Review – Star Trek: Assignment Earth #1

The second-season “Star Trek” original series episode, “Assignment Earth,” featured Kirk and the Star Trek crew visiting 1960s earth.

Special agent Gary-7 and his sidekick Ms. Lincoln (played by Teri Garr) and the cat, Isis, were introduced as possible stars for a spinoff that never happened. Robert Lansing played Gary-7, sort of a futuristic James Bond from another planet, assigned to 1960s Earth.

Writer artist John Byrne, 40 years later, takes that premise and runs with it, creating “Star Trek: Assignment Earth” as a comic-book series.  The five-part series features the time traveller and his assistant covertly tackling threats to the past. 

Byrne’s art is in fine form here, and it’s well-written as well. Byrne has his bashers nowadays, but this is an interesting take on a spinoff that might have been.  And “Time-travelling James Bond” seems like a good hook for a comic-book series.  This one feels like a comic you could have read at the time, with nuclear tests, Soviet scientists, secret projects and double-crosses.

– Matt Price