REVIEW: Is STAR TREK: CELEBRATIONS a Worthwhile Celebration of Pride?

As both a queer person and a Star Trek fan I was incredibly excited for the Star Trek: Celebrations comic that IDW was releasing to celebrate pride this year. I drove over an hour both ways to pick up this comic and it took all my self restraint not to pull over and read the comic on my drive back. Once I got home I immediately started reading, and frankly, I’m a little disappointed. 

I’m hesitant to criticize the first ever Star Trek pride comic as I would really like IDW to release more in the future, however I really think this could’ve done better. The comic is broken up into 5 short stories: “The Knight Errand” which follows Sulu, “Lady Luck” which follows Raffi and Seven, “Facemaker'' which follows Christine Chapel, “Innovation and Interruption” which follows Reno and Staments, and finally “Risian Rendezvous” which follows Mariner and Jennifer. I’m going to go through these stories one by one as they all have their own merits and shortcomings.

“The Knight Errand” follows Sulu telling his daughter, Demora, a bedtime story of how he defeated a Vatalon in one on one combat. I was hesitant about Sulu being included in the pride comic to begin with as his queerness is something that was announced after the run of the Original Series. It’s never mentioned in the show and we never canonically hear anything about Sulu’s identity. The powers that be within Star Trek decided to make this canon despite Takei’s objections. Sulu’s identity is purely performative within the Star Trek universe and in my opinion doesn’t really count as representation at all. In this comic, despite being a pride edition still doesn’t shed much light on Sulu’s queer identity. The only real indication that he is gay in the entire story is the last panel which shows him and his partner sitting on the side of his daughter’s bed. It’s not a story I would expect to see in a pride edition of a comic. Despite my criticisms it is still quite a sweet story with a nice ending. The art is truly beautiful.

“Lady Luck” is probably my favorite story in the whole comic. It follows Raffi and Seven attending Raffi’s Starfleet Academy reunion. Raffi doesn’t get along with the other students from her graduating class and the comic follows her and Seven navigating the rude comments and snarky remarks from classmates. The comic is incredibly sweet and shows Seven and Raffi’s love for each other and their willingness to stand up for one another despite the odds. This is the kind of story I expected from a pride comic and I’m very happy with it. 

“Facemaker” follows Christine Chapel trying to come up with a better alternative to facial prosthetics for starfleet members when visiting pre-warp civilizations. She is trying to figure out how to temporarily genetically alter people so that they become indistinguishable from members of that species. However, she is obviously facing some backlash due to Starfleet’s history with genetic engineering. This comic, while interesting, doesn’t do a great job at being a Pride edition of a story. We do get to meet Chapel’s girlfriend and they have a very sweet interaction. I think the best part of this whole comic is getting to see how trans medical interventions work in the future. Chapel’s girlfriend is a trans woman and there’s a part of the comic where she talks about her “Subdermal Epigenetic Modulation Therapy” which is the future version of today’s HRT. Other than that and some flirty exchanges between Chapel and her girlfriend, this is barely a pride comic. It’s an interesting story but just because you have gay characters existing and doing their jobs does not make something a pride comic. 

I have the same criticisms for “Innovation and Interruption” that I do for the other stories in this comic. Just having queer people existing and doing their jobs doesn’t qualify for a pride comic. This comic follows Statements and Reno dealing with an outbreak of robotic spiders that autonomously use programmable matter. It’s a silly scene showing Staments and Reno scrambling around the enterprise to catch all these spiders, it’s not a pride comic. The only mention of queer identity is on the last page where Reno mentions that the song that she’s listening to is “a recording of [her] wife singing their wedding song.” While it’s really sweet I just don’t think it makes the comic worthy of being a pride edition of a story. In addition, Culber, Adira, and Gray are all on the cover of this comic and thus I expected to see them turn up in the story. They did not. They were not even mentioned. I do not understand why they are on the cover of a comic they aren’t even in. Culber even made his way onto an alternate cover despite never showing up in the actual comic. 

The last story, “Risian Rendezvous”, actually did a pretty good job at telling a story worthy of being included in a Pride comic. It shows Mariner and Jennifer going on a date to Risa and that date going horribly wrong. The story is funny and cute and does a great job at capturing that iconic Lower Decks sense of humor. I really quite enjoyed this story. 

I really do love that IDW decided to release a pride comic this year. I think their heart was in the right place. However it’s 2024 and showing queer people just existing, while great and something I think should be done more often, is not exactly profound. We see it all the time in modern trek. I suppose, I just expected more celebration of queer identity in a comic literally titled Star Trek: Celebrations. It seems as though IDW was doing their best not to step on anyone’s toes and just make a comic that would offend nobody, however in doing so they lost the ability to tell authentic and loving queer stories. My expectations were quite high for a comic from a franchise that believes in “infinite diversity in infinite combinations” and they really let me and many other queer people down.