While Star Trek: Picard Season 3 was acclaimed and well-beloved, there was always something bittersweet about how it came about. Bringing in the cast of The Next Generation required cuts, and the series dropped much of its main cast from Season 1 and 2. This resulted in many storylines being set aside until recently, when one of the characters reappeared in a new comic.
The comic book series Star Trek: The Last Starship presents an intriguing story, taking place shortly after the events of “The Burn,” a universe-changing event highlighted in Discovery. As the Federation collapses, a resurrected James T. Kirk is tasked with trying to keep Starfleet alive, and aiding him in this journey will be a character we haven’t seen since the Picard Season 2 finale.
Borg Jurati Returns In Star Trek: The Last Starship
Issue 1 of Star Trek: The Last Starship hit shelves recently, and with it came the re-emergence of former Picard character Agnes Jurati. She’s back, 800 years in the future and still alive, most likely thanks to her assimilation into a Borg and becoming the queen of a rogue sector of the species.
She’s featured in this latest story to offer her support to Starfleet and provide Borg transwarp technology to help them continue operations in place of dilithium-reliant methods. As a reminder to those who don’t remember Discovery, The Burn destroyed a vast amount of dilithium, rendering all technology reliant on it useless.
Borg Jurati Is Responsible For James T. Kirk’s Return
Agnes Jurati’s help comes at a price. She requests a sample of James T. Kirk’s blood, which Picard fans may recall was housed along with his body at a Daystrom Institute black site in space. The request is honored, and using that blood sample and Borg technology, she’s able to recreate the captain out of nanites.
The ultimate plan, it would seem, is that this new Kirk is meant to save Starfleet and set it back on the course of being a successful operation yet again. It’s a fascinating premise, though we already know in Star Trek canon that Michael Burnham and the Discovery crew are primarily responsible for putting the Federation back on track.
What this means for the new Kirk is a fascinating question that I want to explore. Fortunately, we’re just at the start of The Last Starship, so there will be time to answer that question. Is this possibly setting up a live-action adaptation that will propel Paul Wesley‘s Kirk into the future? I would be down for a spinoff, but I’m not sure if fans would support that over a successor series to Strange New Worlds, highlighting the captain’s early days in charge of the Enterprise.
I’m excited for more issues, in addition to other upcoming Star Trek shows on the horizon. We should be getting Starfleet Academy sometime in early 2026, and hopefully there won’t be a long wait for Strange New Worlds Season 4.
