I am quite a big Star Trek fan and I’m pretty fond of X-Men too. I also happen to have quite a soft spot for wacky comic crossovers. All things considered, I should have absolutely loved this comic. Sadly, while I didn’t hate it by any means, my response to it was pretty lukewarm.
The story is as follows: Kirk and the crew encounter a strange ship, which suddenly explodes. That ship (a Shi’ar vessel) actually had the X-Men on board, and at the last minute they teleport aboard the Enterprise. At first, everyone on the Enterprise thinks that the people who have teleported aboard might be hostile (and the X-Men are wary of the Starfleet personnel), though they soon learn to work together to overcome a shared problem.
Scott Lobdell had a difficult job – telling a compelling story in just a single comic book issue. I think he did the best he could under the circumstances. The biggest problem for me was that it felt like the story starts right at the end. Although this is the start of things for the crew of the Enterprise, the X-Men are explicitly coming towards the culmination of a larger plan. I wish it had been longer and there was more time to set things up. For a crossover between two universes that are quite far apart like this, you kind of need that.
The other downside is that nobody really has enough time to do very much. This isn’t just Kirk meeting Wolverine or something like that, it’s the ensemble cast of Star Trek The Original Series meeting up with a whole team of X-Men. You’ve got Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Wolverine, Beast, Cyclops, Jean Grey, and lots of other characters, and there are only about 40 pages of story. With so many characters who need to have something to do, nobody is going to be written with any substantial depth.
Having said that, my favourite thing about this comic was that there were a few small moments that put a smile onto my face. Someone walks into the medical bay and says “Dr. McCoy” causing both Beast and Bones to turn around. Spock and Wolverine also have a “fight” where a Vulcan nerve pinch immediately incapacitates Logan, only for his regenerative abilities to kick in and wake him up almost instantly. I’m a massive nerd, really, so stuff like that will always tickle me.
Towards the end, there’s also a lovely speech about the hope for the future that Star Trek embodies, and the way in which the X-Men embody people coming together and working in unison, and that’s pretty lovely. It highlights why I love both franchises and kind of makes a good argument for why the two make sense for a crossover. The problem is, it’s just an overly complex story that ties the Shi’ar, Gary Mitchell, and the strange powers he gets in the episode Where No Man Has Gone Before, and 40 pages is just not enough space for it, leaving it all feel a little shallow.
Rating: 6/10
