Review by C.J. Bunce

Sometimes nostalgia wins the day.  That’s the case for the opening issue of the new IDW Publishing comic book series, Sons of Star Trek.  Beginning with the limiting title, the choices don’t seem to be the best the writers could have selected, yet anyone yearning for another episode of Deep Space Nine should take note.  This plays like a classic episode of the series in pretty much every way.  It tells a parallel journey of the grown key cast of the series back on the space station to visit Benjamin Sisko, when the son of Q, looking just like he was played on the series by John de Lancie’s real-life son Keegan, takes the characters into a parallel world, allowing an opportunity for the return of long-gone favorites.

Check out a preview of the first issue, as well as covers for the series, below.

Writer Morgan Hampton, artist Angel Hernandez, and colorist Nick Filardi have put together a new series that looks like the old Malibu Star Trek comics, which featured similarly evocative, photo-real art by Rob Davis.

The previously released covers reveal the new series’ surprises, so we’ll repeat them here without giving away the story.  That’s a focus on grown-up Jake Sisko, Nog, and Worf’s son Alexander, all enmeshed in another Q scenario, which fans tend to either love or hate.  The twist, revealed on the cover art and in the first issue is the return of Dukat as captain of a Starfleet ship, along with more fun: the one-shot Voyager character Tuvix, now Doctor Ogawa, Morn, Jadzia Dax, and the best character of the current TV series, Commander Mariner.

If I were writing a younger generation story for Star Trek, I would skip over what has already been tried and instead expand on the next-next generation previously introduced characters like a grown Naomi Wildman, more Miral Paris, Molly O’Brien, Oji from Who Watches the Watchers?, from the Klingon camp the under-used, under-served character Toral, son of Duras, and from the Romulan-Vulcan camp Spock’s young supporters from the Unification era, or Romulan-Klingons from the Birthright era.  There are so many episodes to tap characters from.  But that’s not this series.

It’s worth saying that fans of Deep Space Nine have not seen enough of Benjamin Sisko since the series ended, either in the way the Enterprise-D crew returned in the Picard series, or Janeway returned as an animated hologram.  Even for a brief encounter, there’s something soothing about a return from even the essence of Avery Brooks on the big space station.

Here are more pages from the first issue, and some cover art:

This is a good start for a Trek book, especially for fans of Deep Space Nine.  Add Sons of Star Trek to your pull list at Elite Comics or your local comic shop now.  The first issue arrives in comic shops everywhere today.