Star Trek's New Captain Proves Voyager Was Never The Mistake Fans Thought It Was

Published Oct 3, 2026, 10:00 AM EDT

Nicolas Ayala is a Senior Writer for the Comics team at ScreenRant, with over five years of experience writing about Superhero media, action movies, and TV shows. 

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The Star Trek franchise rights the wrongs of Star Trek: Voyager with the return of its best characters. The best Star Trek series share a delicate balance between high-concept science fiction and character development that challenges the franchise's own utopian ideals. The Next Generation’s morality plays, Deep Space Nine’s complex exploration of war, and Strange New Worlds’ vibrant optimism excel in their own way, but all of them use the vastness of space to explore timeless human struggles. Notably, Star Trek's standout installments allow their characters to make mistakes, change over time, and suffer the real consequences of their actions.

On the other side of the spectrum, the most divisive Star Trek releases range from polarizing television seasons like early Enterprise and Discovery to controversial cinematic releases like Star Trek Into Darkness, all of which suffer from major flaws like tonal whiplash and a perceived abandonment of the franchise's main themes. Thankfully, when Star Trek relies too much on hyper-stylized action or borderline nihilistic shock-value over the intellectual and hopeful problem-solving that fans have grown to know and love, the franchise quickly goes back on track. The priority is always preventing Star Trek from feeling like any other generic sci-fi universe.

Thirty years later, Star Trek is rectifying one of its biggest disappointments in a different medium.

Star Trek Redeems Voyager In Its New Series

Star Trek; Written By Christopher Cantwell; Art By Dennis Menheere

Christopher Cantwell and Dennis Menheere’s Star Trek comic substantively expands Captain Seven of Nine’s story five years after the events of Star Trek: Picard. At the helm of the U.S.S. Enterprise-G, Seven leads Starfleet officers Jack Crusher and Sidney La Forge into the uncharted Epsilon Corridor to safely relocate thousands of displaced Revlavan refugees. While the episodic format of Star Trek: Voyager repeatedly reset Seven’s psychological progress to maintain the series' episodic status quo, Cantwell’s long-form narrative treats her Borg trauma as a persistent psychological hurdle. IDW's Star Trek puts special focus on how Seven's cybernetic history influences her decision-making and her anxieties surrounding her first major deep-space command.

Comic panels grant Voyager lore the expansive visual scale and the gritty tone the 1990s series' budget denied it. Menheere’s pencil work renders massive alien spires and temporal distortions across wide splash pages, where Seven manages crisis situations under extreme pressure. Seven's encounter with "The Trinity" forces her to evolve, as she abandons her former role as simple ship enforcer to act as diplomatic strategist for the Avuran refugees while facing the threat of the Hidden. Cantwell also integrates her cortical node and ocular Borg implants directly into her analytical mind, and her cybernetic components work as permanent psychological dimensions of her character instead of temporary weekly plot devices.

Star Trek: Voyager Didn't Know What It Wanted To Be

But IDW's Star Trek Comic Understands What Voyager Lacked

Star Trek: Voyager failed to live up to its lofty expectations largely because its ambitious survival-based premise bit off more than it could chew. Designed to be a harrowing journey of a lone ship stranded 70,000 light-years from home with limited resources, Voyager quickly abandoned the promise of dealing with the lasting consequences of resource scarcity and the inherent ideological friction between the integrated Starfleet and Maquis crew members.A heavily damaged ship and depleted shuttlecraft count didn't leave an impact on the story, as they were magically restored to pristine condition by the next episode.

Besides, to sustain a standard twenty-six-episode broadcast season, Star Trek: Voyager over-leveraged iconic franchise elements like the Borg. Fans coming off Star Trek: Deep Space Nine naturally expected intricate multi-episode character growth and serialized political intrigue, whereas Voyager's explicit goal was to capture the adventurous, alien-of-the-week spirit of The Original Series. Audiences expecting long-term character arcs were met with the stagnation of characters like Chakotay and Harry Kim. IDW's Star Trek raises the stakes with decisions that leave lasting damage and ideological rifts that can't simply be wiped away by a reset button.

Do you like Seven of Nine's return as Captain in Star Trek?

Star Trek is now available from IDW Entertainment