Seven Has the Enterprise. I Have Questions.

Thoughts on Star Trek #1 (2026) and its sneak peek at Star Trek: Zero Point

⚠️THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS

There are certain combinations of words that are particularly effective at getting my attention.

“Captain Seven of Nine” is one of them.

Put her on the bridge of the Enterprise-G, add Admiral Janeway, Jack Crusher, Sidney La Forge and Alexander Rozhenko, then casually mention that Seven and Raffi are married now, and apparently my afternoon belongs to you. This is fine. I had plans. They just weren't as interesting anymore.

I have wanted to know what happened next from almost the moment Star Trek: Picard ended. That final glimpse of Seven sitting in the captain's chair of the Enterprise-G felt less like an ending than someone opening a door, letting me look through it for approximately thirty seconds, and then closing it again.

Excuse me. I was looking in there.

So Christopher Cantwell, Dennis Menheere and Jodie Troutman's Star Trek #1 already had a fairly easy way into my Trek-loving heart. Give me Captain Seven. Let me spend some time on her Enterprise. Show me who serves with her and what this crew looks like when they're no longer standing together for one final scene at the end of somebody else's story.

Interestingly, the comic seems to understand that getting to know this crew is part of the assignment.

Counselor Atticus Cassidy has been using holo simulations to study the Enterprise-G crew, trying to understand the people serving together on this ship. The artwork makes that more interesting than a collection of personnel files. Pieces of their lives appear almost like fragments around the Enterprise, moments with parents, losses, relationships and pieces of history occupying the same visual space. We recognize some of them immediately, but seeing them gathered together reminded me how much of this crew we know through somebody else's story.

Cassidy is trying to put the pieces together.

So are we.

And there is another detail in there that caught my attention. Seven specifically wanted these people on her crew.

Well, now I have another question.

Why them?

Jack Crusher, Sidney “Crash” La Forge, Alexander Rozhenko and the others aren't simply the people Starfleet happened to assign to Seven's Enterprise. She chose them. Suddenly learning who they are isn't the only interesting part. I want to know what Seven sees in them.

Unfortunately for Cassidy, there isn't much time to finish figuring everybody out because this is Star Trek and an actual mission has arrived.

The Enterprise-G is heading beyond the known galaxy to help the dying Avuran people find somewhere they can survive. Three possible Class-M worlds are waiting in the Epsilon Corridor, and Seven and her crew have been sent to help determine whether one of them can become a new home.

There is something about Seven of Nine being responsible for that particular mission that got me. Seven knows a few things about trying to figure out where you belong.

I still remember the Seven who arrived on Voyager after being disconnected from the Borg Collective. She didn't simply have to learn how to live among people again. She had to figure out what being an individual meant, what she wanted and eventually what belonging could look like when it wasn't imposed on her by a collective.

Janeway saw possibilities in Seven long before Seven was ready to see many of them herself, which makes Admiral Janeway's presence here especially satisfying for me. Their relationship was never simple, and I wouldn't want it rewritten into something simple now. Janeway challenged Seven, protected her, frustrated her, pushed her and made choices for her that we could probably still argue about over coffee for several hours.

Now Seven has four pips and the Enterprise.

When something goes wrong on that bridge, nobody is waiting for Janeway to tell Seven what to do. They're waiting for Seven, and I found myself wondering what Janeway sees when she looks at her now. Does some part of her still see the young woman standing in Voyager's cargo bay arguing with almost everything she said? Does she see the person she believed Seven could become? Or has Seven become someone even Janeway couldn't have predicted?

The artwork helps here too. Dennis Menheere doesn't turn Seven into an unreadable authority figure simply because she's the captain now. We see her processing what is happening around her. She's skeptical, surprised, frustrated and occasionally looks like Starfleet has handed her information she would very much like to return.

That's Seven.

The uniform has changed. The person inside it hasn't disappeared.

That's what I want from Captain Seven of Nine. I don't want her to become another Janeway. I want to see what everything Seven has lived through looks like when she is the person making the decision. She has been Borg, liberated Borg, Voyager crew member, Fenris Ranger and Starfleet officer. She knows what it is to belong to a collective, lose it, build relationships by choice and eventually be rejected by the institution she wanted to join.

Now Starfleet has handed her the Enterprise and sent her beyond the known galaxy.

No pressure.

And then there is the crew she chose to take with her.

Jack and Sidney give us a direct connection to the future Picard only started to show us, but the character who made me stop for a minute was Alexander Rozhenko.

Worf's son is Seven's chief medical officer.

I genuinely did not see that coming, which is exactly why I like it. Alexander spent so much of his life underneath the enormous shadow of Worf. Being Worf's son came with Klingon expectations, Starfleet expectations, family expectations and the not particularly small problem that Worf and Alexander frequently had very different ideas about who Alexander was supposed to be.

And now he's a doctor.

Not another version of Worf. Not a character being asked to repeat his father's story. He is aboard Seven's Enterprise to care for people, and knowing Seven chose him makes me even more curious about how he got there.

The same is true of the rest of this crew. Sidney is Geordi La Forge's daughter. Jack is the son of Beverly Crusher and Jean-Luc Picard. Alexander is Worf's son. Those names carry decades of Star Trek history, but the comic seems much more interested in what happens after the family connection gets our attention.

Who are they now?

And why did Seven decide these were the people she wanted beside her?

That's where Cassidy's simulations become such a smart way into the series. The counselor is studying their histories and trying to understand what they bring aboard the Enterprise. We're doing essentially the same thing, except the mission interrupts the analysis and gives us a better way to find out.

We get to watch them work.

The art shifts with that too. The quieter Enterprise scenes give us room to watch faces and conversations, but when the mission becomes dangerous, the pages stop feeling quite so orderly. Panels push into one another, colors become more aggressive and Seven's face can become part of the action rather than simply observing it from the bridge. Dennis Menheere's art and Jodie Troutman's colors let the comic move away from the visual language of Picard without losing the people and ship we recognize.

It feels familiar without feeling like someone turned television screenshots into panels.

I appreciate that more than I expected.

And then I turned the page and Seven was kissing Raffi.

Not tucked into the corner of a panel. Not mentioned in passing. The image gets the page, and I may have stared at it for a while before continuing.

They're married.

MARRIED.

After Picard season three gave me so little room to actually experience Seven and Raffi as a couple, there is something especially satisfying about the comic allowing their relationship to take up literal space on the page. They're affectionate. They're together. And apparently quite a lot has happened since we last saw them.

Which, naturally, means I have questions.

Was there a ceremony? Who was there? Was Janeway there? Did Worf attend? Did anyone successfully prevent a group of Starfleet officers from turning the entire thing into an event? Did Seven approach wedding planning with Borg efficiency?

Who cried first?

These are important questions.

Underneath my immediate need for wedding photos that do not actually exist, though, is something I genuinely love about this choice. The comic isn't treating their relationship as something that had to disappear so both women could keep moving forward.

Seven has the Enterprise.

Raffi has a command of her own.

The sneak peek at Star Trek: Zero Point opens that future even further and reveals that D'Vana Tendi will serve as Raffi's science officer.

Raffi Musiker and D'Vana Tendi on the same ship is the kind of combination I didn't know I needed until somebody handed it to me.

I want to see what kind of captain Raffi is. I want to know who Tendi has become. I want to see what happens when Tendi's particular brand of enthusiasm encounters Raffi's particular brand of Raffi. And I really hope separate commands don't mean Seven and Raffi's marriage gets tucked somewhere safely off the page.

Show me the subspace calls that get interrupted. Show me two people trying to find time for each other from different ships. Show me what happens when one of them has had an absolutely terrible day and the other is several light-years away. Let their marriage be part of their stories without becoming the only story either woman gets to have.

Because when I put Seven and Raffi's stories next to each other, something about this new chapter of Star Trek becomes hard to miss.

Look at what Starfleet is trusting them with.

Seven once wanted to join Starfleet and was rejected. Raffi's history with the institution has included disillusionment, isolation, addiction, intelligence work and plenty of reasons to walk away from it entirely. Neither woman followed a nice clean route from Academy cadet to officer to captain.

Now Seven is taking the Enterprise beyond the known galaxy to help save a civilization, while Raffi has been given a ship and mission of her own.

I love that, but not because I think either woman finally became worthy of Starfleet's trust.

They already were.

Starfleet had some catching up to do.

Maybe that's what I enjoyed most about this first issue. There is plenty here that feels familiar, from the Enterprise itself to characters whose family trees stretch through decades of Star Trek, but the comic isn't simply gathering people we recognize and asking nostalgia to carry the story.

It's curious about what comes next.

Worf's son grew up and became a doctor. Geordi's daughter is serving on another Enterprise. Picard and Beverly's son is part of the crew. Raffi is a captain. Seven of Nine is sitting in the center chair, and she chose the people sitting around her.

Even the artwork seems interested in that same question. These characters are recognizable without being frozen as the last television version of themselves. Their histories are literally part of the visual storytelling, but the page keeps moving them forward.

And while Counselor Cassidy is still trying to understand exactly who all these people have become, Starfleet has already sent them beyond the edge of the map to help an entire civilization find a future.

I picked up Star Trek #1 because Seven of Nine had the Enterprise. I finished it wanting to know why she chose this particular crew, what Janeway sees when she looks at Captain Seven now, how Alexander found his way to sickbay, what Raffi and Tendi are going to be like on the same ship, and exactly how much begging will be required before someone gives me the Seven and Raffi wedding story.

Cassidy may have paused the simulations, but I'm just getting started.

And yes, I'm going to need more coffee.

Remember…

✨Be Kind. Do More Good. We Got This.

💫Until next time, lovelies, keep jibber jabbering about the stories and things that move you.