kelvin kirk star trek

Star Trek: Kelvin Timeline explained

We've remodulated our tricorders to help you make sense of the Star Trek Kelvin timeline from the recent Star Trek movies.

Our Star Trek: Kelvin Timeline explained article is here to tell Spock from Spock.

How do you reboot a franchise that’s been around more than 50 years old and whose fan base is, shall we say, passionate about the accuracy of its canon? If you wipe the slate completely clean and start afresh, you lose the benefit of five decades of lore from which to draw inspiration and characters. If you keep the continuity, you’re shackled to decades of details from which you can’t escape. What can you do? If you’re Star Trek, you create the Kelvin Timeline.

The Kelvin timeline, or "alternate universe Trek", creates a new environment in which the events of the more recent Star Trek films (Star Trek, Into Darkness, Beyond) won’t contradict those that came before. It’s also how Spock ended up meeting himself. 

If you want to rewatch the new Star Trek movies, our Star Trek streaming guide will show you where to watch them all online. And if you're curious to see how the new movies stack up against the classics, check out our Star Trek movies, ranked worst to best article. Now, let's dive into the Star Trek Kelvin timeline.

Event One: Nero Travels Through Time 

According to Star Trek (2009), the planet Romulus was destroyed by a supernova in the year 2387. Ambassador Spock attempted to use "red matter", a substance so powerful that a single drop can destroy a planet, to save Romulus by destroying the supernova. He did indeed manage to destroy the supernova, but not in time to prevent the planet’s destruction. To make matters worse, both his ship, the experimental Jellyfish, and the Romulan mining ship Narada were pulled into the black hole’s wake and sent hurtling backwards in time. Spock emerged in 2258 while the Romulans landed in 2233. 

The Narada’s captain, Nero decides to use this opportunity to take out his grief on the organization he holds responsible for the ruin of Romulus and, by extension, the death of his family: the Federation. One of his first acts is to destroy the U.S.S. Kelvin, captained heroically to the very last minute by George Kirk, who lives just long enough to name his newborn son James.

And thus begins the Kelvin timeline. 

Spock, Meet Spock 

Jim Kirk grows up as a rebellious punk constantly trying to outrun his father’s long shadow. Christopher Pike sees something of value in him and urges him to join Starfleet, which he eventually does. Through a contrivance of events, he ends up aboard the Enterprise along with Spock, Bones McCoy, Uhura, and the rest of the Original Series crew. 

It’s now 2258 and Ambassador Spock emerges from the black hole just in time to be scooped up by Nero, who keeps the Jellyfish — and its cache of red matter — for himself while abandoning Spock on the frozen planet of Delta Vega. He wants Spock to bear witness as the Narada drills a hole into the center of Vulcan and releases red matter at the planet’s core. The Enterprise tries to stop him and fails, though they do manage to rescue Spock’s father, Sarek. Nero is eventually defeated, and Spock's young and old take a moment to reflect on their coexistence

Enter Khan, Exit Kirk 

Nero’s too-close-to-success-for-comfort attempt to destroy Earth shifts Starfleet’s ethos from one of discovery to one of protection. They still want to "seek out new life forms," but only to find out how dangerous they are. In Into Darkness (2013), Alexander Marcus, leader of the secretive Section 31, finds the SS Botany Bay, stuffed to the rafters full of augmented humans in cryostasis. He wakes one of them up — Khan Noonien Singh — and forces him to build weapons that Earth could use to defend itself against alien threats. 

Huge surprise, Khan betrays Marcus, exacting vengeance on various Starfleet targets. In doing so, he kills Kirk’s father figure Christopher Pike. Marcus tries to leverage Kirk’s hot-headedness by sending Kirk after Khan, who has fled to the Klingon homeworld of Kronos. He figures Kirk will kill, not capture, Khan, thus removing a threat and evidence of Marcus’ secret project.

Kirk goes off script and keeps Khan alive, much to the chagrin of Admiral Marcus, who tries to blow them all the heck up. The sacrifice that leads to victory happens just as in the original, except in the Kelvin timeline it’s Kirk who gives his life to save his crew. In the prime timeline, Genesis brought Spock back to life, but here it’s Khan’s blood that gets the job done.

That bit of ugliness behind them, the Enterprise receives its five-year-mission. You know the one.

Farewell to Spock 

In Star Trek: Beyond (2016), the Enterprise discovers the USS Franklin, a Federation ship that had been lost for decades. Here’s what’s fun about that: the Kelvin timeline doesn’t start until 2233. The Franklin disappeared before that, so it exists in both timelines, which means a different version of it could theoretically pop up in Star Trek media that doesn’t adhere to the Kelvin timeline. 

In Kelvin, however, the Franklin is half-buried after crashing into the surface of the planet Altamid. Few of its former crew remain, and those that do are unrecognizable, having been transformed by technology they’ve used to keep themselves alive. The Franklin’s captain, Balthazar Edison, now known as Krall, rejects Starfleet ideals of peace. He’s a soldier and he believes that he should be allowed to do what he does best. He returns to starbase Yorktown with the goal of commandeering it to launch an attack on the Federation, but first he’ll have to kill every living thing in residence. Kirk et al save the day, of course. 

This is also the point at which Ambassador Spock leaves the timeline due to the passing of the peerless Leonard Nimoy. Kelvin Spock had been planning to rejoin what remains of the Vulcan people, but instead chooses to honor his other self by remaining in Starfleet.

Crossover With the Prime Timeline 

Keeping track of the Kelvin timeline is important because there are still Star Trek properties operating in the prime timeline, such as Picard . However, there has been a little bit of crossover between the two. Picard takes place long after the titular character has quit Starfleet, and early on we discover the destruction of Romulus was why. 

Picard wanted to launch a rescue mission to save as many Romulans as possible before the detonation of the supernova, but Starfleet pushed back. He went forward with it anyway, but when his ships were decimated by a fleet of rogue synths, Starfleet gave up all rescue efforts. Picard resigned in disgust. Everything that happens after that — and therefore everything taking place in the show — is part of the prime timeline, despite being kicked off by Event One.

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Susan Arendt is a freelance writer, editor, and consultant living in Burleson, TX. She's a huge sci-fi TV and movie buff, and will talk your Vulcan ears off about Star Trek. You can find more of her work at Wired, IGN, Polygon, or look for her on Twitter: @SusanArendt. Be prepared to see too many pictures of her dogs.

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By Any Other Name

• Episode aired Feb 23, 1968

Galactic alien scouts capture the Enterprise for a return voyage and a prelude to invasion. Kirk's one advantage - they're not used to their adopted human form. Galactic alien scouts capture the Enterprise for a return voyage and a prelude to invasion. Kirk's one advantage - they're not used to their adopted human form. Galactic alien scouts capture the Enterprise for a return voyage and a prelude to invasion. Kirk's one advantage - they're not used to their adopted human form.

• Marc Daniels
• Gene Roddenberry
• D.C. Fontana
• Jerome Bixby
• William Shatner
• Leonard Nimoy
• DeForest Kelley
• 30 User reviews
• 16 Critic reviews

• Captain James Tiberius 'Jim' Kirk

• Mister Spock

• Lieutenant Hadley
• (uncredited)

• Lieutenant Leslie
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• Trivia While drinking with Tomar, Scotty finds a bottle of unidentifiable alcohol, and when Tomar asks, "What is it?" Scotty hesitates for a moment and finally says "It's green." This has become an iconic Scotty moment, and is even spoofed in Relics (1992) .
• Goofs While Scott and Tomar are drinking various liquors, Scott tosses an empty bottle to the floor off-camera and the sound of it breaking is heard. Later, when Scott passes out, the discarded bottle is at his feet, intact.

Scott : [Trying to drink Tomar under the table, Scotty enters, a bit tipsy, with a bottle of green liquid] I found this on Ganeroo... Ganimera... mee.

Tomar : What is it?

Scott : It's,

[looks for a label]

Scott : um,

[looks under the bottle; sniffs it]

Scott : ... It's green.

• Alternate versions Special Enhanced version Digitally Remastered with new exterior shots and remade opening theme song
• Connections Featured in Star Trek Logs: An MTV Big Picture Special Edition (1991)
• Soundtracks Theme Music credited to Alexander Courage Sung by Loulie Jean Norman

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• Feb 16, 2022
• February 23, 1968 (United States)
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• Runtime 50 minutes

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The Star Trek Kelvin Timeline Explained

In 2009, Paramount Pictures released Star Trek , the first film in what would become a new action-oriented trilogy to reinvigorate the franchise at the worldwide box office. Directed by J.J. Abrams and starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Zoe Saldana, Star Trek introduced the world to new versions of classic characters like Kirk, Spock, and Uhura, and it took us back to their earlier days in Starfleet. This wasn't just another reboot, though. Thanks to the heavy sci-fi influence of the original series, this version of Star Trek was actually presented in the form of an alternate timeline, with its roots in events of the original universe and one of the franchise's original characters.

Later dubbed "the Kelvin timeline" because of its connection to a destroyed Federation starship called the U.S.S.  Kelvin , this alternate reality set the stage for three different Star Trek feature films, all of which remixed original series continuity in some form or another. Plus, in recent years, the inciting incident for this reality has become a jumping-off point for more stories in the Prime Star Trek reality, making it a major influence in two different universes. From its explosive origins to its broader implications, this is Star Trek 's Kelvin timeline, explained

The real-world origins of the Kelvin timeline

In the late 2000s, Star Trek was in need of a re-invigoration. The last feature film in the franchise, Nemesis , came out in 2002, and the prequel TV series,  Star Trek: Enterprise , went off the air in 2005, leaving the legendary sci-fi property without a major live-action media presence for the first time in years. Ultimately, Paramount Pictures decided the way to bring Trek back was a prequel film ... but not just a typical prequel. The film that would become 2009's Star Trek fell into the hands of screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who decided to use time travel to create an alternate reality that would both raise the stakes for their "prequel" concept of a younger Kirk and Spock and also allow them to take some creative liberties with the well-worn characters.

Speaking with Sci Fi Wire in 2009 , Kurtzman explained, "Yeah, the biggest thing I think we all hiccuped on, just conceptually, when Trek was presented to us was, 'Well, we know how they all died. We know what happened to them.' And when you know that, it's very difficult to put them in jeopardy in a way that feels fresh or original. How do you ever have real stakes to your characters?" Well, the answer was the introduction of an alternate reality that would link the new Star Trek film series to past canon, while also allowing filmmakers to go their own way.

The Kelvin timeline has its roots in tragedy

The story of Star Trek 's Kelvin timeline began in the Prime Star Trek universe in the 2380s , when it became clear that the Romulan sun presented a major danger not just to the Romulan Star Empire but to a whole quadrant of the galaxy. The sun was nearing the end of its life and would soon go supernova, which would in turn destroy Romulus and other nearby worlds. Desperate to save their people, the Romulans asked the United Federation of Planets for help.

When evacuation efforts failed, Spock — now an ambassador from his homeworld of Vulcan — intervened in 2387 with his own attempt to halt the supernova through the use of red matter. Spock was able to stop the supernova's expansion but not before Romulus was destroyed, something he'd promised he could prevent. Enraged, a Romulan mining ship captain named Nero sought vengeance, and he attacked Spock's one-man vessel with his own ship, the Narada . During the pursuit, both ships were pulled through the black hole left in the wake of the supernova, which sent them back in time.

The fate of the U.S.S. Kelvin

Unbeknownst to Nero, when the Narada was drawn into the black hole, the Romulan ship was sent back to 2233, more than 150 years in the past. But the dude was still very angry. Nero's rage then focused on the first Federation vessel he found, the U.S.S. Kelvin . As the Romulan vessel attacked, First Officer George Kirk took command of the Kelvin after the death of his captain, and he sacrificed the ship to protect the escape shuttles fleeing the area, including the one carrying his wife and newborn son, James Kirk. The Kelvin was destroyed, and Nero's reign of terror continued in what was now an alternate reality. 

As you've probably guessed, the Kelvin Ttmeline is so named because the destruction of the Kelvin is the event triggering the alternate reality. In the Kelvin timeline, life unfolds in a way that's quite recognizable for longtime Star Trek fans but with many differences interspersed throughout the universe. The starships look similar, for example, but the designs are altered in many ways, and the same is true of things like phasers, communicators, and Starfleet uniforms.

A different Kirk

In the Prime Star Trek timeline, James T. Kirk's path to captaining the U.S.S. Enterprise is noteworthy but very conventional. Kirk entered Starfleet in part because of his father, but George Kirk was still very much alive when he signed up, and once Kirk was a part of Starfleet, he spent quite a bit of time doing other things before joining the Enterprise , including a stint as an Academy instructor and serving on the U.S.S. Farragut .

In the Kelvin timeline, though, the absence of Kirk's father sent him off on a very different path, one with much less conviction and certainty early on. This version of James T. Kirk was a rebellious young man, joyriding in stolen cars as a teenager and getting into bar fights in his 20s. His Starfleet journey actually began when one of these fights was broken up by Captain Christopher Pike, a Starfleet officer familiar with Kirk's history and his father's heroism. Pike — who was also Kirk's predecessor as captain of the Enterprise in the Prime timeline, under very different circumstances — urged young James to do something with his life because his father sacrificed himself to make sure Kirk would live and accomplish something meaningful. Spurred on by Pike, Kirk joined Starfleet and eventually tricked his way onto the newly launched Enterprise  after cadets in the Academy were called into service to help battle Nero.

Now, there are two Spocks

While Nero arrived in the Kelvin timeline in 2233, Spock didn't actually emerge from the black hole until 25 years later, and he found the vengeful Romulan waiting for him. Nero captured Spock's ship, the Jellyfish , and left the Vulcan stranded on the icy planet Delta Vega, with the intention of making Spock watch his own homeworld perish just as Nero had to watch Romulus fall. Nero achieved this by drilling into Vulcan's core with his ship's machinery, then shooting red matter into it. Vulcan collapsed as the Kelvin timeline version of Spock attempted to evacuate as many of his people as he could. He was able to save his father but not his human mother, who fell just as they were preparing to beam back up to the Enterprise .

A short time later, Kirk was also marooned on Delta Vega by an irate Spock, who was acting captain of the Enterprise and had already discerned Nero was a time traveler. Here, Kirk met the Prime timeline version of Spock, who used a Vulcan mind meld to reveal to him the explanation for Nero's presence, including the destruction of Romulus and the black hole he journeyed through. Eventually, both Spocks met each other and attempted to rebuild Vulcan culture through their shared knowledge and experience. With Spock Prime's help — including the introduction of transwarp beaming to the Kelvin timeline — Kirk and Spock were able to make amends and defeat Nero before he could destroy Earth, cementing the dynamic of the Enterprise crew.

A warlike Federation

The sudden destruction of Vulcan and the losses in the Federation fleet during the battle with Nero, coupled with the growing hostility of the Klingons, spurred certain factions within Starfleet to seek a more militaristic approach to dealing with the future of the galaxy. In 2258 and 2259, Admiral Alexander Marcus went to great lengths to pursue this more warlike approach in secret, and he began exploring the galaxy for various resources to use for the defense of Starfleet. Marcus' search eventually led to the discovery of Botany Bay and a group of enhanced superhumans in cryogenic stasis.

Desperate to advance his cause, Marcus roused the leader of the group, Khan Noonien Singh, and held the rest of Khan's people hostage while Khan himself was forced to develop advanced weapons for the Federation under the secretive Section 31. This included the development of the Vengeance , a powerful new Federation warship, and a new advanced torpedo design that Marcus hoped to use against the Klingons.

Khan tried to smuggle his people out of Marcus' care by hiding them, still in stasis, in the torpedoes, but Marcus discovered this plan. Certain that the admiral had already killed his people, Khan set out to become a one-man vengeance machine and destroy the Federation from the inside.

The wrath of Khan

Operating under the name John Harrison, Khan staged successful attacks on Starfleet facilities that resulted in the death of Admiral Christopher Pike. After this attack, Marcus saw a path to killing his former hostage and covering up his military conspiracy at the same time. He dispatched Kirk and the Enterprise to capture "Harrison" on the Klingon world Kronos, believing Kirk would simply kill the terrorist as an act of revenge. This set Kirk, Spock, and the Enterprise crew on a new, alternate trajectory to a confrontation with their old Prime universe foe.

At fist, Harrison/Khan tried to present himself as an ally to Kirk and Spock before finally turning on them when he felt he could safely extract his still-living crewmates from their torpedoes. The resulting confrontation led to Kelvin timeline Spock seeking the advice of Spock Prime, who recalled the deadly consequences of battling Khan. In the Prime timeline, it was Spock who paid with his life before being revived. In the Kelvin timeline, though, it was Kirk who sacrificed his life in the battle with Khan. Fortunately, Spock was able to defeat Khan through some clever deception, and Dr. Leonard McCoy was able to use Khan's blood, which had strange restorative properties, to revive Kirk.

The clash with Krall in the Kelvin timeline

After the battle with Khan, the Enterprise crew in the Kelvin timeline set out for their own version of the five-year mission we saw in Star Trek: The Original Series , and three years into that mission, they encountered something interesting (particularly from our perspective as observers), something with a backstory that extended far back into the timeline, before the universes diverged.

In Star Trek Beyond , the Enterprise crew discovers the buried U.S.S. Franklin , a Federation starship that was lost decades earlier, in an era before the Kelvin incident diverged the timelines. That means that, since the alternate reality doesn't really split until 2233, the loss of the Franklin is something we can consider to exist in both timelines. What happens after that — including the Enterprise 's encounter with Krall, the mutated former captain of the Franklin  — is part of the Kelvin timeline only, which means another version of Starfleet could encounter the Franklin in the Prime universe and theoretically have a different outcome. It's an intriguing idea spinning out of the fun sci-fi adventure story that  Beyond offers.

Star Trek Beyond also offers another intriguing detail regarding the Kelvin timeline's Spock. Early in the film, he's considering leaving Starfleet to have a more direct role in redeveloping Vulcan culture. After learning that Spock Prime has died, though, he chooses to honor his alternate self's memory by remaining in Starfleet, as it's what Spock Prime was doing at the same age.

How the Kelvin timeline has impacted the Prime timeline

The Kelvin timeline of Star Trek is fascinating for a number of reasons, including the fact that it didn't have to exist this way at all. The writers of 2009's Trek film could have simply said, "We're starting over, but the other films and shows are all still there for you to watch." They didn't do that, instead leaning into the science fiction of it all. That means we have an inciting incident for the Kelvin timeline that also exists as a major, galaxy-altering event in the Prime timeline, and that means there are consequences for both realities.

For a long time, those consequences weren't directly explored in Star Trek live-action storytelling, but that changed with the 2020 series Star Trek: Picard . Set in the decades following Star Trek: The Next Generation , the series follows the latter-day adventures of Jean-Luc Picard , and it reveals that his departure from Starfleet was directly tied to the Romulan sun disaster. Though many in the Federation opposed it, Picard spearheaded a massive evacuation effort to get as many people off Romulus as possible in the years before the supernova, only to have his rescue fleet destroyed by a surprise attack from a group of rogue synths. Starfleet dropped the rescue effort entirely in the aftermath, and Picard resigned.

Den of Geek

Star Trek: A Watching & Reading Guide to the Kelvin Timeline

What's the best chronological order to watch and read the Star Trek Kelvin timeline stories in? Here's our suggestion...

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This article comes from Den of Geek UK .

Over the years, Star Trek has presented us with many alternative timelines and parallel dimensions, but none have become so prominent as the Kelvin Timeline. Home to alternative versions of the U.S.S. Enterprise crew of Captain James T. Kirk, science officer Mr. Spock, chief medical officer Dr. Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy, communications officer Nyota Uhura, chief engineer Montgomery ‘Scotty’ Scott, Helmsman Hikaru Sulu, and Navigator Pavel Chekov.

You will probably know the Kelvin Timeline from the 2009 movie Star Trek , and its sequels Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond . However, there is more to this alternate reality than just those movies.

Here we will give you an unofficial guide to the Kelvin Timeline, consisting of movies, TV series, video games, and comics. “Punch it!”

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1. Star Trek: Enterprise

Medium: TV show, seasons 1 to 4 (2001-2005)

The adventures of the Enterprise NX-01 crew, led by Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula), take place between the years 2151 and 2155. Or rather, those are the adventures we see in seasons 1 to 4, as the show was cancelled before it could cover topics like the Earth-Romulan War, the origin of the Borg Queen, and the formation of the Federation. The creation of the Kelvin Timeline takes place 78 years later, in 2233, and therefore makes Star Trek: Enterprise the only TV series set in both timelines.

In Star Trek Into Darkness , a model of the NX-01 Enterprise can be seen in Admiral Markus’ collection. Video footage in Star Trek Beyond shows us that the crew on the U.S.S. Franklin wore the same uniforms as the NX-01 Enterprise crew. And the Franklin’s Captain, Balthazar M. Edison, is implied to have been part of the MACO attachment of the NX-01 Enterprise during Earth’s conflict with the Xindi.

What one must wonder is how the Borg that crashed in the Arctic after the Prime Timeline’s time travel movie Star Trek: First Contact exactly shows up in the episode “Regeneration.” Does that mean the Kelvin Timeline has no further effect on the past of the Prime Timeline, or that The Next Generation era turns out (mostly) the same in the Kelvin Timeline? We can only wait to see how the Kelvin Timeline develops.

The final episode of the show, “These Are the Voyages … ,”is only partially canon to the Kelvin Timeline, due to it basically being a holodeck episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation set during its season 7 episode “The Pegasus.” The historical parts involving the Enterprise NX-01 crew did happen, but everything involving Star Trek: The Next Generation does not.

2. Star Trek: Countdown

Medium: comic (2009)

This comic from IDW Publishing written by Mike Johnson and Tim Jones, after a story by movie scribes Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, further connects the Prime Timeline with the Kelvin Timeline and gives more motivation to movie antagonist Nero. The story leads up to the events in Star Trek , but is set in the Prime Timeline eight years after the events of the movie Star Trek: Nemesis in 2387, and it picks up some threads from Star Trek: The Next Generation ’s “Unification” two-parter. It furthermore shows where The Next Generation crew ended up since.

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Romulus, and the rest of the galaxy, is in danger of a massively destructive supernova. Spock, now ambassador on Romulus, tells the Romulan Senate of the threat and proposes the use of the Vulcan substance called “red matter” as a solution, which causes quite a stir. With a ship called Jellyfish, designed by Geordi La Forge, Spock attempts to use the red matter to create a singularity to absorb the supernova. Unfortunately, this comes too late for Romulus and the planet is destroyed. This leads to the crew of the mining ship Narada and its Captain Nero to seek revenge on Ambassador Spock and follow him through the singularity and into the past.

The destruction of Romulus eventually leads to the Prime Timeline events in the MMORPG videogame Star Trek Online . However, the canon status of that game’s story can be overwritten by potential future post- Star Trek: Nemesis projects if the power that be choose to do so.

Just recently, Eaglemoss reprinted Star Trek: Countdown as the first hardcover paperback volume in their Star Trek graphic novel collection, with a bonus classic –1960s comic story “Planet of No Return.”

3. Star Trek

Medium: movie (2009)

Directed by J.J. Abrams and written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the story starts on the U.S.S. Kelvin in 2233. The encounter between the Romulan ship Narada emerging from the singularity and the Kelvin causes a diversion of the Prime Timeline and the creation of the Kelvin Timeline. After this, the story picks up in 2255 when Captain Christopher Pike convinces James T. Kirk to enlist in Starfleet. Three years later, in 2258, the Narada and its Captain Nero show up again to continue their vengeance for the destruction of Romulus, and threaten the Federation.

The Kelvin incident causes a number of diversions from the Prime Timeline. For example, James T. Kirk’s father, George Kirk, dies saving the Kelvin escape shuttles from the Narada, while his wife, Winona, gives birth to James T. Kirk on one of the shuttles. In the Prime Timeline, Kirk was born on Earth in Ohio.

Another difference of note in the Kelvin Timeline is an earlier born Pavel Chekov. In the Prime Timeline, Chekov was born in 2245, while in the Kelvin Timeline he was born in 2241. A change that was probably made because Chekov would otherwise be a 13-year-old during the events of Star Trek . Former Enterprise Captain Christopher Pike also goes through a number of changes that arguably benefit him, as the events of Star Trek: The Original Series episode “The Cage” most likely do not occur.

The biggest change might be to the Enterprise herself. The interior of the ship is a lot different from what we saw in The Original Series . Most notably is the engineering section, which is humongous when compared to all others in Star Trek shows or movies – in fact it’s actually the Budweiser Brewery in Los Angeles. The ship’s measurements are also different. The Prime Timeline Constitution-class Enterprise is 288.6 meters in length, while the Galaxy-class Enterprise-D is 641 meters in length, but both are topped by the Kelvin Timeline Constitution-class Enterprise that has a length of 1,200 meters, according to the 2009 reference book Star Trek – The Art of The Film . However, the Enterprise we see in the Kelvin Timeline movies is likely not the counterpart of the Prime Timeline Enterprise. More on that later when we talk about the comic Star Trek: Countdown to Darkness .

IDW also adapted the movie into a six-issue comic, if you’d rather keep on reading.

There is also a tie-in videogame called Star Trek D·A·C , an arcade style top-down shooter. The “D·A·C” in the title stands for the game modes in the game: deathmatch, assault, and conquest.

4. Star Trek: Nero

This four-issue comic from IDW written again by Mike Johnson and Tim Jones, after a story by movie scribes Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, takes place during Star Trek . It follows Nero and his Narada crew between the moment they emerge from the singularity and their second appearance in the movie. The comic tells us what they did in those years. Actually, the comic takes a deleted scene of Nero on a Klingon prison planet and expands upon it. It’s a shame that scene was cut from the movie.

It might be best to read this comic after seeing Star Trek , as it’s quite spoiler heavy. Repeat viewers might find added motivation to Nero’s actions in the movie.

5. Star Trek, Vol. 1

Medium: comic, issues 1 to 4 (2011)

Overseen by writer/producer Roberto Orci and written by Mike Johnson, the Star Trek comic from IDW gives us Kelvin Timeline versions of Prime Timeline Star Trek: The Original Series stories. In this first volume, we get two stories set after Star Trek . The first is “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” which was  The Original Series ‘ the second pilot episode after “The Cage.” The second story is “The Galileo Seven,” which is a season 1 episode.

The comic contradicts Star Trek Into Darkness a bit, as in the movie Kirk says he didn’t lose any crew members during his first year as captain.

6. Star Trek, Vol. 2

Medium: comic, issues 5 to 8 (2011)

The second volume tells a Kelvin version of The Original Series ’s “Operation – Annihilate!,” the season 1 finale. This version of the story gives us flashbacks to just after young Kirk crashed the Corvette in the movie. The comic makes it clear that, unlike what the credits of Star Trek told us, the owner of the Corvette was not Kirk’s stepfather but his maternal uncle, Frank. Frank has a live-action appearance in a deleted scene of the movie.

The second story, called “Vulcan’s Vengeance,” is the first story not to adapt an Original Series story. However, according to writer Mike Johnson, the story is to be seen as the Kelvin Timeline’s answer to The Original Series ’s “Balance of Terror.” In the story, a group of rogue Vulcans want to take revenge on the Romulan Empire after Nero’s deeds in Star Trek . Spock attempts to infiltrate, but gets a nasty surprise.

7. Star Trek, Vol. 3

Medium: comic, issues 9 to 12 (2012)

Volume 3 starts with “The Return of the Archons,” an adaptation of the season 1 episode of The Original Series . In it the Enterprise gets a lead on the U.S.S. Archon, a starship that disappeared a century earlier.

The next story had to happen at some point. It’s a Kelvin Timeline version of The Original Series  season 2 episode “The Trouble with Tribbles.” In the story, called “The Truth About Tribbles,” Scotty has found an ideal pet for his cousin Chris, a furry little animal called a Tribble. It’s only after Scotty has teleported the pet Tribble to his cousin on Earth that the Enterprise’s crew discovers the unfortunate side effect of two Tribbles in one room.

The stories of Volume 1 , Volume 2 , and Volume 3 are also collected in Star Trek: New Adventures, Vol. 1 .

8. Star Trek, Vol. 4

Medium: comic, issues 13 to 16 (2012)

IDW’s fourth volume presents us with three stories. The first is “Hendorff” about the life of red shirt security officer Hendorff, which you might better know by his Kirk given nickname “Cupcake.” In the story, Hendorff muses about the Kelvin version of events of The Original Series  season 2 episode “The Apple.”

The second story is called “Keenser’s Story” and tells us how he ended up as Scotty’s sidekick.

The third story, “Mirrored,” is the Kelvin Timeline version of The Original Series season 2 episode “Mirror, Mirror.” In it Bones and Scotty have a discussion about alternate timelines. Following that we are transported to a Mirror Kelvin Timeline where there is no Federation of Planets but a Terran Empire, and where Mirror Spock is captain of the ISS Enterprise. Mirror Kirk, however, plans his revenge on Mirror Spock.

9. Star Trek, Vol. 5

Medium: comic, issues 17 to 20 (2013)

It’s flashback time in this fifth volume of IDW’s comic. In “Bones,” written by Mike Johnson and F. Leonard Johnson, we learn how Dr. Leonard McCoy ended up in that shuttle Kirk boards early on in Star Trek . In “The Voice of Falling Star,” written by Ryan Parrott, we discover more about Uhura and her first meeting with Spock. Then, in “Scotty,” we see how a young Montgomery Scott found his interest in engineering. And finally, in “Red Level Down,” it’s revealed that Sulu and Chekov’s lives were intertwined since their time at Starfleet Academy.

10. Star Trek

Medium: video game (2013)

In April 2013, Paramount Digital Entertainment and Namco Bandai published Star Trek , a video game developed by Digital Extremes for PC, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3. The game stars the likenesses and voice talents of the cast of the movies. With a story by Marianne Krawczyk, with input from movie scribes Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof, and comic writer Mike Johnson. It’s set between the comic Star Trek, Vol. 5 and the movie Star Trek Into Darkness , about a year after Star Trek in 2259. The Enterprise encounters a group of Vulcan scientists who want to create a new Vulcan home planet. They however open a rip in space, prompting a Gorn invasion.

The story’s canon status is in dispute. While Krawczyk’s story had input from the Star Trek movie scribes, and Senior Vice President of Paramount Pictures and producer on the game Brian Miller said the story was set in the Kelvin Timeline canon, Roberto Orci later said it was not canon. Probably because the game was panned by critics. Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness director J.J. Abrams said he was “emotionally hurt” by the game’s poor quality and reviews and that it hurt Star Trek Into Darkness by being released just before it. Nevertheless, in 2013, the 24th issue of IDW’s canon Star Trek comic reveals the story of the video game to be canon.

11. Star Trek: Countdown to Darkness

Medium: comic (2013)

IDW’s four-issue prelude to the movie Star Trek Into Darkness , written by Mike Johnson, after a story by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, isn’t as heavily involved with the plot of the movie as Star Trek: Countdown was with Star Trek ’s. The story of the comic chronicles the “Mudd incident” that is mentioned in Star Trek Into Darkness and explains how they got that ship they use to go to Qo’noS. But more importantly, we are introduced to the Kelvin Timeline version of Captain Robert April, who in the Prime Timeline was the captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise before Captain Pike and Captain Kirk. In the Kelvin Timeline, this is still true. How is that possible, as the U.S.S. Enterprise was brand new in Star Trek ? Well, April was the captain of a U.S.S. Enterprise before the U.S.S. Enterprise Kirk is the captain of. Yes, in the Kelvin timeline there is an Enterprise between the NX-01 Enterprise and the U.S.S. Enterprise Kirk helms.

Interestingly, the way the comic portrays April’s Enterprise is more reminiscent to the Enterprise we saw in The Original Series . The comic also tells us April’s Enterprise was used before the Kelvin Timeline was created. This could mean that April’s Enterprise was the Kelvin Timeline counterpart to the Prime Timeline’s Enterprise and not the one we see in the movies. Why isn’t Kirk’s Enterprise not called the Enterprise-A then? Theorize in the comments section!

12. Star Trek Into Darkness

Medium: movie (2013)

Again directed by J.J. Abrams, and written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and Damon Lindelof. It’s now 2259, a year after the events in Star Trek , and we meet the Enterprise crew on the primitive planet Niburu. Captain Kirk and his crew violate the Prime Directive when saving the native tribes people from an impending volcanic eruption. Back on Earth this leads to a demotion for Kirk by a disappointed Admiral Pike. However, when rogue Starfleet officer John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) attacks a Starfleet summit, Kirk and his crew is sent to apprehend him. This leads to revelations of the dark side of Starfleet with which Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fans are familiar with, and a Kelvin Timeline retelling of the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan .

Paramount Pictures and production company Bad Robot went to great lengths to “cloak” the true name of Cumberbatch’s character. They redubbed promotional scenes, and actors had a hard time talking around it in press interviews, often going to answers like “Cumberbatch plays a character who has previously appeared in Star Trek canon.” This isn’t untrue, as Lieutenant Harrison was indeed a character in The Original Series , appearing in season 1 episodes “Charlie X,” “The Galileo Seven,” “Arena,” “The Return of the Archons,” and “Operation – Annihilate!”

When Kirk and company visit Klingon home planet Qo’noS, something very interesting happens. Qo’noS’ moon Praxis is already destroyed. This might have enormous repercussions for the Kelvin Timeline, as in the Prime Timeline the Klingons where forced to peace talks after the moon blew up, as seen in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country . In Star Trek Into Darkness , the destruction of Praxis isn’t seen as something that will halt the Klingons, meaning that those peace talks with the Federation might not occur.

Keep an eye out for a Star Wars easter egg around the one hour and seventeen minutes mark, as astromech droid R2-D2 flies by.

The U.S.S. Vengeance is said to be twice the size of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Which is enormous, as according to the 2009 reference book Star Trek – The Art of The Film the Enterprise is 1,200 meters in length, meaning that the Vengeance would be roughly 2,400 metres in length! It has to be said that there have been a number of contradicting measurements given for the Enterprise’s size, but still, that would mean the ship is still a lot bigger than the Prime Timeline’s U.S.S. Enterprise-E which is 685 metres.

To depict the engineering section, the L.A. Budweiser Brewery was revisited, but also the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, which is used as the Enterprise’s warp core.

While this was the first Star Trek movie in 3D, certain scenes where shot in the IMAX format. These scenes have had a bumpy road getting to home media. At firstthe IMAX version of the movie, which removes the black bars on the top and bottom of your screen, was only available on iTunes. Eventually this was fixed with the Blu-ray release of Star Trek: The Compendium , a collection of both Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness . But this release doesn’t have the 3D version of Star Trek Into Darkness . The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray of Star Trek Into Darkness does include the IMAX scenes, but also lacks a 3D version.

13. Star Trek: Khan

Medium: comic (2013, 2014)

This IDW five-issue series tells the story of the Kelvin Timeline’s Khan Noonien Singh before and after Star Trek Into Darkness . As we see Khan during the Eugenics Wars, this means this part of his story is set in the Prime Timeline. When Khan is awakened, he is the Kelvin Timeline version, and we see how he got on before the events of Star Trek Into Darkness . Most importantly, this comic explains how Khan goes from being a Sikh, as portrayed by Ricardo Montalban in the Prime Timeline, to the very English Benedict Cumberbatch in the Kelvin Timeline. Something that probably would have been better addressed in the movie.

14. Star Trek, Vol. 6: After Darkness

Medium: comic, issues 21 to 24 (2013)

Volume 6 of the Star Trek comic picks up after   Star Trek Into Darkness , which ended in 2260. The U.S.S. Enterprise is in preparation to embark on a five-year mission into unknown space. Doctor Carol Marcus has joined the crew, and Spock has come under the influence of the Vulcan mating condition known as “Pon Farr.” This calls for a detour to New Vulcan, where Spock’s girlfriend Uhura finds a nasty surprise waiting. Meanwhile, the Klingons are very much not amused by Kirk’s little visit to Qo’noS, and Section 31 is looking to partner up to get their revenge.

The other story in this volume involves the Gorn, and confirms that the story of the Star Trek video game is to be considered canon.

The stories of Star Trek Volume 6 , together with Volume 4 and Volume 5 , are also collected in Star Trek: New Adventures, Vol. 2 , which does not include Star Trek: Countdown to Darkness or Star Trek: Khan .

15. Star Trek, Vol. 7: The Khitomer Conflict

Medium: comic, issues 25 to 28 (2013)

The Enterprise is about to embark on the five-year mission into unknown space, picking up the last new crew members at a starbase, including, to the surprise of Hikaru Sulu, engineering officer Yuki Sulu, his younger sister.

On the planet Khitomer, a new Klingon colony is being set up. However, the colony is soon destroyed by Romulan warships who have acquired some technology from a third party. The Enterprise gets involved and clashes with Klingon ships that have an eerie resemblance to Nero’s Nerada.

Yuki Sulu is a new character that hasn’t appeared before in the Prime Timeline that we could find. It is unknown if her existence is caused by the creation of the Kelvin Timeline or that she just was never mentioned in the Prime Timeline.

You might remember the planet Khitomer from Prime Timeline movie Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country .

16. Star Trek, Vol. 8

Medium: comic, issues 29 to 34 (2014)

Volume 8 features three stories. In the first story, “Parallel Lives,” we follow a mission on the U.S.S. Enterprise helmed by Captain Jane Tiberius Kirk. Yes, Jane Kirk. This is a parallel universe to the Kelvin Timeline where the same things happened but everyone is gender swapped. This means that most of the main characters are now female. The story also explores whether Kirk’s contact with Khan’s blood will have repercussions in the future. Eventually, this gender-swapped crew encounters another Enterprise – the Enterprise of Captain James Tiberius Kirk.

In Star Trek Into Darkness , you might have spotted the cyborg-looking crew member on the bridge. This is Starfleet’s first and only Humanoid Mainframe Interface, Science Officer 0718. Where did he come from all of a sudden? “I, Enterprise” explains.

In “Lost Apollo,” the Enterprise’s away team gets stuck on a planet where they find a connection to NASA’s Apollo program.

The stories of Star Trek Volume 7 and Volume 8 are also collected in Star Trek: New Adventures, Vol. 3 .

17. Star Trek, Vol. 9: The Q Gambit

Medium: comic, issues 35 to 40 (2014, 2015)

This story has a lot of connections to The Next Generation era. We return to the Prime Timeline post- Star Trek: Countdown . Q visits Ambassador Jean-Luc Picard on the U.S.S. Enterprise-E. Here Q informs Picard that Spock survived and that his actions created the Kelvin Timeline. Before Q leaves, he tells Picard that Spock’s actions may have saved the Prime Timeline but might have doomed the future of the Kelvin Timeline. Then Q departs to visit the Kelvin Timeline U.S.S. Enterprise, where he takes Kirk on a trip to the Kelvin version of The Next Generation era.

18. Star Trek, Vol. 10

Medium: comic, issues 41 to 45 (2015)

In “Behemoth,” the Enterprise encounters its first alien lifeform in unknown space in a damaged ship. This unknown alien might be their only hope to stop a big threat coming their way.

In “Eurydice,” directly after the events of “Behemoth,” the Enterprise crew find themselves in the unknown space of the Delta Quadrant. Decades of travel away from home and with a low energy supply, they seemingly find help back to Federation space from female alien Eurydice.

19. Star Trek, Vol. 11

Medium: comic, issues 46 to 49 (2015)

Having found a way to get back to Federation space, tensions rise among the crew when the Enterprise gets stuck in a pocket of interphase, a state in which time and space cease to exist. Then the Enterprise gets stuck in “The Tholian Webs.” This story is a Kelvin reimagining of The Original Series  season 3 episode “The Tholian Web.”

Seeing the leadership potential in Lieutenant Sulu, Captain Kirk gives him command over an away team in “Deity.” On the planet, Sulu’s team encounter the native population during a ritual. When their deity shows up, Sulu’s team and the Enterprise have a clash with the Prime Directive.

The stories of Star Trek Volume 9: The Q Gambit , Volume 10 , and Volume 11 are also collected in Star Trek: New Adventures, Vol. 4 .

20. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy

Medium: comic (2015, 2016)

In 2258, the U.S.S. Enterprise crew are cadets at Starfleet Academy. When Cadet Uhura picks up a distress signal from the U.S.S. Slayton, she calls in some help from the other members of the would-be crew. However, when she gets close to the origin of the signal, Uhura gets stonewalled from further investigation, and the trail goes cold.

Three years later, in 2261, Vulcan Cadet T’laan wants to leave Starfleet Academy as she feels out of place. Her professor persuades her to stay to compete in the Starfleet Academy team in the Centennial Competition between academies from throughout the Federation, commemorating the 100th anniversary of Starfleet Academy. She joins a team consisting of the Andorian Shev, the Monchezkin K’bentayr, and the humans Lucia Gonzales and Grace Chen. During the competition this team also comes across the distress signal of the U.S.S. Slayton and start their own investigation.

21. Star Trek, Vol. 12

Medium: comic, issues 50 to 54 (2015, 2016)

“Live Evil” finds its inspiration in The Original Series season 2 episode “Mirror, Mirror.” When the Enterprise gets caught in an ion storm everything seems normal afterwards, until the Enterprise encounters a planet that hails them as the Imperial flagship. When Kirk leads an away team to the surface, they encounter no other than Khan Noonien Singh, man of peace.

Remember Uhura’s Orion roommate at Starfleet Academy, Gaila, with whom Kirk had a fling in Star Trek ? She is the central character in “Reunion.” When the Enterprise rendezvous with the U.S.S. Tereshkova, Gaila visits her red shirt brother Kai on the Enterprise. All seems fine until Gaila and Kai’s past comes knocking.

22. Star Trek, Vol. 13

Medium: comic, issues 55 to 60 (2016)

“Legacy of Spock: celebrates both the 50th anniversary of Star Trek as well as the late Leonard Nimoy. Set after Prime Spock attended the promotion of James T. Kirk to captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise, he intends to join the remainder of the Vulcan species. However, Spock’s father, Sarek, warns him that he should prepare for a cold greeting. The Vulcans want to resettle on the planet Ceti Alpha V, which causes Spock to speak up, as he very well knows that this planet soon will be a desolate place, as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan showed us. Meanwhile, Romulan elements see this as the opportune moment to snuff out the Vulcans…

The series finale of the ongoing Star Trek comic is “Connection.” In this story, both the Kelvin Timeline Enterprise crew and the Prime Timeline Enterprise crew encounter the same anomaly. This causes the minds of crewmembers to swap bodies. The only solution is for both crews to work together in both timelines.

23. Star Trek: Manifest Destiny

Medium: comic (2016)

This four-issue story, written by Mike Johnson and Ryan Parrott, is the final one before  Star Trek Beyond . The Enterprise encounters a rogue and very aggressive Klingon faction. The Enterprise is on red alert as the Klingons attempt to board the ship. If this situation isn’t defused quickly, war with the Klingon Empire is a high possibility.

24. Star Trek Beyond

Medium: movie (2016)

In 2263, after almost three years into the USS Enterprise’s five-year mission, the Enterprise visits the Federation Starbase Yorktown. When an escape pod is found drifting at a nearby nebula, the Enterprise investigates. The pod’s occupant, Kalara, claims her ship is stranded on the planet Altamid, located past the dangerous and unexplored nebula. When the Enterprise travels to the planet, they are greeted by a powerful, hostile force.

Unlike the previous two movies, Star Trek Beyond is directed by Justin Lin. Writing duties also changed, as Simon Pegg co-wrote the movie with Doug Jung. While Pegg reprises the role of Scotty, Jung also has a role in the movie. He plays Sulu’s husband, Ben, whom we meet on the Starbase Yorktown along with their daughter. While their daughter remains unnamed in the movie, it is possible that she is the Kelvin Timeline version of Demora Sulu, who we saw in the Prime Timeline movie Star Trek: Generations .

There is a black lining to the movie, as two stars from the series died before release. Leonard Nimoy fell into a coma on February 25, 2015, and died February 27, 2015, at the age of 83 of complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Star Trek Beyond was dedicated to Nimoy.

Anton Yelchin died in June 2016, at the age of just 27. Star Trek Beyond was the first project of his that was released posthumously, and one of a number of projects dedicated to him. An “in memoriam” was included in Star Trek issue 60.

Released in the year of Star Trek ’s 50th Anniversary, there are multiple hints to the past of the franchise. The movie starts on the 966th day of the U.S.S. Enterprise’s five-year mission, a reference to 1966, the year that Star Trek: The Original Series first premiered on television screens. It also means the five-year mission is almost three years underway, which might be a reference to the three live-action seasons the show got. In the movie, Kirk says that the mission has begun to feel “episodic” – a reference to the episodic nature of The Original Series . Throughout the movie, you will see exactly 50 different new alien makeups, which was rewarded with a Oscar nomination for Best Makeup.

The passing of Leonard Nimoy is addressed in the movie, as Spock learns of the news. Among Prime Spock’s possessions is a picture of the Prime Timeline Enterprise crew. The U.S.S. Franklin and its crew are not only a call back to the Star Trek: Enterprise era, but the Franklin’s registry number NX-326 is also a reference to Leonard Nimoy’s birthday of March 26th. When Kirk asks Sulu if he can fly the Franklin, he responds with “Are you kidding me?” The line is delivered with the same expression and tone as George Takei’s Sulu in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country . The name Franklin is also a reference to director Justin Lin’s father, Frank Lin. On the dedication plaque, there is a little bit of space left between “Frank” and “Lin.”

While we are on the subject of Lin’s family, his son, Oqwe Lin, is briefly seen as a green alien child when the Enterprise enters the Starbase Yorktown. The name “Yorktown” is also a reference, as Gene Roddenberry’s early script treatments for The Original Series used the name “Yorktown” instead of “Enterprise” for the name of the starship.

When Scotty discusses the theories around the U.S.S. Franklin’s disappearance, one is a “giant green space hand,” a reference to The Original Series season 2 episode “Who Mourns for Adonais?” The hand can be briefly seen during the credits.

When the Enterprise crew disembarks on Starbase Yorktown, you can hear the Starbase’s communication system call out the Federation starship NCC-2893. This is the registry number of the U.S.S. Stargazer, the starship Star Trek: The Next Generation ’s Jean-Luc Picard once commanded before the Enterprise-D. At one point in the movie, Kirk says, “I ripped my shirt again.” This is a reference to the many times Kirk ripped his shirt in The Original Series . At the end of the movie, the main cast gives the iconic introductory speech used at the beginning of both Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes.

Star Trek Beyond is the fourth movie to be presented in the Barco Escape format, which seems similar to the Cinerama technique introduced in the 1950s. This technology uses three connected cinema screens to “wrap” the picture around the audience. Two screens are placed from the sides of the central screen to the left and right wall, giving a wide, panoramic experience. The Barco Escape Star Trek Beyond trailer on the Barco Escape YouTube channel gives you an idea of what this experience is like.

25. Star Trek: Boldly Go

Medium: comic (2016-)

IDW Publishing and writer Mike Johnson return with this follow-up comic series set after the majority of Star Trek Beyond . The crewmembers have been reassigned or have taken a leave from Starfleet. Kirk, McCoy, and Chekov are reassigned to the U.S.S. Endeavour, and Sulu is reassigned to the U.S.S. Concord, while Spock and Uhura are visiting New Vulcan. Scotty is teaching at Starfleet Academy in San Francisco. The cadets we met in Star Trek: Starfleet Academy return and are joined by Star Trek Beyond ’s Jaylah.

Things turn bad when the U.S.S. Endeavour picks up the survivors of an attack on the U.S.S. Concord. Sulu survived and has one eerie message from the attackers: Resistance is futile.

The first volume of Star Trek: Boldy Go , consisting of the first six issues, is available on July 25th.

Star Trek/Green Lantern Stories

IDW Publishing is known for their cross company and cross franchise crossovers. IDW and DC Comics teamed up for two of these crossovers, written by Mike Johnson, starring the cast of IDW’s Kelvin Timeline comics and DC Comics’ Green Lantern comics. The first story is called Star Trek/Green Lantern: The Spectrum War and the second Star Trek/Green Lantern: Stranger Worlds , which is a direct sequel. It features the  Green Lantern comic cast coming to the Star Trek Kelvin Timeline universe as a follow up of sorts to DC Comics event Blackest Night . Lantern rings choose new bearers amongst Star Trek characters and ignite conflict between the Federation and its enemies.

These Star Trek / Green Lantern stories are set in a diversion of the Kelvin Timeline, which happens between  Star Trek, Vol. 13 and  Star Trek Beyond .

At the moment, IDW’s Star Trek: Boldly Go comic is the torchbearer for the continuation of the Kelvin Timeline. There are talks about a fourth movie, and multiple actors, like Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto, have already signed on. Chris Hemsworth’s George Kirk might also return for the fourth movie. Producer J.J. Abrams has stated that Chekov would not be recast, but written out of the story, after the untimely death of Anton Yelchin.

But until the fourth movie comes around, we will have  Star Trek: Discovery in the Prime Timeline to take us where no one has gone before…

Read and download the full Den of Geek SDCC Special Edition magazine here!

Robbert de Koeijer

Star Trek: Mapping Out the New “Kelvin” Timeline

Star Trek superfans are sticklers for canon. Star Trek’s official lore spans centuries, from obscure millennia past to the far-flung future of the 31st century. When J.J. Abrams and his production team set out to create a new version of Star Trek in the form of the 2009 film of the same name , they knew they had to address a daunting question. How could they reinvent iconic characters like Captain Kirk , Spock , and Dr. McCoy  without trampling on decades worth of lore?

The answer to that question is the most clever conceit of the current feature film series: Rather than violate canon or create a prequel to the original show, the production team decided to create an alternate reality .

That means the new films are not a reboot of the original Star Trek. Rather, they exist in a separate yet parallel universe to the six TV shows and 10 films that came before. It may seem like a small semantic shift, but it allayed any fears Star Trek fans had that Abrams would barge his way in and obliterate 40 years of existing Trek history.

Even better, Abrams and team actually created a fictional reason for this new timeline (known now as the Kelvin Timeline) to exist, then tied it directly to events that occurred in the original timeline (aka the Prime Timeline).

So how exactly did the Kelvin Timeline come about, and what’s happened since?

Romulus Is Destroyed (Prime Year 2387)

In the year 2387, almost 20 years after the events of The Next Generation , a supernova threatened the entire galaxy. In its path was the planet Romulus , the capital of the Romulan Star Empire . Spock, whose long Vulcan lifespan allowed him to live for over 100 years after Star Trek: The Original Series , promised to help the Romulans. Armed with a substance known as red matter that could disrupt the supernova, Spock took a Vulcan ship to Romulus — but it was too late. The supernova destroyed Romulus. Spock launched the red matter anyway to stop any further destruction.

A Romulan mining ship called the Narada , commanded by a Romulan named Nero , witnessed the planet’s destruction and found Spock. Nero, enraged by the destruction of his planet and the death of his pregnant wife, blamed Spock for what happened. Both the Narada  and Spock’s ship came too close to the black hole created by the red matter. They were both sucked in, with the Narada going in first.

And that’s where the Kelvin Timeline begins…

The Narada and the Kelvin (Kelvin Year 2233)

Over 100 years earlier, in 2233, the Federation starship U.S.S. Kelvin intercepted strange readings on the Klingon border. They went to the source of the readings and found the black hole, with the Narada  emerging from it soon after. The Narada immediately attacked the Kelvin , and Nero realized that he and his entire crew had gone back in time to the 23rd century. George Kirk , the first officer aboard the Kelvin , commanded his ship after the death of his captain.

At the same time, his wife Winona gave birth to a son: James Tiberius Kirk . Only minutes after the future Captain Kirk’s birth aboard an escape shuttle, the Kelvin was destroyed, taking George Kirk with it.

It was this event that sparked the beginning of the Kelvin Timeline. The destruction of the Kelvin didn’t happen in the timeline Nero came from. George Kirk lived to old age and watched his son become captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise . By virtue of Nero’s arrival and the ripple effect it caused, history would be very different in this new universe.

Nero, meanwhile, went into exile, having calculated that because of time displacement, it would not be another 25 years until Spock arrived from the future.

Kirk and Spock Begin (Kelvin Year 2258)

The young Kirk and Spock both began their lives in a new reality. Kirk, raised without a father, became rebellious and was often in trouble with the law in Iowa. Yet he was still gifted. The half-human Spock grappled with his emotions while growing up on Vulcan. He joined Starfleet and became first officer on the Enterprise , under the command of Christopher Pike . Kirk also joined Starfleet on advice from Captain Pike.

In 2258, Nero finally captured Spock Prime. Intent on revenge, Nero used red matter to destroy Vulcan . Starfleet sent an armada, crewed largely by available cadets from Starfleet Academy, in order to find out what was happening. The Enterprise , upon which Cadet Kirk had snuck on board after he was put on academic suspension, arrived late to find the armada destroyed. Nero spared the Enterprise only because he knew the young Spock would be aboard. Pike was captured by the Romulans, but not before he placed Spock in command and appointed Kirk as first officer.

A disagreement over what to do next led Spock to abandon Kirk on a snowy world near Vulcan. Kirk met Spock Prime there and learned about what happened in the other timeline. With the help of Montgomery Scott (Scotty), who was stationed at an outpost, Kirk transported back to the Enterprise and emotionally compromised Spock, forcing him to step down as acting captain. Kirk took command and led the crew to rescue Captain Pike and destroy the Narada . Pike was promoted to Admiral, while Kirk became captain of the Enterprise .

The new crew soon set out on their mission. By that point, the other classic characters of Leonard McCoy , Nyota Uhura , Hikaru Sulu , and Pavel Chekov also joined the crew throughout the course of the mission to stop Nero.

Starfleet’s Militarization (Kelvin Years 2258-2259)

After Vulcan was destroyed, Starfleet — under the command of Admiral Alexander Marcus — began searching distant quadrants of space. Their objective was to find anything they could use to strengthen Starfleet. Not only could that prevent a future disaster like Vulcan, but Marcus also believed that war with the Klingons was imminent. He wanted that war. He wanted to win it, and he believed he was the only one who could. The militarization of Starfleet had begun.

While searching, Starfleet discovered the Botany Bay , a 20th-century spaceship from Earth that carried genetically-engineered humans. These humans, known as Augments , were led by Khan Noonien Singh . Khan and his crew had been frozen in cryosleep since the 1990s, and Marcus awoke only Khan.

Under the new identity of Commander John Harrison, Khan was forced into working for Section 31 , a covert black ops group in Starfleet, to design new weapons and ships that could benefit from Khan’s savagery. Marcus used Khan’s crew against him, but Khan eventually placed them inside the torpedoes he had built and tried to smuggle them to safety. Khan was discovered, and he was forced to flee Starfleet alone.

Khan’s Wrath (Kelvin Year 2259)

Khan believed his crew was dead, so he set out for revenge against Marcus and Starfleet. He bombed a Section 31 base in London, prompting the fleet captains and their first officers to gather in San Francisco. Among those present were Pike, Kirk, and Spock. Kirk had lost command of the Enterprise after violating the Prime Directive , and he was reassigned to be first officer under Pike, who retook command of the ship. Khan attacked the officers and killed many of them, Pike included, giving Kirk his own thirst for revenge.

Khan found refuge on the Klingon homeworld, which was where Marcus — who wanted to use this as a pretext for war — ordered Kirk to take the Enterprise to kill “John Harrison” with the torpedoes Khan had designed. Instead, Spock convinced Kirk to capture “Harrison” and return him to Earth for trial. Kirk then learned that Harrison was really Khan.

Marcus soon arrived aboard an experimental starship called the Vengeance . Never intending for Kirk to make it away from the Klingon homeworld alive, Marcus fired on the Enterprise . Kirk and Khan teamed up to space jump from the damaged Enterprise to the Vengeance , which Scotty had snuck onboard earlier and disabled. There, they could capture Marcus and rescue his daughter, Carol Marcus , a member of the Enterprise crew.

Once aboard, Khan betrayed Kirk, killed Admiral Marcus, and demanded that Spock beam the Augment-filled torpedoes to the Vengeance . Once Spock did so, Khan returned the Enterprise crew members and opened fire. The Enterprise was critically damaged, but Spock played his trump card: He detonated the torpedoes in the Vengeance launch bay, after having Dr. McCoy remove the Augments while they were still on the Enterprise. The Enterprise nearly crashed before Kirk sacrificed his life to save the ship, while Khan crashed the dying Vengeance into the heart of San Francisco.

Spock, enraged at the death of Kirk, chased Khan through San Francisco. McCoy, meanwhile, realized that Khan’s blood had regenerative properties that could return Kirk to life. Uhura transported to San Francisco, where she convinced Spock to capture Khan instead of killing him. Kirk returned to life because of the blood, while Khan was placed into cryosleep once again. One year later, the refitted Enterprise was assigned a new journey: a five-year mission to explore where no one has gone before.

The Five-Year Mission (Kelvin Year 2263)

WARNING: Major Plot Spoilers for Star Trek Beyond Follow!

After spending so much time in deep space, the crew of the Enterprise  became listless. Even Captain Kirk, always the adventurer, thought things were getting a little too routine. A stop at a space station called Yorktown , though, gave them a new mission: rescuing a crew stranded on a planet cloaked inside a nebula . The Enterprise traveled to this strange new world only to be immediately attacked and destroyed by a crew of drone ships. Kirk was the last person to depart the ship, watching the saucer of the Enterprise crash onto the surface from his escape pod.

With most of the crew captured by the leader of the drone swarm, a mysterious alien warrior named Krall , Kirk and the others who weren’t captured regrouped and find their crewmates with the help of a stranded warrior named Jaylah . They ended up boarding the crashed remains of a 22nd-century starship called the USS Franklin , that disappeared in the early 2160s and was never heard from again. The crew repaired the Franklin , which Jaylah had been working on for several years after making the ship her home, and rescued the rest of their crew.

It was then that they learned the truth: Krall was actually Balthazar Eddison, the captain of the Franklin , who had used alien technology to keep himself alive — at the cost of extreme physical mutation. And he had a beef with the Federation: He was a soldier in the Xindi War and the Earth-Romulan War , who felt he was forgotten when peace was achieved and the Federation never rescued his crew. For a century, Krall searched for an ancient artifact known as the Abronath that could power a bioweapon from the planet, and he attacked the Enterprise once he learned it was aboard.

Flying the Franklin , Kirk and his crew followed Krall to Yorktown, where Krall intended to unleash the bioweapon against millions of Federation citizens. Kirk defeated Krall, who was sucked into space and killed. Through his dealings with Krall, who had a similar identity crisis, Kirk came to remember that being a starship captain was his first, best destiny, and that he lived for the adventure with his crew. The crew was given a new starship, the USS Enterprise-A , and they resumed their five-year mission to explore where no one has gone before.

Star Trek Beyond is in theaters now.

Star Trek: The Kelvin Timeline, Explained

The latest run of Star Trek movies, starting in 2009, gave rise to a whole new timeline in the canon. Here's what that means within the franchise.

Star Trek first graced the small screen way back in the late 1960s, and since then it has been a staple in the science fiction adventure genre. Over the years it has not only come up with some of the most incredible depictions of what further lies ahead for mankind, but also influenced modern day technology . This all came to a rather disappointing stop, however, back in 2005 when the Star Trek: Enterprise went off the air, leaving a large void for the first time in years. Eager to bring Star Trek back into popular culture and re-invigorate the franchise Paramount Pictures set about creating not only a new, never seen before action adventure Star Trek film, but to create an entirely new timeline: The Kelvin Timeline.

Paramount wanted a prequel film, showing what led Captain James T. Kirk and the much loved, much memed, Spock to where audiences see them in The Original Series. Screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci were hired to create this story, but they quickly ran into conceptual problems. Their biggest problem was that audiences already knew the story of these characters and what happens to them. Unless purely new people were watching the film, there would not be the same amount of drama or suspense, especially when they know how these characters die (and thus know that they don’t die in the new film). The other issue was that Kirk’s life before the events of The Original Series were not particularly film-worthy. That's not to say they were not interesting or exciting, but there wasn’t much canonically there to explore.

RELATED: Star Trek: The Klingon Language, Explained

Keeping to the canon was something Kurtzman and Orci were especially interested in. They had an opportunity to rewrite the story, make changes here and there that broke with the history Star Trek had established so well over the years. Instead, they decided to do something interesting, and use time travel to create a whole new timeline . With this device, they were able to incorporate new and fresh ideas and narrative, but left the original “prime” timeline in place. This is one of the main story elements of the 2009 film Star Trek , which starts in the year 2380 in, interestingly, the “prime” timeline. This is the same universe audiences know and love, the one that gave them heartbreaking moments on DS9 , and the enigmatically wonderful Captain Picard.

The Romulan sun is about to go supernova, which would destroy not only Romulus, but countless other nearby worlds. Cutting a long story short, Ambassador Spock used a red matter device to stop the disaster, but he failed to save the home world, leading him to be chased and attacked by a lone Romulan mining ship, the Narada, captained by a Romulan named Nero. This is where things start to get complicated. During the chase, the two get caught in the gravitation pull of a black hole, which flings them back in time to the year 2233, over 150 years in the past. Being a Romulan , Nero, despite his confusion, seeks out and attacks the nearest Federation ship, which just so happened to be the U.S.S. Kelvin, captained by none other than First Officer George Kirk — James T. Kirk's father. In an effort to save the countless shuttles escaping the destruction wrought by Nero, which included a shuttle containing the newborn James Kirk and his mother, George Kirk sacrifices his ship. As the Kelvin is destroyed, it sets about the start of the new timeline, named in honor of the ships' sacrifice.

From this point onwards, things follow a fairly similar chain of events to those who know the “prime” timeline, but things are all slightly different. Audiences are shown a different Kirk, one who is rebellious, and far away from the fairly conventional pre-enterprise Kirk mentioned earlier. Bar fights and stolen car joyrides are a few of his newfound hobbies, but as things progress, the old Kirk attitude comes through. Eventually he finds himself fighting alongside Starfleet (after a bit of fibbing) aboard the iconic USS Enterprise . Yet despite his similar trajectory, there are bigger differences in the wider universe. One of these, which came as a shock to many first time viewers, was that the 2009 film ended with the destruction of Vulcan by the hands of Nero as penance for the destruction of his own home world, having blamed Spock.

The similarities and differences continue into the second film Star Trek: Into Darkness where audiences are introduced (or perhaps re-introduced) to the one and only Khan Noonien Singh. In the prime timeline, Kirk is the one who awakens him from the cryogenic stasis, and starts a whole series of events that end in one of the best Star Trek films ever made, The Wrath of Khan. However, in the Kelvin timeline, it is Admiral Alexander Marcus who wakes Khan from his slumber.

After the destruction of Vulcan, Starfleet is no longer the same utopian Starfleet audiences have grown to know and love ( ignoring their problematic tendencies ) from the previous iterations into the franchise. It had adopted a much more militaristic persona, breeding warlike minds like that of Admiral Marcus. In secret, he blackmails the reawakened Khan to help develop powerful weaponry, as well as warships for the federation. Audiences are treaded to the same characters and baseline story, but from the perspective of an all new timeline.

The Kelvin timeline is rather hit-and-miss among fans of the Star Trek franchise. Some like to ignore its existence, but in a way that’s exactly what the writers wanted. They wanted to retell a story that everyone knew and do it differently, all without breaking the well-respected canon that fans have grown so attached to. Creating the Kelvin timeline was a stroke of genius in a way, and while not being directly linked to the “prime” timeline, the films have still influenced proceeding additions to the franchise. The destruction of Romulan, an event that the 2009 Star Trek states takes place ion the “prime” timeline, plays as major context to the events of 2020s Picard . The Kelvin timeline is a great example of how one small event can cause major ripples within the universe, changing events to near unrecognizable levels, all while producing four ( to count the upcoming 2023 film ) half-decent Star Trek films.

MORE: How Star Trek: The Next Generation Explored Blindness & Accessibility With Geordi LaForge

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Published May 31, 2023

Kelvin Timeline Counterparts

A look at six alternate timeline versions of notable Prime Universe characters!

StarTrek.com

In addition to the U.S.S. Enterprise ’s core crew, the Kelvin Timeline featured alternate versions of several notable characters who were previously seen in the Prime Universe…

Christopher Pike

After recruiting James T. Kirk into Starfleet, Christopher Pike became a mentor-like figure to both Kirk and Spock . Pike captained the U.S.S. Enterprise during its mission to investigate Nero ’s attack on Vulcan, entrusting his starship to Spock and Kirk when he surrendered himself to his Romulan counterpart. In the wake of that incident, Pike was promoted to admiral and Kirk inherited the Enterprise ’s center seat.

A Prime Directive violation resulted in Kirk being demoted, so Pike once again found himself in command of the Enterprise . Before he could resume that post, Pike was murdered by John Harrison, better known as Khan Noonien Singh , as the 20th Century tyrant assaulted Starfleet Headquarters. Pike’s death struck Kirk and Spock particularly hard, leading them to relentlessly pursue Khan.

Much like his Prime peer, Kelvin Sarek served as Vulcan’s ambassador to Earth, where he met and married Amanda Grayson. Tension marred Sarek’s relationship with his son Spock to a certain extent, as other Vulcans tended to view both Grayson and Spock with a bit of disdain. Sarek sat on the Vulcan Science Academy panel when Spock turned down the opportunity to be admitted to the institution.

Spock managed to rescue Sarek just before Nero’s mining vessel destroyed Vulcan, making the father and son two of the very few survivors who had escaped their homeworld’s demise. With Spock emotionally compromised after his mother’s death, Sarek sought to comfort his son, revealing that he, the ever stoic Vulcan ambassador, had always loved his wife.

Amanda Grayson

Always supportive of Spock, Amanda Grayson supplied her son with the human affection that he did not receive from his father. Grayson’s ancestry often became a target for bullies who wished to taunt Spock, as they knew their words would provoke him to anger. Much as Kirk lost his father in the Kelvin Timeline, Spock witnessed Amanda as she fell to her death during the evacuation of Vulcan.

Thrust into the captain’s chair, Spock needed to both command the Enterprise and process his mother’s passing. When Kirk disagreed with Spock’s decision to regroup with the fleet, he exploited the half-Vulcan’s pain as a means to relieve Spock from his duty. The act clearly made Kirk uncomfortable, but his intentions were noble and the two eventually put the incident behind them. To demonstrate his feelings for Nyota Uhura , Spock gifted her with a vokaya amulet that had belonged to Grayson.

Carol Marcus

Unlike Prime Carol, who often felt suspicious toward Starfleet, the Kelvin Timeline’s Carol Marcus actually joined the interstellar organization as a science officer and expert in advanced weaponry. Curious about a secret project her father was working on, Marcus snuck aboard the Enterprise while utilizing her mother’s maiden name. Marcus’ specialization paid off, as she worked with Dr. McCoy to disarm a long-range torpedo, soon discovering that her father had hidden one of Khan’s followers inside it.

Admiral Marcus beamed Carol aboard the U.S.S. Vengeance as he prepared to eliminate the Enterprise and its crew. Ashamed of her father’s actions, Carol voiced her dissent and was present when Kirk, Montgomery Scott, and Khan commandeered the Vengeance ’s bridge. A year after Khan was captured, Carol officially joined the Enterprise ’s bridge crew as the starship embarked on its five-year mission, though she was not present during the vessel’s visit to Starbase Yorktown.

Although Finnegan aggravated and teased James T. Kirk at Starfleet Academy in the Prime Universe, Kelvin’s Finnegan had a more serious demeanor. Commander Finnegan operated out of Starbase Yorktown, where he coordinated the massive space station’s defenses. Finnegan was present when a mysterious vessel emerged from the Necro Cloud Nebula, as well as when Krall’s armada of swarm ships launched their ambush against Yorktown. Once Kirk and his crew determined that they could disrupt the link between Krall’s ships, Finnegan followed their lead and amplified the raucous broadcast, playing a valuable role in defeating the enemy fleet.

Christine Chapel

Originally a nurse in Enterprise ’s sickbay, Christine Chapel assisted Dr. McCoy as he treated James T. Kirk while the ship made its way to Vulcan in 2258. A failed romance between Chapel and Kirk prompted the nurse to request a transfer to a post on the outer frontier. Interestingly, Chapel was also friends with Carol Marcus, though the nurse was never actually seen on-screen in any of the Kelvin Timeline films.

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Jay Stobie (he/him) is a freelance writer, author, and consultant who has contributed articles to StarTrek.com, Star Trek Explorer, and Star Trek Magazine, as well as to Star Wars Insider and StarWars.com. Learn more about Jay by visiting JayStobie.com or finding him on Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms at @StobiesGalaxy.

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Captain James T Kirk-Kelvin Timeline , Enterprise- A , NCC-1701-A , Romulans , Spock , Star Trek 2009 , Star Trek Beyond , Star Trek Into Darkness , Tribbles - December 22, 2020

JAMES T. KIRK STAR TREK PERSONNEL FILE (ALTERNATE/KELVIN TIMELINE)

Updated 2-12-2022

James T. Kirk was best known as the Captain of the USS Enterprise and USS Enterprise-A and for defeating Nero and Khan who were enemies of Starfleet and the Federation.

Destruction of the USS Kelvin

The USS Kelvin under the command of Captain Richard Robau and his first officer Lieutenant Commander George Kirk, father of James Kirk. Were 75,000 kilometers from the Federation-Klingon border when attacked by unknown aggressors after a black hole was created by the detonation of a red matter device in 2387. This detonation altered the timeline, sending 2 space crafts back in time creating an alternate reality. The Narada , a Romulan mining vessel emerged first and attacked the USS Kelvin and under the lure of negotiation, they murdered Captain Robau.

The Kelvin was heavily damaged by the attack and young Kirk, now in command ordered the crew to abandon the ship. As this was happening, his wife Winona was giving birth to the future Captain, James T. Kirk. Disaster struck when the ship’s auto-destruct was damaged. Now unable to use it to ram the Kelvin into the Narada to give the life pods a chance to escape, Kirk decided to remain at the helm and sacrifice his life to save his crew, his wife and his newly born infant son, which they name James Tiberius Kirk.

Kirk grew up rebellious and without direction because of the loss of his father. His mother, Winona remarried, and settled in Iowa, in the Midwest of America on Earth. When Kirk was a pre-teen he stole his Fathers classic antique 1965 Chevy Corvette convertible, (that his Step-Father now claimed) and  recklessly drove through the countryside, engaging in a high-speed chase with the local police before ditching the car as it went over a cliff, nearly killing the young Kirk.

At age twenty-two Kirk was known for being a rule-breaker and a bar brawler, he was doing exactly that after meeting Nyota Uhura and impressing her despite his romantic advances with his knowledge of xenolinguistics. Taking on three Starfleet Cadets, Kirk was overwhelmed and then saved by the entrance of Captain Christopher Pike. Pike knew Kirk through his dissertation on the USS Kelvin. He told Kirk that he was "the only genius-level repeat offender in the Midwest" and that he could do better. He challenged him saying he could apply himself and make captain in eight years. Kirk contemplated his future on his Father’s PX70 motorcycle and then drove on to the grounds of the Riverside Shipyard, his mind made up. He gave his bike to one of the workers, and approached Pike, telling him that he would graduate in three years, not four. Onboard the shuttle, Kirk meets Leonard McCoy, a medical doctor, who is recently divorced saying his ex-wife had taken the planet in their divorce. They share a drink as the ship takes off.

Three years later Kirk confidently tells McCoy that he is taking the Kobayashi Maru test again. McCoy is shocked at Kirk’s confidence and cockiness. No one passes the test or even repeats it three times. Kirk left to “study”, which to Kirk meant meeting up with an Orion cadet named Gaila in her dorm room. They were interrupted by Uhura who had returned from decoding a message from the Klingons about 47 battlecruisers being destroyed near a prison planet. She undressed unknowingly in front of a hidden Kirk. Then she deducted from her roommate's behavior that she had yet another male companion in the room. She discovered Kirk and angrily threw him out of the room.

The next day Kirk’s cockiness in the simulation took on comedic proportions. Eating an apple, Kirk calmly gave orders as the test simulated an unwinnable situation. It was supposed to test a cadet's discipline and command capabilities when facing an impossible situation, and ultimately test their character while faced with a situation where there was no successful outcome. However, the program seemed to glitch, allowing Kirk to win, thus negating the test’s purpose.

Overseeing this test is Spock, a Vulcan, who is puzzled how the test failed.

Vulcan Attacked

 An inquiry due to the suspicious nature of Kirk’s win against the Kobayashi Maru is convened. Kirk demanded to know his accuser, and it was Spock. He had found evidence that Kirk had entered a subroutine into the computer making it possible for him to win the Kobayashi Maru simulation. The hearing was interrupted by the news that the Federation had received a distress call from Vulcan. The bulk of the fleet was occupied in the Laurentian system, so Starfleet was forced to commission the Academy cadets in this emergency situation. They dispatched the cadets to their ships immediately to begin a rescue mission. Cadets were assigned based on their aptitude, the best being sent to the USS Enterprise, the newest ship in the fleet. Uhura was assigned to the USS Farragut, which she found to be in error. She went to Spock to have this corrected. Kirk was not assigned, as he had been grounded due to the inquiry. McCoy, being a good friend, gave Kirk a vaccine that caused a severe reaction. Using the excuse that he had to continue the care of Kirk, they boarded the Enterprise. After hearing Ensign Pavel Chekov's ship-wide mission broadcast that they were headed to Vulcan to investigate reports of a lightning storm in space as well as seismic disturbances on Vulcan that may require evacuation, Kirk deduced that those who killed his father were back. He raced to the bridge to confirm this with Uhura, despite further injections to cease his now allergic reaction that distorted his hands and face. He was finally able to communicate with Uhura who confirmed his suspicions.

The Enterprise emerged from warp into a debris field of the seven Starfleet ships that had just been destroyed. They discovered the Narada had deployed a rig which is now drilling into the planet Vulcan. The Narada attacked and heavily damaged the Enterprise. Nero ceased the attack when he discovered that the ship was the Enterprise. Nero casually greeted a startled Pike. He ordered him to board a shuttlecraft to discuss a cessation of violence. Before he left, Pike asked the crew for men trained in advanced hand to hand combat. Sulu and Kirk affirmed that they were. He ordered Spock to accompany him along with Sulu and Kirk as he went to depart the ship. He promoted Spock to captain and made Kirk first officer, much to the chagrin of Spock. While the shuttle was departing for the Narada, Kirk, Sulu, and Chief Engineer Olson would jump to the drill platform to disable it and restore contact with Starfleet and the ability to transport as it was being actively blocked by the drilling platform. They jumped, starting their orbital skydive. Olson seeking further thrills failed to pull his chute at 2,000 ft and died after a strong wind gust drove him under the platform and into the beam that was drilling into the planet.

On the platform, Sulu and Kirk engaged with two members of Nero’s crew, defeating them and destroying the platform, but not in time. The damage was done and Nero dropped red matter into the hole causing a black hole to form inside Vulcan’s core. The planet would be destroyed in minutes. Kirk called for Sulu and him to be beamed up, but at that same moment, Nero had the platform recalled, which jolted Sulu and he fell off. Kirk leapt off and caught Sulu but the drag on his chute caused it to break off. At the last second, after running from the bridge, Chekov succeeded in pinpointing their location and beamed them to the Enterprise, where Spock told Kirk he was going to save the Vulcan Council, including his parents. Spock managed to reach them but his mother fell before the transporter could lock on to her, and she perished. The crew of the Enterprise watched helplessly as Vulcan was consumed by a black hole.

Spock and Kirk quickly came to blows over the correct course of action, to find Nero and fight or rejoin with the Fleet. Kirk wouldn't give up ground so Spock incapacitated him with a Vulcan nerve pinch and sent him in an escape pod to a snow-covered Delta Vega.

Spock and defeating Nero

Kirk found the planet’s animals not very hospitable but before he was consumed by one, an elderly Vulcan intercedes. It was Spock. Not the Spock of this universe, but one who traveled from the prime universe by accident because he had ejected red matter into a supernova that he had been unable to save the planet Romulus from. The red matter and the black hole had ruptured time and space sending Spock and Nero into the past. Nero's ship, the Narada was thrown over 150 years into the past while Spock arrived 25 years after Nero did. Nero was waiting and marooned him to let him watch helplessly as Vulcan was destroyed.

Kirk explained what had happened and that Spock was captain of the Enterprise, not Kirk. Spock then deduced that the universes were altered and split off by the destruction of the USS Kelvin and the death of Kirk’s father.

They journeyed to a Starfleet base where they met Montgomery Scott, an engineering genius who was exiled after he beamed Admiral Archer’s prized beagle into parts unknown. They formed a plan to beam onto the Enterprise using Scott’s transwarp beaming theory. Before going, Spock gave Kirk the key to defeating the younger Vulcan...elicit an emotional response. They successfully beamed aboard the Enterprise and Kirk used Spock’s mother to attain his goal of getting Spock to lose control of his emotions. Kirk was beaten savagely by Spock until his father, Sarek stepped in to stop him and Spock stepped down with Kirk assuming command of the Enterprise. The Enterprise then caught up to the Narada and beamed aboard it. Spock found the elder Spock’s ship and inspected it. He discovered the truth about the elderly Vulcan when the ship identified him as the captain.

Kirk retrieved Pike and they escaped by tricking Nero’s second in command and blasting him point-blank with his own weapon. Kirk gave Nero and his crew the chance to surrender, but they refused and the ship was destroyed, causing another black hole to form because of the escaped Red Matter. Scott ejected the warp cores which countered the black hole’s pull saving the Enterprise, Earth and the Federation from Nero.

Upon return, Kirk was commissioned as an officer in the United Federation of Planets Starfleet with the serial number SC937-0176CEC. Making good on his boast to graduate in three years. He was given command of the USS Enterprise and Spock joined him as his first officer.

A year later Kirk was demoted after violating the Prime Directive on Nibiru by saving Spock but exposing a pre-warp civilization to the Enterprise, believing it to be a god. Facing the possibility of having to return to the academy and losing command of the Enterprise, Kirk drowned his sorrows at a bar. Pike found him and informed him that he would be assuming command and that Kirk would be reduced in rank to Commander and be his First Officer.

The two were ordered to attend a summit regarding the bombing of the Kelvin Memorial Archive in London. The perpetrator was a rogue commander named John Harrison. As Kirk analyzed the surveillance of Harrison at the debris site and questioned why Harrison would bomb an archive for the information he needed he then realized what was about to happen. Harrison would be aware of Starfleet protocol. That such an attack would require a meeting like this one where all of Starfleet's top brass were assembled. Harrison then attacked the meeting with a small gunship. Kirk was able to disable the ship he was using but Khan beamed away. When Kirk returned to the devastated meeting room, his friend and mentor Christopher Pike had been killed in the attack.

Kirk was informed that Harrison had used a portable transwarp beaming device to escape to Qo'noS, the homeworld of the Klingon Empire. He was promoted to Captain and Spock to his first officer, and given orders to hunt Harrison down.

Marcus gave the Enterprise seventy-two advanced long-range torpedoes to bombard Harrison's location from orbit, however, the warp core broke down. They disguised themselves as K'normian arms dealers, to find Harrison using a confiscated  K'normian trading ship. They find Klingons and then Harrison after the Klingons attempted to kill a negotiating Uhura. Harrison dispatched all the Klingons and then surrendered to Kirk. During interrogation, he admited that he wasn't Harrison but the infamous Khan Noonien Singh from the Augment Wars. He advised Kirk to examine one of the 72 torpedoes Admiral Marcus had given the Enterprise. They contained Khan’s fellow soldiers from the war and in cryosleep. Marcus had been holding them hostage. Marcus confronted the Enterprise from the USS Vengenace, a Dreadnought-class ship, demanding that Khan be handed over, but Kirk defied the Admiral saying Khan should be brought back to Earth to stand trial. He ordered Sulu to take the Enterprise to Earth. The Enterprise could not outrun the Vengeance though which fired, knocking the Enterprise out of warp near Earth and its moon. Marcus made it clear that the Enterprise would be taken out to preserve his conspiracy. He beamed his daughter to the Vengeance. Kirk and Khan ally to take down Marcus. They don suits and infiltrate the Vengeance. Khan easily deals with the opposing forces due to his superior strength. They confront Marcus and Khan kills him after Scott (who had hidden aboard the Vengeance) was unable to stun Khan. Khan demanded the torpedoes with his soldiers to be turned over to him. Spock complied but returned only the torpedoes and not the men in cryo. Khan returned Carol Marcus, Scott, and Kirk to the Enterprise as part of the deal but then turned on the Enterprise, continuing to heavily damage the ship. Spock ordered the torpedoes detonated, which crippled the Vengeance and sent a huge shockwave that pushed both ships into the pull of Earth’s gravity. Kirk and Scott reached the Enterprise's warp core and see the problem is easily fixed if they had the time or a radiation suit. Kirk, knowing it’s certain death, knocks Scott out and repaired the warp drive, saving the Enterprise. Scott awoke and called Spock, who found Kirk dying where he displayed the Vulcan salute to Spock and died from radiation poisoning.

McCoy had experimented with Khan’s blood with a tribble earlier, it too had been exposed and died but had come back. Realizing that Khan’s blood was the key to saving James Kirk, they quickly capture the crashed Khan and revive him. Kirk would wake up 2 weeks later.

The Altamid Mission

Kirk would command the Enterprise through 3 years, finding the life to be “episodic” and not as fulfilling as he once did. On the eve of his 30 th birthday, entering a year older than his father was when he died, Kirk felt lost on why he was a part of Starfleet. When a rescue mission was offered, he took up the opportunity and volunteered. It was a trap. The Enterprise was badly damaged by a swarm of ships tearing it apart. Kirk realized that the goal of these aggressors was to capture a dismantled artifact weapon. Kirk saw that the Enterprise was on the brink of destruction so he handed the artifact off to Ensign Syl and ordered the Enterprise to have its saucer section detach to save the crew. The saucer descended to the planet Altamid below and crashed. The crew discovered that the trap was laid by Kalara and Krall, both of whom were human crew members of the USS Franklin in the 22 nd century during the period of the  Romulan and Xindi wars. They had come across artifact technology that mutated them but allowed them to keep extending their lives. Krall was bent on destroying the Federation, having gone insane. He had acquired the artifact weapon, restored it, and planned to use it at the nearby Starbase, the Yorktown. Kirk tracked him down on the Yorktown to the ventilation hub before he could release the bioweapon. Kirk opened an airlock flushing the weapon, Krall, and almost Kirk into the void of space. He was rescued by Spock and McCoy just before he was sucked out. Kirk found retrospection on why he wanted to remain in Starfleet and continued his mission on the brand new USS Enterprise-A.

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George Samuel Kirk, Sr. (Kelvin timeline)

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George Samuel Kirk, Sr. was a noted Human Starfleet officer in the 23rd century , serial number SA-733-9624-AM. ( TOS website  : Starfleet Shipyard )

Biography [ ]

George was born in 2202 , in Riverside , Iowa on Earth 's North American continent, the youngest son of Tiberius Kirk . He also had one elder brother, James Kirk . ( TOS movie : Star Trek , TOS novels : The Motion Picture , Best Destiny , Past Prologue , Time for Yesterday , Enterprise: The First Adventure , Final Frontier , TOS website  : Starfleet Shipyard )

His paternal grandfather was Samuel Abraham Kirk , who served as the ship's historian aboard the USS Pioneer , one of the first Federation Starfleet vessels, in the 2160s . ( ENT - Rise of the Federation novel : A Choice of Futures )

George Kirk did not believe in the "no-win scenario", something in which his youngest son would develop a belief. ( ST website  : StarTrek.com )

Kirk eventually enlisted in Starfleet, truly believing in the organization's humanitarian and peaceful goals. ( TOS movie : Star Trek Beyond )

In the mid- 2220s , Kirk was a midshipman on the working trader ship Alexandria . Several years later, he met a young woman named Winona . They were married in 2229 . ( TOS novels : The Great Starship Race , Final Frontier )

Married life was an adventure for the young couple, but once Winona became pregnant they looked for a place to raise their family. They bought a farm in the small town of Riverside , Iowa , though most of the farming would be done under lease by their Amish neighbors. Most household duties fell to Winona, as George still served in Starfleet as a security officer and was away from Earth for long periods. ( TOS novels : Final Frontier , Best Destiny )

Despite this the Kirks still managed to start a family. George Samuel Kirk, Jr. , their elder son, was born on 12 August 2230 . ( ENT novel : Last Full Measure ; TOS novel : Enterprise: The First Adventure ) Later that same year, the USS Kelvin made first contact with the Roylan people, with Kirk as part of the delegation, his first time as part of a first contact. When the shuttle experienced mechanical issues, the away team was approached by Keenser who had pinpointed the problem. As such, Keenser was invited with them back to the Kelvin. On the ride up he experienced space sickness, which George was nothing compared to the training he'd have to go through. ( TOS comic : " IDW Star Trek, Issue 14 ")

By 2233 , George was a lieutenant commander in Starfleet , and had become first officer aboard the Kelvin . He was killed that year, just seconds after the birth of his second son, James T. Kirk , when he made a suicide run against the Narada with the otherwise abandoned Kelvin . At the moment of impact, he managed to activate his ship's warp drive , atomizing his craft, though the resulting warp field managed to crippled the Narada and allowing the shuttles time to evacuate. ( TOS movie : Star Trek & TOS - Nero comic : " Number One ")

In light of his sacrifice, George Kirk came to be honored and revered as a great hero, with both Christopher Pike and Garth of Izar being inspired by him, the latter even considering his own heroics to be superfluous in light of George's. ( TOS movie : Star Trek & TOS - Boldly Go comic : " Issue 11 ")

Circa 2258 , George Kirk, Jr. kept a hologram of his parents in his home on Deneva . ( TOS comic : " Operation: Annihilate!, Part 2 ")

The following year , James Kirk remembered his father's voice and sacrifice while being resurrected with Khan Noonien Singh 's blood. ( TOS movie : Star Trek Into Darkness )

Four years later, James would reflect that his upcoming birthday meant he would be older than his father had been upon his death. McCoy believed this was an indicator that James had thought so highly of his father that he'd unconsciously emulated him to the point of being unsure of his own identity. ( TOS movie : Star Trek Beyond )

Alternate timelines [ ]

In a permutation of the mirror universe , George sacrificed himself to protect the crew of the ISS Kelvin from the Narada . He was avenged by his younger son snapping Nero 's neck. ( TOS - Mirrored comic : " Part 1 ")

In a timeline populated by members of the opposite sex, "George" sacrificed herself to ensure the safety of the Kelvin shuttles, the act inspiring her daughter, Jane Tiberia Kirk , to follow her example. Jane kept a holo-image of her mother on her desk for inspiration. ( TOS - Parallel Lives comic : " Part 1 ")

In another timeline, George never served on the USS Kelvin and survived long enough to take command of the USS Enterprise . As the ship was engaged in battle, Gary Mitchell allowed James Kirk a glimpse into that reality. ( TOS - IDIC comic : " Part 5 ")

External link [ ]

• George Samuel Kirk, Sr. (Kelvin timeline) article at Memory Alpha , the wiki for canon Star Trek .
• 1 Ferengi Rules of Acquisition
• 2 The Chase
• 3 Preserver (race)

New Star Trek Prequel Movie Is Officially Official, Andor And Black Mirror Director Confirmed

Captain's Log: Stardate 2024. It's been eight years since the USS Enterprise's last voyage on the big screen, with the franchise having since returned to its roots on television. During that period, the property has proliferated thanks to an influx of streaming series that's included everything from a "Next Generation" reunion to a raunchy cartoon and a wonderfully silly musical episode . But through it all, the question has lingered: when will Trekkies get to undertake another mission painted on the largest canvas available?

It's not been for lack of effort on Paramount's part. Ever since the commercial disappointment of 2016's "Star Trek Beyond" brought the escapades of the Kelvin Universe film series to a halt, the studio has cycled through one filmmaker after another in its quest to get "Star Trek" up and running in theaters once more. Most recently, it turned to "Black Mirror" director Toby Haynes to helm a new chapter based on a script by "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" and "The LEGO Batman Movie" scribe Seth Grahame-Smith. At the same time, Paramount has continued to try and mount a fourth and final chapter in the Kelvin Timeline story that began with J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek" in 2009, having only barely recruited Steve Yockey ("The Flight Attendant") to work his magic on the screenplay.

Thankfully, we finally got an official update today during Paramount's CinemaCon presentation in Las Vegas (which /Film's Ryan Scott was there to witness with his own two eyes). The studio confirmed that Haynes' film will usher in the franchise's long-awaited return to theaters while, apparently, also functioning as a prequel to the previous Kelvin Universe movies. Production will begin later this year.

Star Trek will boldly go before it's never gone before

Literally winding back the clock for a mission is common practice in "Star Trek," so much so that the property even has a strict set of rules covering all the do's and don'ts of time travel (lest anyone step on a butterfly and wipe James Kirk out of existence). Prequels, on the other hand, only really came into vogue in the 2000s with the one-two punch of "Star Trek: Enterprise" and Abrams' film, the latter of which also introduced the alternate timeline known as the Kelvin Universe. Now, much as its big screen reboot 15 years ago served to reinvigorate the franchise while also appealing to a new generation of Trekkies, it's possible Paramount's goal here is for Haynes' prequel to revive the Kelvin series before bringing the main cast back while at the same time offering a jumping-on point for those who're new(ish) to the whole trekking across space thing.

Haynes' movie itself has previously been described as an "origin story" for "Star Trek" at large , which certainly supports the idea of it functioning as a soft reset without actually wiping out any earlier continuity (just like Abrams' movie). The director, for his part, has already demonstrated an appreciation for the property with his acclaimed "Black Mirror" episode "USS Callister" — a darkly satirical take on "Star Trek" tropes and toxic fandom — while his work on the "Star Wars" series "Andor" proves he's more than up for the task of taking a beloved sci-fi property and subverting it in fresh and exhilarating ways. With a little luck, these past eight years will prove to be more than worth the wait.

Keep it tuned to /Film for further updates on anything and everything "Star Trek."

Star Trek Got This Character Wrong - And It Doomed the Kelvin Timeline

The Kelvin Timeline Star Trek movies were controversial with fans, and one reason may be because they overlooked the most important character.

• The Kelvin Timeline movies failed because they never got Star Trek's most important character right: the USS Enterprise.
• The redesign of the Kelvin Timeline Enterprise made it a massive ship with a larger crew, disconnecting it from the original series and hindering its relationship with the characters.
• The lack of attachment to the Enterprise in the Kelvin Timeline movies contributed to the franchise's failure to reach the success Paramount anticipated.

The Star Trek Kelvin Timeline trilogy of movies was an ambitious play by Paramount to reinvent a beloved franchise while honoring what came before. There are several reasons these films didn't work as expected. However, one crucial reason the Kelvin Timeline movies failed is that they never got Star Trek 's most important character right: the USS Enterprise.

Star Trek had been gone from television for just four years by the time 2009's Star Trek debuted. Enterprise is an underrated series, in part because few folks were able to watch it. Those who did felt it either wasn't new enough or changed things so much it didn't "feel like" Trek . The return of James T. Kirk, Spock, Uhura and the rest was seen as an opportunity to modernize the 1960s series and deliver Star Trek to a new generation. Instead, the changed characters and infrequent movie release schedule made these characters feel like strangers wearing old friends' outfits. With nostalgia needs being addressed by Picard Season 3 and the episodic Strange New Worlds , hindsight reveals the films got more right than wrong. Still, unlike any previous series set on a ship, the USS Enterprise was never treated like a character. It's far more than a setting or vehicle — it's the only "home" that ever truly mattered to these characters.

Updated February 14, 2024, by Joshua M. Patton: The Kelvin Timeline is so-named because the inciting incident for this branch reality in Star Trek is the destruction of the USS Kelvin. James T. Kirk's father died on the ship, rescuing its crew, his wife and newborn son. Perhaps what is most changed about Kirk in the Kelvin Timeline is he never seemed to love the USS Enterprise as much as his Prime Universe counterpart. The spectre of the USS Kelvin hangs in his mind, putting some distance between him and the ship.

The Kelvin Timeline Kept the USS Enterprise at a Distance

Why the uss enterprise is sci-fi's most beautiful starship.

Matt Jeffries's design for the original USS Enterprise is perhaps the single most recognizable fictional spaceship. Even the drastic reimagining of the ship for The Next Generation didn't veer too far from it. The design of the Kelvin Timeline Enterprise differs from the original in only two key ways. The first is that the warp nacelles are much chunkier with a "hot rod" design. The second, and perhaps most detrimental, is that it's a massive ship with a crew complement of 1,100, around three times more than the crew of The Original Series . This led to scenes where various crew members ran from the bridge to some other section in order to find another character or use the transporter.

Still, the characterization of the Enterprise and the ship's relationship with the crew is more ephemeral than the design. Fans think Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is the worst movie in the franchise, and it's curiously the only film where the Enterprise is "working against" the crew. When the original Enterprise was destroyed in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock , it didn't hit Kirk until he looked up at the fiery descent of the ship, said, "My god, Bones. What have I done?" Kirk, Scotty, and the rest of the principal characters made that ship a home. In the classic The Original Series episode "The Naked Time," Kirk reveals (through the influence of alien pathogens) his greatest love is the Enterprise, so much so that he refuses to let her go.

The only Kelvin Timeline movie where Kirk is the captain of the ship the entire time is Beyond , and it's destroyed in the first half-hour of the film. The Kelvin Timeline movies focused very closely on the characters' relationships with each other in the limited time they had, but there was no space left for the Enterprise to be anything other than some big ship. The action on the bridge must tie directly to the action elsewhere in Star Trek , at least if the transport in question is the Enterprise. Instead, the ship only showed up when something needed to be shot at or transported.

How the USS Kelvin Relates to the Enterprise In This Timeline

Discovery's use of tng footage can change how viewers see star trek.

At the beginning of Star Trek: Beyond, Kirk and Spock are thinking of leaving the ship behind. While this is something that both characters eventually did, year three of the five-year mission is far too soon. Later, when the Enterprise is destroyed , audiences just roll their eyes or shrug their shoulders. In fact, after three movies where the characters don't seem to care much about the ship, Krall's destruction of it felt almost like a mercy.

Star Trek Into Darkness is the best Enterprise movie of the three, even if Scotty resigns (which felt like a very out-of-character moment). It's the movie where the characters seem to feel the most comfortable on the ship. It carries the characters through the story, which is what it was designed to do. Forget the ham-fisted Wrath of Khan callbacks — the fact it's primarily a ship adventure makes it feel like an episode of the original series. Yet, the connection to the vessel itself that ran through earlier iterations of this universe is absent.

For the characters, at least, the legacy of the USS Kelvin looms large in their minds. The ship is not more important than her crew, so when Kirk orders them to abandon the Enterprise, he's not losing his beloved "home." Rather, he's following his father's example in all ways but one, he's not going down with the ship.

The Kelvin Timeline Films Destroyed the USS Enterprise Too Many Times

Why paramount stopped making star trek movies, twice.

A trend in modern action films is to stretch the visual effects as far as they go to show audiences devastation and destruction. In the modern Star Trek films, a little camera shake and sparks from the bridge consoles just don't cut it. However, the near-destruction of the USS Enterprise happened so many times, when it was officially destroyed, it lacked impact. The Prime Timeline Kirk also chose to destroy the original USS Enterprise to save his crew. However, the look of anguish on his face as it crashes into the surface of the Genesis planet underscores how much it meant to him. "My god, Bones. What have I done?" he says in that movie, echoing what was in the hearts of the viewers at the time. The Kelvin Timeline crew never got attached to their Enterprise like that, so neither did the audience.

The films obviously wanted to go big and cinematic. However, the treatment of the Enterprise in the Kelvin Timeline films is like if Star Wars rebooted and made the Millennium Falcon the size of a Star Destroyer. Of all the changes made to characters in the movies, from Kirk being a rebel to Spock and Uhura's relationship, the Enterprise was the character most underserved. It was never supposed to be a sci-fi set piece. It's a character that lives and breathes along with the crew that takes her through the stars. The Kelvin Timeline films never understood that, and it's one of the main reasons the franchise never reached the billion-dollar heights Paramount hoped it would.

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Commander Rayner (Callum Keith Rennie) isn’t thrilled by this prospect, pointing out before she leaves that it’s too dangerous a mission for a captain to undertake. But Burnham disagrees that this is enough of a reason to stop her; it’s a nice reminder that this is a show and a character that originated in the time of James T. Kirk, a time when captains didn’t stay behind in the face of danger.

But it’s not only that, there’s something else going on. Burnham gives Rayner permission to be blunt, quoting a classic work on Rayner’s native Kellerun , The Ballad of Krull , asking him to “serve it without a crumb of ossekat .” (As far as made-up Star Trek idioms go, that’s a pretty good one.)

It’s also the beginning of a sudden and relentless onslaught of references to Rayner’s culture, but more on that later. What’s Rayner’s problem? He’s uncomfortable with the prospect of being left in command of a ship and crew that aren’t “his.” Welcome to being second in command, buddy.

Book and Burnham take off, heading into the wormhole and finding it to be an inhospitable place. They quickly drop out of communication range with Discovery , there’s ship debris everywhere, including the wreckage of Moll and L’ak’s ship…. and what’s that, the  ISS Enterprise ?!

(A side note before we get too excited about that: what is the deal with all the empty space in the new shuttlecraft set, introduced in last season’s “All Is Possible”? The two pilot seats looked like they were crammed into the corner of a huge unfurnished room.)

Okay, Enterprise time. Burnham and Book rightly surmise that this is where Moll and L’ak must have escaped to and beam to the ship, which of course turns out to be a redress of the Strange New Worlds  standing sets. A quick scan identifies that no one else is aboard — though the clue, which Moll and L’ak have found, does also have a lifesign, hmm — and that Moll and L’ak are holed up in sickbay. Burnham takes a few moments to ponder her visit to the Mirror Universe back in Season 1 and wonder what the alternate version of her half-brother Spock might have been like (bearded, for one).

And aside from some brief storytelling about Mirror Saru’s role as a rebel leader, that’s about it for the Terran Empire of it all. Star Trek: Discovery has spent plenty of time in and around the Mirror Universe already, and I personally don’t think they need to revisit it again. But introducing the  ISS Enterprise — the ship that started it all with The Original Series ’ “Mirror, Mirror” — and then not doing anything momentous with it? Strange decision, and one that makes it ultimately feel more like this was a way for the show to get to reuse a set on the cheap than it does a materially significant addition to the episode.

In fact, in some ways it’s actually a detriment to the episode. If the action had been set on any other ship it would have been fine, but being on the ISS Enterprise I kept expecting something — like seeing Paul Wesley as Mirror Kirk slinking around, or finding Anson Mount camping it up as Mirror Pike in a personal log. If they’d set the action on a generic derelict ship, what we got wouldn’t have seemed like a let down. As it is though, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop… and it simply never did.

Maybe in a subsequent episode, it’ll turn out that there’s an advantage in having an entire functional starship composed of atoms from another universe at Starfleet’s disposal — or to have a convenient collection of Constitution -class sets available for that Starfleet Academy show to borrow once in a while — but until that happens (if it even does) the use of the ISS Enterprise just seems like a name drop and a “We have to set the action somewhere , why not here?” instead of a significant use of the setting and the huge amount of lore and history that comes with it.

It’s like setting something aboard the Titanic without ever mentioning any icebergs.

As Burnham and Book make their way down to sickbay they do find evidence that the ship was being used in a way that seemed unusually gentle for a Terran Empire vessel: signs that children and families were aboard at one time, and that they were the kind of people sentimental enough to have keepsakes and favorite stuffed animals. But again, nothing about this seems like it needs the Mirror Universe connection. Ships of people trying to escape adversity are already a Star Trek staple.

Burnham and Book find Moll (Eve Harlow) and L’ak (Elias Toufexis) in sickbay, and after a valiant but ultimately unsuccessful attempt at getting them to surrender, everyone starts shooting. Moll and L’ak have a Breen blood bounty — an erigah — on their heads and surrender is simply not an option. During the firefight a lockdown is triggered, forcefields coming down that split the group into pairs: Burnham and L’ak stuck in sickbay, while Book and Moll able to go back to the bridge to try and reset sickbay.

Pairing off also gives Book the opportunity to continue his efforts to connect with Moll, and I have to say, I don’t think I’m a fan. Setting aside the portion of this that’s purely a strategic attempt to forge a connection with someone who is very to keen to kill him, my first reaction to the way Book talks to Moll about her father (and his mentor) was distaste.

I don’t think Book meant it this way, but the way he’s written in these scenes feels unpleasantly close to the “Well, he was a great guy to me , I never saw him do anything bad” response that’s sometimes made to accusations of misconduct. A person can be wonderful to some people in their life and terrible to others; both experiences are true for the people who received them, but they’re not mutually exclusive.

Book is preternaturally empathetic, and yet he doesn’t seem to see how continually assuring Moll that her father loved her is an act that’s both unwanted and actively painful for Moll to hear. I understand that Book is just trying to bring a sliver of comfort to Moll – but in the process he’s dismissing her own experiences of her father and his place in her life. Unless Moll asks him for this, it’s really none of Book’s business.

I suspect they’re setting up Moll’s character for a nice, cathartic arc where she comes to terms with her life, forgives her father, releases her past, whatever. And when that happens in real life that’s great — but it doesn’t always, and that’s okay too. If Moll never sees in her father the man Book saw in his mentor, it’s not a character failing. Discovery is really hammering home the theme of confronting one’s past in order to take control of one’s present and future, and I think it would be valuable if they included an example of a character learning to do the latter… without having to be okay with the former.

And to return to a question I posed in my review of “Under the Twin Moons,” I know Book is isolated and excruciatingly lonely after the destruction of Kweijan and his split with Michael, but the weight he’s placed on his relationship with Moll as “the closest thing he has to family” seems like he’s setting himself up for disappointment. Maybe I’m just a cynic, but this does not feel like a hopeful storyline to me. Not everyone wants to be family, and right now it doesn’t seem like Moll’s been given much of a choice in the matter — despite her frequent and very powerful explanations of why she’s not interested.

Clearly frustrated with Book’s topic of conversation and desperate to return to L’ak, Moll makes a reckless decision to brute-force a solution and overload some circuits. It works, and the forcefields in sickbay come down, but it also sends the Enterprise onto an unstoppable collision course with the too-small-to-pass-through and also going-to-be-closing-forever-soon wormhole. They’ve got eight minutes to figure this out.

Meanwhile aboard Discovery , we see Rayner’s struggles to interact with the crew. This thread could have gone so many different ways, Rayner seeming “too good” for a temporary command, him seeing this as his chance to do things “better” than Burnham or show how it’s “really done,” but instead the show takes the much more subtle and satisfying route: Rayner is deeply respectful of the captaincy, as a rank and a role, and really doesn’t want to step on Burnham’s authority.

He’s more than willing to disagree with her on command decisions , but he doesn’t question her command . And more personally, he doesn’t want his gruffness and lack of experience with this crew to cause problems. He’s trying, in his own Rayner way, and more importantly he’s succeeding — and, as we see as he shepherds the crew through figuring out how to communicate with and then rescue Book and Burnham, the crew does their part and meets him halfway.

Rayner is learning that he needs to tone down his temperament just enough that he doesn’t come across as an actual asshole to this crew, and the crew is learning that his gruffness isn’t a sign of disrespect but simply a desire to cut to the chase and get to direct, actionable information with a minimum of fluff. There are shades of Nimoy’s Spock or Voyager -era Seven of Nine here, but couched within a distinctly different temperament, and it’s fascinating to watch. I’d love to have seen him interacting with the crew of the Antares , where he presumably felt more comfortable.

The interpersonal stuff with Rayner and the crew is great; where Rayner’s thread feels distractingly like a box being checked is the explosion of “Rayner is a Kellerun!” being shouted from the bulkheads. I could practically hear the writers yelping out a panicked “Oh crap, we forgot to say what kind of alien Rayner is!”

Again, Discovery is back to its old self with the clunky, heavy-handed, and oddly paced character work. Rayner goes from having zero cultural touchstones to having about five in the span of the 15-20 minutes of screentime that his story gets this week. They’re good touchstones, don’t get me wrong — I’m skeptical of Kellerun citrus mash, I have to be honest, but I’d give it a try; not so sure about boiling a cake though — they’re just very present .

As with Rayner’s alienness, the frequent flashbacks throughout the episode to Moll and L’ak’s meeting and courtship feel like a “We forgot to explain this and now we’re trying to reference it!” correction. The content of the flashbacks is fine, there’s a lot of interesting Breen worldbuilding for a species that’s been mysterious from the start — and watching Moll and L’ak’s relationship grow from one of mutual convenience to one of true love is genuinely moving. But the way it’s woven into an episode that, again, feels like it’s composed of bits and pieces of storyline, makes it hard to shake the sense that I was watching a To Do list get checked off.

By the time the season is over it might be clear that there was simply no extra room to give a full episode over to Moll and L’ak’s meeting, or maybe an episode without any of the main cast wasn’t something they were willing or contractually able to do, but I would have loved if these flashbacks were pulled out and expanded into a full-length episode of their own. Some of the worldbuilding felt hasty to the point of hindering the emotional beats — at times I wondered if I’d forgotten a whole bunch of Breen lore and at others I was just trying to keep up with what was going on.

For example, my confusion about L’ak’s comment about having two faces, which Moll seemed to completely understand — “Duh, everyone knows the Breen have two faces” — was a distraction in the middle of an otherwise nice and significant moment. This is later clarified as the translucent face and the solid face, but again I was distracted from fully appreciating an interesting bit of Breen culture because I was busy applying what I’d just learned back to the previous scene.

The quickly (and maybe not totally clearly articulated notion) that Breen deliberately restrict themselves to their translucent form for reasons that are entirely to do with avoiding any perception of weakness is a potent if hasty bit of social commentary, and as I said I nearly didn’t catch it.

Whether holding the translucent form requires the armor for protection or the armor necessitates the translucent form — it seems like it would be more comfortable wearing that helmet all the time if you were the texture and consistency of lime jello — this is surely a metaphor for the increasingly rigid, isolating, and emotionally and sometimes physically unhealthy things men in certain circles feel they must do to be appropriately masculine. Seeing L’ak free himself from that rigidity is powerful.

With the forcefields in sickbay down, Burnham and L’ak immediately spring into action:  Burnham trying to get the artifact from L’ak and L’ak simply trying to get away. They fight, and Burnham impressively proves she can hold her own against a Breen. When L’ak accidentally falls on his own blade, Burnham grabs the clue and speeds to the bridge where she manages to get a message to Rayner through some tractor beam trickery. The message? Another reference to that classic of Kellerun literature that gives Rayner the info he needs. Hey, did you know Rayner was a Kellerun?

The ISS Enterprise makes it through the wormhole, Moll and L’ak zip away in an escape pod, and it’s time to wrap things up. We head to Red’s for a quick but significant moment between Tilly (Mary Wiseman) and Culber (Wilson Cruz), as Tilly offers advice and an ear to a Culber who’s going through a quiet existential – maybe also spiritual? – crisis.

OBSERVATION LOUNGE

• In addition to the dedication plaques on the bridge, the ISS Enterprise has an additional plaque in its transporter room — one which, despite recounting the heroism of rebel action hero Mirror Saru, still states “Long Live the Empire.”
• The transporter room plaque is marked with “Stardate 32336.6,” which is about 9 years before the events of “Encounter at Farpoint.”
• The plaque describes the fate of Mirror Spock, who was killed after instituting the reforms which later led to the fall of the Terran Empire (as described in DS9’s “Crossover”).

The full text of the ISS Enterprise transporter room plaque:

The new High Chancellor presented hope and justice as if they were natural to our world. His words, “The light of hope shines through even the darkest of nights” became our rallying cry. He spoke of reform, and changed many of us. But some saw this as weakness. They killed him, and we sought help from an unlikely ally: A Kelpien slave turned rebel leader.   He spoke of visitors from another world… a near perfect mirror cast our darkness into light. With his aid we secured the Enterprise and stayed behind to continue his work. We bear scars from our escape, but our hope remains. May it carry us into a pristine, peaceful, and just future.

• Not counting L’ak’s previous appearances this season, this episode marks the first time we have seen the Breen in live action since their involvement in the Dominion War in Deep Space Nine.  (The species has appeared in  Star Trek: Lower Decks three times.)
• The 32nd century Breen wear updated encounter suits clearly based on the designs introduced in  Deep Space Nine ; their digital speech is extremely faithful to the incomprehensible noises Breen soldiers have spoken in past appearances.
• Given the fact that Moll appears to be just fine in the environment of the Breen ship, I guess Weyoun was right when he said the Breen homeworld was “quite comfortable” in “The Changing Face of Evil.”
• When L’ak is stabbed he gently oozes some green goo — but as we learned in “In Purgatory’s Shadow,” Breen do not have traditional humanoid blood.

• During his time in command of Discovery , Rayner never sits in the captain’s chair.
• This episode closes with a dedication plaque that reads “In loving memory of our friend, Allan ‘Red’ Marceta”. Marceta was, I presume, the namesake for Discovery’s bar.
• Someone aboard Discovery keeps a Cardassian vole as a pet. Going by Tilly’s reaction, and what we know from  Deep Space Nine , this is not a good thing.
• Linus (David Benjamin Tomlinson) plays a mean piano.
• Owosekun and Detmer get the off-screen cherry assignment of flying the ISS Enterprise back to Federation Headquarters, alone. I’m thinking that’s going to inspire some fanfic…

We don’t learn what this week’s clue is, though we know there’s a blue vial tucked away inside it, but we do learn that the crew of the ISS Enterprise did indeed make it to our universe. The scientist responsible for hiding this particular clue there was one of them, a Dr. Cho, who eventually made it all the way to branch admiral.

They strove for something positive and succeeded against all odds. Hopefully Discovery will be able to do the same as they continue their pursuit of Moll, L’ak, and the Progenitors.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 returns with “Whistlespeak” on Thursday, May 2.

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Kirks Starship Enterprise Returns In Star Trek: Discovery - With A Big Twist

Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Discovery Season 5, Episode 5 - "Mirrors"

• The Mirror Universe's ISS Enterprise, last seen in Star Trek: The Original Series' "Mirror, Mirror," makes a shocking return in Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 5.
• Star Trek: Discovery filmed scenes on the USS Enterprise set of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
• The ISS Enterprise now exists in the 32nd century, offering a new glimpse into the alternate reality of the Mirror Universe.

Captain James T. Kirk's (William Shatner) Starship Enterprise makes a shocking return in Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 5, but with a jaw-dropping twist - it's the ISS Enterprise from Star Trek: The Original Series ' "Mirror, Mirror"! Written by Johanna Lee & Carlos Cisco and directed by Jen McGowan, Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 5, "Mirrors," sees Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Cleveland Booker (David Ajala) enter interdimensional space to pursue Moll (Eve Harlow) and L'ak (Elias Toufexis) and the next clue to the Progenitors' ancient treasure. What Burnham and Book never expected to find was the Mirror Universe's derelict ISS Enterprise.

Star Trek: Discovery picked up the mantle of the Mirror Universe from Star Trek: The Original Series , Star Trek: Deep Space Nine , and Star Trek; Enterprise. Discovery 's season 1's game-changing Mirror Universe arc introduced Emperor Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh), who would enter Star Trek 's Prime Universe and is now headlining Paramount+'s upcoming Star Trek: Section 31 movie. Star Trek: Discovery deepened the saga of the Mirror Universe, but the alternate reality's final appearance was in Star Trek: Discovery season 3. Thanks to Star Trek 's Temporal Wars , it's now impossible for the Prime and Mirror Universes to cross over in Star Trek: Discovery 's 32nd century.

Individuals who both time travel and cross from Star Trek' s Prime and Mirror Universes suffer a lethal medical condition, such as what happened to Emperor Georgiou.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 5 Returning Cast & New Character Guide

Star trek: discovery brings back kirks mirror universe starship enterprise, the iss enterprise last appeared in star trek: the original series' "mirror, mirror".

The Mirror Universe's ISS Enterprise in Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 5 is the same Constitution Class starship from Star Trek: The Original Series season 2, episode 4, "Mirror, Mirror," which was the ISS Enterprise's only prior canonical appearance. The ISS Enterprise was trapped in interdimensional space and abandoned by its crew, who were refugees and freedom fighters attempting to flee the Mirror Universe for Star Trek 's Prime Universe in the 24th century. As Captain Burnham later learned, the refugees made it to the Prime Universe, and one scientist even became a Starfleet Admiral.

In Star Trek: Enterprise season 4's "In A Mirror, Darkly", the 22nd-century Terran Empire gained control of the Constitution Class USS Defiant, which crossed over and time traveled from the 23rd-century Prime Universe.

In Star Trek: The Original Series ' "Mirror, Mirror", the ISS Enterprise was commanded by Captain James T. Kirk who assassinated its prior Captain, Christopher Pike (Jeffrey Hunter). "Mirror, Mirror" saw the Prime Universe's Kirk, Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley), and Scotty (James Doohan) switch places with their Mirror counterparts due to a transporter accident during an ion storm. Before switching back, Prime Kirk planted a seed with the goateed Mirror Spock (Leonard Nimoy) to take control of the Terran Empire and institute reforms to prevent the inevitable destruction of the Empire.

Mirror Spock's reforms were successful but ultimately weakened the Terran Empire, which was conquered by the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance, as seen in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Star Trek: Discovery Filmed Season 5s Enterprise On Strange New Worlds Set

Star trek: strange new worlds was on hiatus after season 2..

Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 5, "Mirrors", was filmed on the USS Enterprise set of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds . When Discovery season 5 was in production in late 2022, Strange New Worlds was on hiatus after completing season 2 filming in June . ( Strange New Worlds wouldn't begin season 3 production until December 2023.) Sonequa Martin-Green, David Ajala, Eve Harlow, and Elias Toufexis shot on Strange New Worlds ' sets, which are located in Toronto where Star Trek: Discovery also filmed.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 is in production, and the series has been renewed for season 4.

Star Trek: Discovery redressed Strange New Worlds ' USS Enterprise set to become the ISS Enterprise. Scenes were filmed on the Enterprise's bridge, hallways, and medical bay. Interestingly, by using Strange New Worlds ' Enterprise set, which depicts the USS Enterprise before Captain Kirk assumes command, Star Trek: Discovery season 5 establishes that the ISS Enterprise, which crossed into the Prime Universe decades after Star Trek: The Original Series , is the same ship as in "Mirror, Mirror" despite the very different interiors.

Star Trek: Enterprise recreated the sets of Star Trek: The Original Series ' USS Enterprise for the interiors of the USS Defiant.

What Happens To Mirror Universes Enterprise In Star Trek: Discovery?

The 32nd century just got another 23rd-century starship.

Captain Burnham and Cleveland Booker piloted the ISS Enterprise out of interdimensional space and into Star Trek 's Prime Universe with the help of the USS Discovery. Afterward, Burnham assigned Lt. Commanders Kayla Detmer (Emily Coutts) and Joann Owosekun (Oyin Oladejo) to fly the ISS Enterprise to Federation headquarters, so that the Mirror Universe's starship could be put into "storage". However, there are now fascinating ramifications to the ISS Enterprise existing in Star Trek: Discovery 's 32nd century .

Amazingly, the ISS Enterprise is also now the second 23rd-century starship in 3191 along with the USS Discovery itself.

Although the ISS Enterprise is obsolete by 32nd-century standards, it's still a bonanza of Mirror Universe technology that the United Federation of Planets has now acquired . This would certainly be of interest to Dr. Kovich (David Cronenberg). The 23rd-century ISS Enterprise is a window not just to 900 years ago, but also to the alternate reality, especially since the Mirror Universe is now sealed off permanently from the Federation. Amazingly, the ISS Enterprise is also now the second 23rd-century starship in 3191 along with the USS Discovery itself. Perhaps the ISS Enterprise will reappear and play a role in the second half of Star Trek: Discovery season 5.

New episodes of Star Trek: Discovery season 5 stream Thursdays on Paramount+

Cast Blu del Barrio, Oded Fehr, Anthony Rapp, Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, Wilson Cruz, Eve Harlow, Mary Wiseman, Callum Keith Rennie

Streaming Service(s) Paramount+

Franchise(s) Star Trek

Writers Alex Kurtzman

Directors Jonathan Frakes, Olatunde Osunsanmi

Showrunner Alex Kurtzman

Where To Watch Paramount+

Screen Rant

What happened to mirror universe captain kirk in star trek.

Star Trek: Discovery returns to the Mirror Universe, which raises questions about what happened to the Terran Empire's Captain Kirk after TOS.

WARNING: Contains SPOILERS for Star Trek: Discovery, season 5, episode 5, "Mirrors".

• In "Star Trek: Discovery", new information about the fate of the Mirror Universe Captain Kirk is provided by the return of the ISS Enterprise.
• Mirror Kirk may have faced execution or plotted violent opposition against Spock's peaceful reforms.
• A planned William Shatner comeback in "Star Trek: Enterprise" involving Mirror Kirk's return was shelved due to financial reasons.

Star Trek: Discovery has just brought back the ISS Enterprise from the Terran Empire, raising the question of what happened to the Mirror Universe's Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) after the end of Star Trek: The Original Series . In Discovery season 5, episode 5, "Mirrors", written by Johanna Lee and Carlos Cisco, and directed by Jen McGowan, the next clue to the Progenitors' treasure is found aboard the ISS Enterprise , trapped inside a pocket of interdimensional space. As Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Book (David Ajala) explore the Mirror Universe's version of the starship Enterprise , they learn more about what happened after TOS ' "Mirror, Mirror".

In "Mirror, Mirror", the Mirror Universe version of Captain Kirk switched places with his Prime Universe counterpart. While in the Mirror Universe, Prime Kirk inspired the Mirror Universe variant of Spock (Leonard Nimoy) to embrace the possibility of a more peaceful future. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine revealed that Spock's more peaceful approach led to the downfall of the Terran Empire at the hands of the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance . However, DS9 was vague on what happened to the ISS Enterprise, Spock, and Kirk. While Star Trek: Discovery has now revealed the fate of the ISS Enterprise, the fate of Mirror Kirk is something of a mystery.

Star Trek: Discovery’s Burnham Fight Makes Michael Even More Like Kirk

What happened to mirror universe captain kirk after star trek: the original series.

Star Trek: Discovery reveals that the Terran High Chancellor was killed for trying to make reforms, which is presumably a reference to Mirror Spock . In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine season 2, episode 23, "Crossover", it was confirmed that Mirror Spock rose to the role of Commander in Chief, and the peaceful reforms led to the Terran Empire being unprepared for war with the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance. While Discovery seems to confirm that Mirror Spock was executed for this failure, it remains tight-lipped on the fate of Mirror Kirk after he was beamed off the USS Enterprise at the end of "Mirror, Mirror".

The fate of Mirror Kirk after Star Trek: The Original Series has spawned multiple comic books and novels over the years, including the Mirror Universe trilogy by William Shatner, and Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens.

Many speculated that Mirror Kirk was either imprisoned or put to death by Mirror Spock, even though that doesn't correlate with the Vulcan's attempt to make peaceful reforms . However, career progression in the Mirror Universe is ruthless, so it's certainly possible that Spock would have had Kirk executed, so he could take control of the ISS Enterprise to cement his rise to power. Another possibility is that Kirk survived, and was one of the many Terrans who objected to Mirror Spock's more peaceful reforms, perhaps even being the one who killed him in Star Trek: Discovery 's new version of events.

Mirror Kirk’s Aborted Star Trek: Enterprise Return Explained

Mirror Kirk was an integral part of a William Shatner comeback pitched for Star Trek: Enterprise season 4. In Shatner's pitch, co-conceived with writers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Mirror Kirk was put to death by Spock following the events of "Mirror, Mirror", by being placed in the Tantalus Field. However, it would be revealed that the Tantalus Field didn't kill its victims, it placed them inside a pocket universe, where they would be discovered by Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) and the crew of the Enterprise NX-01. Mirror Kirk and his comrades would then launch a hostile takeover of the Enterprise, pitting Shatner against Bakula.

Another pitch for a William Shatner episode of Star Trek: Enterprise would have seen him play the NX-01's unseen chef, who would be revealed as an ancestor of James T. Kirk.

William Shatner's return in Star Trek: Enterprise would have been a ratings smash, but it was nixed by Paramount . The reasons behind Paramount aborting Shatner's Star Trek return were said to be financial, with both Manny Coto and Rick Berman telling "The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek" by Peter Holmstrom that the actor's fee was more than Enterprise could afford. With the Mirror Kirk episode abandoned, the fate of Captain Kirk's Terran counterpart would have to remain a mystery. However, Star Trek: Enterprise did return to the Mirror Universe in a season 4 two-parter involving the USS Defiant from Star Trek: TOS .

Enterprise’s Mirror Universe Episodes Marked The Sad End Of The Star Trek Prequel

Star trek: discovery reveals what happened to mirror captain kirk’s enterprise.

Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 5, "Mirrors" may not reveal the fate of Mirror Kirk, but it does reveal what happened to his Enterprise. Investigating the abandoned ISS Enterprise in search of Moll (Eve Harlow) and L'ak (Elias Toufexis) , Burnham and Book learn about what happened after Spock's reforms. Following the death of the Terran High Chancellor, a group of Terrans boarded the ISS Enterprise in search of the Prime Universe, perhaps inspired by the hopeful words of Prime Kirk in "Mirror, Mirror". The refugees were led by Mirror Saru (Doug Jones), who had become a resistance leader following Discovery season 1 .

Saru is one of the few Star Trek characters to be a good guy in both the Mirror and Prime Universes.

However, the ISS Enterprise became trapped in the interdimensional fold encountered by the USS Discovery in the 32nd century. Forced to abandon ship, the refugees made it through the wormhole into the prime Star Trek universe. One of the refugees was Dr. Cho, who became part of the Federation's team that investigated the Progenitors' technology alongside Dr. Vellek (Michael Copeman) and Jinaal . Dr. Cho is the only named refugee in Star Trek: Discovery , but it creates the fascinating possibility that Mirror Saru, and maybe even Mirror Kirk found their way to the Prime Universe in the 24th century.

Star Trek: Discovery streams Thursdays on Paramount+.

Star Trek: Discovery

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Star Trek: Discovery is an entry in the legendary Sci-Fi franchise, set ten years before the original Star Trek series events. The show centers around Commander Michael Burnham, assigned to the USS Discovery, where the crew attempts to prevent a Klingon war while traveling through the vast reaches of space.

Star Trek: The Original Series

Star Trek: The Original Series follows the exploits of the crew of the USS Enterprise. On a five-year mission to explore uncharted space, Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) must trust his crew - Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (Forest DeKelley), Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (James Doohan), Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Chekov (Walter Koenig) and Sulu (George Takei) - with his life. Facing previously undiscovered life forms and civilizations and representing humanity among the stars on behalf of Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets, the Enterprise regularly comes up against impossible odds and diplomatic dilemmas.