Star Trek: Defiant Vol. 5: No Old Warriors collects just four issues ahead of the “Lore War” crossover finale, though it sells for the same price the previous volumes. Most of those actually only collect five issues, so we’re not that much outside the norm, but still I was surprised to pick this up and find how little was here.

To be fair, IDW would have had to overstuff Defiant Vol. 4: The Stars of Home or something to have not had a four-issue volume, since indeed these issues are a self-contained storyline you couldn’t break. So, fair’s fair, though equally another issue wouldn’t have hurt “No Old Warriors” either (or an annual) if IDW could’ve fit it into the schedule. Of the two storylines here, one is significantly, almost comically undernourished compared to the other. I’m not usually one to push for comics to be longer, but it seems clear writer Christopher Cantwell didn’t have enough pages.

That said, this is one of those “Klingon chronicles” stories that Trek often does, mainly Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, and while I don’t tend to be a fan of those, I did like this. We have at this point well and truly abandoned any idea of a status quo or mission for the USS Defiant within the Defiant series and instead fully embraced this as simply a Worf spotlight series, hence his getting most of the attention here even off the ship. That’s a disappointment in terms of what Defiant could have been — Suicide Squad a la Star Trek, which this series touched once and then never again — but it’s a win for the book, in that it is a darn good Worf story.

Neither Warriors nor Star Trek Vol. 5: When the Walls Fell is actually the final volume of these series, since each continues into Star Trek: Lore War — but still I’d be remiss not to read a bit into each series' independent “ending.” Star Trek, in its last issue, noodles with a side character, pursuing the authors' interests but maybe not the readers'. With Walls, as mentioned, Defiant gives up any pretense of what it should be and embraces what it’s been all along. I think that’s missing the mark, but still, it works out well.

[Review contains spoilers for Star Trek Vol. 5 and Defiant Vol. 5]

Worf’s son Alexander admits to murdering seven people when he was on the wrong side of the Day of Blood crossover. I guess because they were Klingons and not Starfleet officers, the Federation doesn’t have a hand in it, and instead he’s released to Worf for rehabilitation. For this, Cantwell invents the Klingon Quv rite, at the end of which Alexander will have “his honor restored” and be essentially forgiven for his crimes. Seems a bit easy to me but that might be my cultural relativism talking.

I appreciate how serious things get for Alexander. No, I hardly believed Cantwell would kill him off, but there were enough “almost” moments where Cantwell did have me wondering, at least, what Worf would do were his son killed during this ritual. And what sells this for me, as it has most of IDW’s dual Star Trek series, are the cameos — Toq, from “Birthright”; D’Yestra, sister of Alexander’s mother K’Ehleyr, whom you can just imagine being also played by Suzie Plakson; and then Martok pops up out of nowhere and Cantwell gets his voice just right. That’s good stuff, plus Worf and Alexander fomenting a revolution in the second chapter.

There is also that, halfway through the book, Worf sends Alexander to go slay the clone of Kahless that was responsible for Day of Blood. I’ve been going back and forth between the Star Trek and Defiant books, and I’d already seen Kahless designated as Sisko’s Emissary in When the Walls Fell, so I thought this was big — Worf and Alexander encountering Kahless in the aftermath of events in the other book. That’s not quite how it goes — Worf and Alexander come and go before that other story — but the tease of some pre-crossover synchronicity drove my excitement for the third chapter.

Throughout all this, Cantwell gives the other members of the Defiant crew less and less screen time. At the start, things are coming to a head for B’Elanna Torres, now captain of the Defiant but considering whether she’s cut out for going home and being a mother to her daughter. Then Miles O’Brien raises the specter of the self-replicating mines he feels guilty about, and the Defiant is into the breach one last time. But Cantwell ends up cutting big chunks out of a standoff with both the Cardassians and Section 31; one issue, it seems the Defiant’s about to crash, and then the next issue, inexplicably, O’Brien and Ro Laren are down on the surface of a planet for some reason while everyone else is still up in space. There’s a fight, cut short, and then the two are back on the Defiant again.

In other circumstances I might argue Cantwell gives the plot too many pages (a la Defiant Vol. 3: Hell Is Only a Word), but it’s so choppy as to really need more. And that’s on top of that, in the fourth issue, Cantwell largely abandons Worf and the Defiant to focus on former crew member Nymira and Next Generation villain Berlinghoff Rasmussen. We get way more than we need on the grift they’re running, basically just to show the audience the effects of Lore’s universe-destroying wave launched in Walls, when surely some of those pages could be used for the Defiant story. Here, too, I think the author misjudges what the audience really cares about.

With Star Trek: Defiant Vol. 5: No Old Warriors, IDW’s Trek spin-off series reaches its “end”; not really, but close enough. Defiant was supposed to be Star Trek’s “Dirty Dozen” and we can confidently conclude that it wasn’t. Maybe that has no place in Trek anyway, but gosh, I wish this series had had an overarching plot more than just the Defiant crew randomly running into things on their way home.

I want desperately to like Christopher Cantwell's new-new Star Trek series, but his Defiant run leaves me concerned.

[Includes original and variant covers]