Assignment: Earth No. 1 Cover by John Byrne

We return to one of my favourite topics, Gene Roddenberry’s other ideas for TV series. The first one was Assignment: Earth, a back-door pilot that aired as the last episode of the second season of Star Trek in 1968.

If you’ve been visiting this site for a number of years, you’ll already know that I’ve had the web’s best resource for Æ and Roddenberry’s other failed pilots – Genesis II, Planet Earth, The Questor Tapes and Spectre – since the late 1990s. But if you haven’t yet visited assignmentearth.ca, please do and tell me what you think.

John Byrne produced a number of entertaining Trek stories for IDW, including a five-issue Assignment: Earth mini-series in 2008. It was fun but, as I’ve said elsewhere, I’ve always thought Æ would be better if it wasn’t tied into Trek’s continuity.

With that in mind, along with a new colour version I redid the trade dress to not reference Trek.

Colour and new logo by me.

As published.

Original art scan from the web.

New colour version.

New trade dress applied.