Better minds than I can surely correct me, but I feel like there’s not a lot of basis for intra-Star Trek crossovers.¹ Yes, the novels Destiny and Coda et al.; yes, “Unification” and “Relics”; yes, Q Conflict, etc. But what we find in Star Trek: Day of Blood — two titles, two crews, all mashed together in one story — that feels more rare Trek-wise (what IDW calls “the first,” though see all the other caveats above).

But it is not so rare, though maybe rarely done to its fullest potential, in comics. And here I’d say, in terms of comic book crossovers, Day of Blood is very good. Yup, this is mostly five main issues of people just running around, and yup, it takes about four issues from when captains Benjamin Sisko and Worf set off from the Defiant wreckage until they get where they’re going. Again, however, the respective crews are all mashed together, the side quests follow from issue to issue, and we get most of the cross-team team-ups we could want — it’s not particularly science-forward Star Trek, but as a comics crossover, not bad.

[Review contains spoilers]

I was surprised to find in the end that Sisko and Worf settle their differences, and that it seems that Worf and the rogue Defiant crew are headed to face their consequences on Earth. My guess would have been that the premise of Christopher Cantwell’s Defiant — antihero Federation renegades doing good — would have continued maybe until the end of the book, so I’m surprised maybe they’ll get to be “official” again (Ro, I imagine, pardoned such to put her in the place she needs to be for her eventual Picard role). This twist isn’t bad; rather I’m interested in the book’s unexpected-by-me direction and also if another Trek character will come on to replace Lore, and so on.

I did find Sisko and Worf’s reconciliation somewhat treacly, if indeed again I wasn’t expecting the Defiant crew to be brought back into the fold quite so soon. Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing’s conflict seemed overwrought from the start — that Sisko, of all people, would expect Worf to kill his own son on command — and so Sisko’s arc to recognize his mistake equally feels like writerly fiat and not true to the character. That culminates in Sisko asking Worf, essentially, whether they can be friends again; maybe it’s been a while, but I don’t remember Sisko and Worf being quite so chummy, letting alone Worf again calling Sisko by his first name instead of his title.

As mentioned, there’s all sorts of good pairings here. We have Spock and Scotty, which is fun, and an apparently rivalry between Next Generation’s Ro and Lower Decks' Shaxs. I was disappointed not to see Data interact with Sela more, though the writers put her with Crusher since Data’s busy with Lore. Equally I was enjoying “reformed Lore” and sorry to see him return to type, though knowing where this series ends, perhaps that was inevitable.

One hates to think that Voyager’s Tom Paris and B’Elanna Torres are not a happy couple; I’d prefer to believe they rode off into the sunset more like Riker and Troi than Han and Leia. There’s not strife here but certainly conflict, the suggestion of Tom as an inattentive father even as we’re still not even sure how B’Elanna came to join Worf’s crew. Neither Tom nor B’Elanna seems to be doing quite the right thing, each of them reaching out to Harry Kim to say the other will be coming to get daughter Miral. And notably Harry’s position is listed as “assignment classified,” which I wonder if that’s a nod to some of his spy dealings in the Voyager relaunch novels or whether Harry will be appearing in one of these titles before too long.

Sela has been an interesting figure in these volumes. Albeit with somewhat limited exposure, I’ve thought of Sela as a dangerous figure, one of Next Generation’s “villains” alongside Lore, Q, the Borg Queen, and so on. Star Trek: Defiant Vol. 1, however, portrayed her as a sycophant, someone held in low regard by the Romulan elite. Here, she has a key scene where she’s chastised for her bad behavior by Crusher and then seeks to prove herself, maybe the beginnings of a hero turn, though she’s scheming with Martok before the story ends. Suspiria Vilchez’s variant cover portrays Sela as a bombshell out of old sci-fi serials, shoulder pads and all; it’s a romanticizing that the character doesn’t usually get and I’m curious if it will inform Cantwell’s use of her at all.

It seems both the Theseus and Defiant crews lose their purpose in Star Trek: Day of Blood; the threat of Kahless is defeated, eliminating both what sent Worf AWOL and also the purported reasons Sisko was resurrected. I will be curious to see whether either vessel becomes a “ship of the line” now, sent to explore strange new worlds, and whether, in addition to replacing Lore, that means any updates to the crews — what other guest stars we can expect, essentially. Surely there’s still an overarching plot and related difficulties to surmount — Lore, Sela, Martok, Kahless — but I’m eager to see what the writers imagine as Starfleet’s orders as the status quo in the interim.

[Includes original and variant covers, Shaxs' Best Day special]