This is a slightly different brand of Trek, though. Set around the Original Series time periods, sharing space with Kirk, Spock, Uhura and the rest of the gang. But where their heroics were appropriate for prime time TV, where the heroes fought injustice and suffered only as much as audience share would allow, the cast of Red Shirts live differently. They're here to fight, and to win. No less heroes than the command staff that we've seen on TV, but down in the mud. Conscious that their lives may be seen as more disposable. Very conscious that their lives are on the line on every away mission. Keen to survive. But for all that, still human. Still willing to be brave, to stand up and be counted, to live and fight and die for their friends, their comrades, or the ideals of the Federation. Not that they want to, of course. But they know the score. This is a more lethal, bloodier version of the world we tohught we knew.
Levens does a great job in the illustration department. The colours are rich and vibrant, and you can immediately identify each of the hapless Red Shirts as they come across the page. There's eleven of them(!) and if their numbers do reduce rather rapidly, still you know who's who and what their deal is without having to squint. The environments are rendered in lush, loving detail, from the glossy white of Federation starships to the purple dark of an alien jungle, where one small step can leave things splashed carmine with the insides of the unlucky. You can feel the world breathing in and out around you, and if it has more splashes of weapons fire and blood than usual, that just makes it more vital. There's an intentional claustrophobia in the environments, everyone in slightly too close proximity, everyone one short step from disaster.
The cast...well, you're spread across a lot of different faces, very quickly. But they all have moments to shine, things which make them feel real, make them feel like people, and make you feel for them, as their mission moves from "adventure" to "out of control trashfire". There are definitely a few that seem more like a quick collection of traits than a full characterisation, but the comic is clearly giving it all it has to build them a backstory, to make you see each of these poor folks as people. Because, make no mistake, and as the monstrous creature that used to be a person on the cover makes clear, this is Star-Trek-As-Horror, and survival is by no means guaranteed.
There's a story here, about a monitoring station that's keeping an eye on stellar winds. And about spies, trying to figure out what's being received - or transmitted - from that station. About old officers left out in the middle of nowhere with an eye to conspiracy, and the occasional actual conspiracy. This is a harsher, colder Trek, where nobody has their phasers set to stun, where life is cheap, and where nobody's hands are clean. But it's still Trek, for all that - a story of humanity out among the stars, being our best and worst selves. It's fun, playing on expectation, subverting it, enabling it, and unflinchingly looking at what life is like for these poor expendable folks at the sharp end of Starfleet's exploration of new worlds. It wants to shwow you what kind of people they are, what dreams they have, what drives them, and what they're willing to do to survive - and it doesn't look away form the answers, foul and fair.
Is Star Trek: Red Shirts a typical Star Trek story? No. But it's an entertaining one, an important one, and one that might leave you asking questions, might leave you examining how you feel, in the wreckage of what expendables will do in the face of the inevitable. It's a good read, and if you're looking for something a little different, then it's well worth a look.
