It’s common for long-running franchises like Star Trek to have inconsistencies in their stories. With so much history and detail, it’s hard to keep everything straight. We saw this recently in ‘Strange New Worlds’ when a moment between Spock and Kirk didn’t quite fit with established lore. Usually, these issues are addressed by simply explaining them as changes to the past, and the story continues.
Almost fifty years ago, Star Trek accidentally created a unique continuity moment that’s unlikely to be repeated. Due to a strange combination of release timing and miscommunication between the show’s writers, a Starfleet character was brought back to life before she was even written as having died – though it didn’t last forever.
How Star Trek “Resurrected” Lieutenant Ilia
Even after the original Star Trek series finished airing, it stayed popular, leading to other forms of media. From 1967 to 1979, Gold Key Comics published a Star Trek comic book series, and British comic strips ran for a couple of years between 1969 and 1971. In December 1979, coinciding with the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the LA Times Syndicate launched a daily comic strip directly connected to the film.
The comic strip debuted on December 2nd, 46 years ago, with the film following on December 7th (after a limited Washington D.C. release on December 6th). However, the initial comic strips featured Ilia, a prominent character played by Persis Khambatta in the movie, who famously dies in The Motion Picture and is replaced by a duplicate. Because the comic continued the story after the film’s ending, readers who encountered it after seeing the movie would have been very confused.
The reason Ilia wasn’t retroactively changed in the comic actually stems from a misunderstanding. Artist Thomas Warkentin initially drew Ilia at the navigation station in the first two comic arcs – “Called Home” (December 2, 1979) and “Dilithium Dilemma” (January 9, 1980) – because he was given still images from the movie. He didn’t realize the character was destined to die until after seeing the film in theaters. He included her silently in a couple of panels of “Called Home” and again in “Dilithium Dilemma” where she had dialogue with Kirk. By the third arc, however, she was removed, once again listed as Missing in Action, reflecting her fate in The Motion Picture.
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2025-12-03 01:40