, and war.
That alone would make this series a thrilling shakeup of Trek canon. But Kelly and Lanzing don’t stop there — they bring back Captain James T. Kirk himself, reanimated and restless, thrust into a future that no longer has room for the optimism he once embodied. Alongside a scrappy new crew led by Captain Delacourt Sato, Kirk must confront a galaxy that has evolved past diplomacy — one that forces him to test whether peace can still survive when survival itself is the highest law.
A Federation on the edge
From the first issue, Kelly and Lanzing establish that this isn’t your father’s Enterprise. The U.S.S. Omega is a patched-together vessel crewed by outcasts, addicts, and survivors. There’s Zed, a drunken Ferengi doctor with a painkiller habit, and a Queen who now serves as the ship’s chief engineer — a morally suspect move that feels right at home in this fractured world. These aren’t model officers; they’re the last people you’d expect to hold the Federation’s future in their hands.
And yet, somehow, they do.
Each issue has built on this premise with an almost cinematic intensity. In issue #2, Sato wrestles with the burden of command when in battle. His obsession with peace — noble, but naïve — is shattered when the Klingons attack, leaving him making mistakes by the very ideal he’s sworn to uphold. It’s a moment that flips Trek’s moral compass on its head: what if the pursuit of peace makes you unfit to win?
By issue #3, the contrast between Sato and Kirk becomes the series’ emotional spine. Kirk — tactical, decisive, and unrelentingly human — keeps the crew alive through instinct and improvisation, his leadership cutting through the chaos like a phaser beam. He’s the perfect counterpoint to Sato’s tortured pacifism, and his presence reawakens a sense of purpose in a crew that’s lost faith in everything but survival.
An exclusive unlettered preview page from issue #2.
Courtesy IDW
Redefining Trek’s moral universe
In my review of the first issue, I wrote that The Last Starship “boldly charts new territory, delivering a darker, riskier vision of the Federation that feels both raw and refreshingly new.” Three issues in, that statement holds even truer. Kelly and Lanzing aren’t dismantling Star Trek’s ideals — they’re pressure-testing them. They ask whether peace, empathy, and reason can exist in a galaxy where no one believes in them anymore.
This isn’t nihilism. It’s evolution. The Last Starship honors Trek’s moral legacy by exploring what happens when morality itself becomes a liability. It’s Starfleet stripped down to its bones, where cleverness and compassion must coexist with ruthlessness and grit.
A visual universe as worn and alive as its characters
Artist Adrian Bonilla, joined by colorist Heather Moore, gives the series a grounded, tactile feel that sets it apart from the gleaming bridges and pristine corridors of classic Trek. The U.S.S. Omega is claustrophobic and dented; its crew is visibly tired. Bonilla’s camera rarely stops moving — dynamic angles make even small rooms feel vast, while close-ups capture every flicker of doubt, pride, and fear. There’s a grit to this world, a lived-in realism that mirrors the Federation’s moral erosion.
The next great Trek epic
In a recent StarTrek.com interview, Kelly and Lanzing spoke about The Last Starship as a “mirror” for the Federation itself — not a repudiation of what came before, but a chance to explore what those ideals mean when the light starts to fade. That, ultimately, is what makes The Last Starship so compelling. It doesn’t just push Star Trek forward chronologically — it pushes it philosophically.
This is a Star Trek about limits: the limits of peace, the limits of faith, the limits of even heroes like Kirk. And in testing those limits, it proves that there are still bold new worlds left to explore — even within the human heart.
You can preorder Star Trek: The Last Starship #3 until November 3rd, with the issue out in comic shops on December 17th. Star Trek: The Last Starship #2 is out November 19th.
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