With Star Trek Vol. 5: When the Walls Fell, it seems writers Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzig are getting a little punchy. It’s the final collection essentially, just short of the Star Trek: Lore War crossover and finale, and maybe that’s the reason for the book going meta, but I wasn’t convinced. In pitting Trek franchise against Trek franchise, the authors clearly favor a side, but the digs they take are mundane, nothing better than what most everyone else observed some 10-plus years ago.

At the same time, the whole premise of Kelly and Lanzig’s Star Trek centers around explaining an otherwise unexplainable Star Trek mystery, and here at the final inflection point, they seem to perform admirably. If it holds up, it feels like a win, an answer that seems perfectly obvious once given, and maybe that’s a fair trade for some silliness at the start.