Star Trek, Volume 1 by Mike Johnson, Stephen Molnar, and Joe Phillips

Star Trek, Volume 1

Collection published: 2012
Acquired: November 2012
Read: November 2025

Where No Man Has Gone Before / The Galileo Seven, from Star Trek vol. 1 #1-4 (Sept.-Dec. 2011) 
written by Mike Johnson, art by Stephen Molnar and Joe Phillips, colors by John Rauch, letters by Neil Uyetake, creative consultant: Roberto Orci

Following its shakedown cruise (covered The Unsettling Stars and Legacy of Spock; reviews of those to come) and other short missions (More Beautiful than Death; see item #2 in the list below), the Enterprise has embarked on a long-term mission of exploration. Scotty and Keenser are still repairing the damage from the battle with Nero; in the meantime, two friends of Kirk's from the Academy, Gary Mitchell and Lee Kelso, have joined the crew.

What follows is pretty much a blow-by-blow remake of "Where No Man Has Gone Before," albeit with some streamlining; there's no Doctor Dehner for example. (She doesn't join the Enterprise crew because McCoy is there, and they're exes.) The two biggest changes are that the story explicitly takes the stance that some kind of entity is controlling Mitchell, as opposed to Mitchell becoming awful once he comes into his power, and that Spock pops up in the final battle to help Kirk, which I found to be a pretty nice moment.

I like the idea of getting some insight into the Kelvin Kirk's Academy days via Mitchell and Kelso; I found myself wishing the story had gone further with his, maybe by putting them on the Enterprise several issues before killing them off. On screen, there's enough small bits of business and good camaraderie between Shatner and Gary Lockwood to convince you these two men are old friends; it doesn't work as well on the comics page.

from Star Trek vol. 1 #2 (art by Stephen Molnar)

Similarly, The Galileo Seven is a pretty streamlined retelling with a twist at the end that loses some of the interesting dynamism of the original; here, Spock's struggle in command is less pronounced. I think this is fine, in the sense that it honestly doesn't make a ton of sense in the original episode (why does Spock keep expecting the natives to act "logically"?) but isn't replaced by much. I did end up liking that Spock sacrifices himself to save the rest of the shuttle crew; I found the bit where Uhura swoops in, on the other hand, a bit too cheeseball.

In the original episode, the yeoman on the Galileo is Mears, but here it's the debut of the Kelvin timeline Janice Rand. She has a weird hairdo.

from Star Trek vol. 1 #4 (art by Joe Phillips)

The first stardate given in Where No Man follows the (stupid) Kelvin timeline system, but all subsequent ones in these stories are regular original series–style ones. In fact, they're the ones from the original episodes... even though these stories take place eight years earlier!

You know how many crew members I've lost since I took command? Three, I think, across the two stories. Gary and Lee, plus a guy on the Galileo.

This is the third in a series of posts about the Kelvin timeline Star Trek comics (and novels). The next covers Star Trek, Volume 2. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Official Motion Picture Adaptation
2. More Beautiful than Death