The tag line at the top is a little disingenuous. Yes, Kirk's there, but so are Saavik and the newly-introduced Ensign Bryce, who, along with her other new recruit cohort, is amongst the reasons I love this series so much. The opening of the first issue shows the death of two characters named Bearclaw and Bryce aboard the ship that the Enterprise is investigating. Similarly, as the Enterprise leaves Earth, two new recruits bearing the same names are aboard. The drama that unfolds between these two ensigns is excellent, and gives us a perspective on a few things that we don't often see in Star Trek. First, there's some generational trauma going on here, as Ensign Bearclaw blames father's death on Bryce's father. Bryce, on the other hand, claims her father did his job, and couldn't have done anything more. Add to this the fact that Bearclaw is an Indigenous person, and you've got some interesting commentary, both on recent and historical traumas. I'm curious to see how Barr and co. handle Bearclaw's portrayal. The second interesting thing these characters do for us is show us what life is actually like aboard the Enterprise. They're bored a lot of the time, or just fed up with one another - there might be a lot of people on board, but a small population is a small population. There was a Star Trek: TNG episode ("Lower Decks"?) that attempted something similar to this, but the advantage of the serialized comic medium is that a story is often going to be more drawn out that on television, leaving more space for the development of ancillary characters.
More to come...
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