{"id":27148,"date":"2026-09-27T22:46:01","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T02:46:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/?p=27148"},"modified":"2026-09-27T22:46:01","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T02:46:01","slug":"the-best-of-star-trek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/the-best-of-star-trek\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best of Star Trek"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{5\/5} &#8220;There&#8217;s a feeling that you have when you command a starship. It&#8217;s impossible to explain to someone who has never had that responsibility. To see the stars shoot by you, and know that you&#8230; no on else&#8230; is responsible for bringing four hundred and thirty lives safely through that vast unknown. And you feel&#8230; a kinship&#8230; to the stars.&#8221; (from &#8220;The Trial of James T. Kirk&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Best of Star Trek<\/strong> by Mike Barr, Diane Duane, and Peter David, published in 1991 (individual comic books published between 1984 and 1990)<\/p>\n<p>In &#8220;Mortal Gods&#8221; Kirk finds a former student of his has declared himself a god on a planet of aliens. In &#8220;The Final Voyage&#8221; the Enterprise is whisked off to Talos IV, where Captain Pike is &#8212; Kirk finds 3 Klingon ships in orbit. In &#8220;Double Blind&#8221; there are some aliens who want to take over the ship &#8212; but Kirk isn&#8217;t sure they are capable of doing it. In &#8220;Retrospect&#8221; when Kirk asks Scotty what&#8217;s wrong he reveals that his wife has died. In &#8220;The Trial of James T. Kirk&#8221; Kirk surrenders himself to prevent hostilities between the Klingons and the Nasgul.<\/p>\n<p>This graphic novel contains 5 stories. The title is accurate &#8212; this was the best of <strong>Star Trek<\/strong> comic books in 1991.<\/p>\n<p>We see Sarek, Samuel T. Cogley, Will Decker, and a few others we&#8217;ve seen before. In &#8220;Trial&#8221; there are remarkable conversations between Spock and Sarek, and between Uhura and R.J. Blaise. Scotty has a beautiful romance in &#8220;Retrospect.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There are a small number of flaws. In &#8220;Mortal&#8221; phasers are set to kill when they shouldn&#8217;t be. In &#8220;Final&#8221; the Klingons gain the power of the Talosians &#8212; but they don&#8217;t have the brains for it.<\/p>\n<p>The cover by Jason Palmer is superb. The interior artwork is by people like Tom Sutton, Curt Swan, and James Fry.<\/p>\n<p>This is the 2nd time I&#8217;ve read it.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve read a few <strong>Batman<\/strong> and <strong>Star Trek<\/strong> comic books and a joint novel by Barr. I previously reviewed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/star-trek-the-mirror-universe-saga\/\"><strong>Star Trek: The Mirror Universe Saga<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve read 10 novels and 1 graphic novel by Duane. I previously reviewed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/star-trek-doctors-orders\/\"><strong>Star Trek: Doctor\u2019s Orders<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve read 28 novels, 3 graphic novels, and a bunch of comic books by David. I previously reviewed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/star-trek-the-return\/\"><strong>Star Trek: The Return!<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{5\/5} &#8220;There&#8217;s a feeling that you have when you command a starship. It&#8217;s impossible to explain to someone who has never had that responsibility. To see the stars shoot by you, and know that you&#8230; no on else&#8230; is responsible for bringing four hundred and thirty lives safely through that vast unknown. And you feel&#8230; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,56,5,8,59],"class_list":["post-27148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-book","tag-graphic-novels","tag-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-star-trek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27148"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27388,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27148\/revisions\/27388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}