Star Trek Revives the Kelvin Timeline for a New, Rebooted Era

Few moments in Star Trek’s sixty-year historical mythology are as controversial as the Kelvin Era, ushered in by the 2009 motion picture. Directed by visionary filmmaker J.J. Abrams and featuring an all-new, star-filled cast, the intention was to reinvigorate the franchise for a new generation on the big screen, with stories spotlighting a younger Kirk and Spock and a largely untested crew of the Starship Enterprise.

Now IDW Publishing is releasing these beloved storylines in a special edition “ultra-sized” compilation titled Star Trek: The Kelvin Era for $13.99. Hitting shelves at comic book specialty shops on November 17th, the 360-page collection will be printed in the popular, portable 6×9 format and will include the previously mentioned prequel series, graphic novel, and the 2009 film adaptation.

The Kelvin Era Launched An Entirely New Generation Of Trek Fandom

star-trek-the-kelvin-era-idw-classic-collections-tp-main-cover — Star Trek Just Resurrected the Kelvin Timeline For A Rebooted Era

Prompted by the incursion of a terrifyingly monstrous Romulan ship from the future, the attack on the unsuspecting crew of the Starship Kelvin becomes the inflection point for which an entire new timeline evolves very differently from the “prime” Star Trek universe. That story appeared as a “prelude” to the 2009 feature film. IDW Publishing titled that prequel series Star Trek: Countdown.

To build up to the feature film’s release, IDW also published an additional graphic novel, Star Trek: Nero, giving audiences a fuller, fleshed-out background of the film’s Romulan antagonist, who is determined to destroy the universe after witnessing the destruction of his beloved home world. In the 24th-century Prime Timeline, an aged, wizened Spock cannot prevent an ecological disaster and is blamed on Nero, a Romulan who is off-world when Romulus is destroyed by a supernova.

The Romulans, a longtime adversary of the Federation, are an offshoot of the Vulcans, and Spock spends much of his retirement from Starfleet trying to reunify the species. The prequel series Star Trek: Countdown and the graphic novel Star Trek: Nero leading up to the film’s adaptation (also published as a miniseries from IDW) are written as, and intended to be, official Star Trek canon.

A Star Trek For A New Generation Created By Fans of Every Trek

The special edition compilation features stories by Mike Johnson, Tim Jones, Star Trek’s own Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci, with art by David Messina and Giovanna Niro. Celebrating all the fandom of one of science fiction’s most beloved franchises, Star Trek: The Kelvin Era puts the spotlight back on the film that launched a whole new era of Trek reinterpreted for an all-new audience.

The film trilogy remains one of the most watchable in the franchise, and it especially inspired fans both old and new with stories that felt familiar yet were magnified for modern tastes and sensibilities. The follow-up films in the series include Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), which reunited the crew of the Kelvin-era Enterprise to confront one of the most notorious villains of any Trek era, Khan Noonien Singh, originally portrayed in the classic series by Ricardo Montalbán, and reimagined for the sequel by Benedict Cumberbatch.

Starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Zoe Saldaña, the Star Trek reboot was a hit at the box office and introduced the “loophole” that kept Abrams and his crew from having to inherit decades of calcified continuity: the film is built on an alternate timeline that is ignited when the Starship Kelvin is destroyed, setting in motion a series of events that alter the course of the Enterprise crew’s lives.

Star Trek: The Kelvin Era — IDW Classic Collections trade paperback will be hitting shelves on November 17 from IDW Publishing.