Like any long-running franchise, there’s always some wacky non-canonical ephemera spinning out of it. Star Trek is no different. And one of the wackier ones came in the early days of Star Trek: The Next Generation, when it first started airing back in 1987. Around the time of the show’s premiere, DC Comics published a tie-in mini-series, which produced what has always been a rarity — a Trek Christmas story. And YouTube channel Junkball Media released a video that describes the events of this interstellar holiday story, “Spirit in the Sky,” in a very funny ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas style. This story has a cosmic Santa, Grinch-like aliens, and other delightfully cringe elements.
What’s so odd about a Star Trek Christmas story? It’s odd because Star Trek, as a franchise, has gone out of its way to establish that there are no human religious holidays in the 24th century, as per (famously atheistic) Gene Roddenberry’s edict. There’s one mention of a Christmas party on the Enterprise in one original series episode. Also, there’s a Dickensian holiday fantasy sequence in Star Trek: Generations. But generally speaking, you won’t see stockings hanging or Christmas trees on the holodeck. So how did this slip through the cracks and wind up in an official Trek comic? That has to do with when the comic was made.
The first DC Next Generation mini-series arrived in late 1987, just a couple of months after the TV series began. However, DC created the comics long before any episodes had aired. So Superman writer Mike Carlin and artist Pablo Marcos were working from the series bible, and production photos. They didn’t know what the characters’ voices were yet, because they probably hadn’t yet seen an actual episode. So the characters all feel off-brand, and even more hilarious, they are all drawn like ripped superheroes. This Jean Luc was definitely hitting the gym. As DC created this comic just as the show was getting underway, the Christmas element probably just never made it to Roddenberry’s radar. But we’re glad Gene missed this, because this holiday season Trek is pretty hilarious.