IDW Publishing has announced two Star Trek books for 2027 that fans can get behind for once. One is written by the actress who played Beverly Crusher. The other is written by the novelist who created Grand Admiral Thrawn. They arrived within a day of each other, about a month after IDW’s longtime Star Trek editor Heather Antos announced she was stepping back from the line.
Gates McFadden Writes Crusher
IDW announced on October 6 that Gates McFadden will write Star Trek: Crusher, a limited series due in summer 2027. It is her comics writing debut, and the release is timed to the 40th anniversary of The Next Generation. Megan Levens draws it, with Charlie Kirchoff on colors. Levens has drawn IDW Trek before, including Boldly Go and Red Shirts.
The series fills 20 years of Beverly Crusher’s life that no screen story has shown, the gap between the film Star Trek: Nemesis and the third season of Star Trek: Picard. McFadden played Crusher in the Next Generation series, four feature films and that Picard season, where Beverly and the mystery of her son Jack drove the plot. The comic has a defined stretch of time and an unresolved thread to pull.
McFadden said she has spent years “bringing the words of other great writers to life in Beverly’s shoes” and is now the one scripting the next chapter. IDW CEO Davidi Jonas put the case in one line: “Who better to tell it than Beverly Crusher herself?”
Zahn Takes On Deep Space Nine
IDW announced on October 7 that Timothy Zahn will write Star Trek: Roc’s Egg, an original graphic novel set on Deep Space Nine and due in October 2027. It is his first Star Trek project. Ángel Hernández, whose credits include Star Trek: Voyager - Homecoming and Godzilla: Here There Be Aliens, draws it. IDW’s tagline is “Something is rotten on Deep Space 9.”
The story is a mystery. A Roc’s Egg, an artifact, arrives on the station and is seemingly destroyed in transit, so a Federation JAG investigation is called in. The team finds a secret auction, a station full of wealthy collectors and dangerous criminals, a priceless artifact that may not be what it seems and a murder waiting to happen. IDW calls it a “twisty new mystery” set on a station “where everyone has something to hide.”
Zahn said his association with Star Trek “goes all the way back to 1966” and that he wants to add “my own small grace note to that rich and vibrant symphony.” He called the job “a huge honor and privilege.” Antos, quoted in the announcement as the former IDW Group Editor, called herself a lifelong fan of his work and pointed to his “incredible gift for intricate plotting.”
The Man Who Wrote Thrawn
Before Heir to the Empire arrived in 1991, Star Wars had gone four years without new material since the original film’s tenth anniversary. Zahn’s novel ended that stretch and reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Dark Force Rising followed in 1992 and The Last Command in 1993, and the three books sold 15 million copies combined. The trilogy is widely credited with building the Expanded Universe, and its success led Lucasfilm to commission more novels right away.
The books gave Star Wars characters it kept using for three decades. Grand Admiral Thrawn is an Imperial officer who beats his enemies by studying them, down to their art, to learn how they think. Mara Jade, a former agent of the Emperor, and the smuggler Talon Karrde came from the same books. Zahn followed with the Hand of Thrawn duology in 1997 and 1998 and the prequel Outbound Flight in 2006. When Lucasfilm rebuilt its continuity, Thrawn came back anyway, and Zahn wrote the new novels from 2017 to 2019, then the Ascendancy trilogy in 2020 and 2021. In 2023, Dave Filoni confirmed that Zahn consulted on Ahsoka to help the team portray Thrawn correctly.
That is the work of a writer who did more than fill a licensing slot. Zahn built a villain, a heroine and a political situation that readers carried for more than 30 years, with no film behind them for most of that time. NPR listeners ranked the trilogy 88th among the top 100 science fiction and fantasy books in a 2011 poll of more than 60,000 voters. Outside Star Wars, he won the 1984 Hugo Award for the novella “Cascade Point,” has published more than sixty novels, and wrote the Cobra and Dragonback series. A mystery set on Deep Space Nine sits close to his trade. Thrawn’s campaigns are puzzles that the heroes solve one step late.
Fans React on Zahn’s Facebook Page
Readers on Zahn’s Facebook page welcomed the news. One fan wrote:
I’ve always thought DS9 was the best sci-fi version of Trek. It’s fantastic one of the best sci-fi writers in the business is having a crack at DS9. I’m so pumped for this. !!
Another wrote:
Congrats! Maybe ill be able to get into Star Trek now that you are writing for it
A third wrote:
Congratulations! So happy to see you work in yet another of my favourite IP’s. Especially with the focus star trek has is appreciated with the current state of the world.
The second comment shows what an outside author brings to a franchise book. A reader who says he has not gotten into Star Trek names Zahn as the reason to try it.
IDW’s Trek Line After Antos
On September 8, Antos announced she was stepping back from editing Star Trek comics after a five-year run and shifting her focus to IDW Dark, the horror line she helped build. She remains Senior Group Editor for Licensing at IDW, and Thea Cheuk and Cassandra Jones take over the Star Trek books. The Zahn announcement still carries her name, though this is the beginning of a transition for Star Trek at IDW.
IDW’s most recent Star Trek launches centered on Kurtzman-era leads: a flagship series with Captain Seven of Nine commanding the USS Enterprise-G, and Star Trek: Zero Point, starring Commander Raffi Musiker, which goes on sale October 14. McFadden and Zahn point somewhere else. One book fills a 20-year gap in a Next Generation character’s life, and the other is a mystery on a Deep Space Nine station. Both rest on legacy settings and a writer with a following of their own.
If a Next Generation actress and the author of Thrawn can earn this response before a page is drawn, will IDW build its Star Trek line around writers like them, or go back to the Picard-era leads it launched last month?
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