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By 1991 it was obvious that Doctor Who would not be back for a new series so I needed something else to fill the void. Star Trek filled the gap admirably. I’d grown up knowing the original series, seen all the movies and loved the Next Generation with its rumours from across the pond of a deadly new race called the Borg. (Back then we had no internet!)

I collected the (by then) defunct Galoob figures and in 1993 stumbled by chance on the new line of Playmates Next Generation figures complete with Borg! I promised myself I’d only buy the Borg and Deanna Troi (absent from the Galoob line). I lied. I bought all ten of the first wave and went on to get many, many more including the Deep Space Nine and Voyager figures too.

It was probably around 1997 that I hit upon the idea of making a Star Trek action figure film. A movie that would encompass as many of the figures I’d accrued and crossover The Next Generation with Deep Space Nine. I wrote most of the script for the hour long/ four part adventure before it hit the buffers. A lack of time and probably a loss of interest in Star Trek (especially with the return of Doctor Who via the TV Movie and renewed Dapol figures) scuppered it.

But the story still remained.

Fast forward to 2013. With the JJ Abrams Star Trek sequel on the horizon and the toy licence in the hands of Hasbro I began to hope that we might get some 3.75” figures. And that the line would be so successful it would go back and cover Next Generation as well (which I was more interested in than the rebooted Kirk and Spock.) Total pipedream, no such figures were even on the cards. But it did serve to remind me that I already had a wealth of great action figures. Totally inspired, I turned to the Star Trek: Legacy storyline to see if it could be done as a comic. The original plan had been to make it four episodes of four pages but I really wanted a weekly presence on the AFT site.

Fortunately (with maybe one or two exceptions) the sixteen individual pages seemed exciting and meaty enough to carry the story week by week.

The movie script was written up to the final part where the Borg ship lifts off from the planet Kalrok and while it needed some editing and rejigging to get it into the AFT comic format the barebones remain very much in tact.

Even after that, I further edited the script as I storyboarded the seventeen pages. Some of the action towards the end has been split across several pages to avoid a rushed ending. A scene from page 14 where Sisko suggests the quantum singularity plan to O’Brien was cut, as I felt it wasn’t needed and gave away the solution too early.

The final bit of shooting was done on 20th August for the two panels in the Jem'Hadar ship and the Klingon ships that appear in the final panel.

A good handful of the pages were edited and ready to go ahead of transmission of page 1. Others just needed to be lettered week by week but as time went by I found myself editing pages in the week they were to be posted online. I’m pleased to say that no episode was late however.

Once scene cut from page 15 is an exchange with Odo and Quark about the appearance of the Romulan fleet. I felt it would be better to show the Romulans so their dialogue is said ‘off camera’ by Kira.

The end of the story after the destruction of the Borg ship was totally missing from the script and put together on 21^st August. I always knew what it was intended to say though.

One of the things that drew me to Star Trek initially was its in-universe continuity, both in terms of technology and in terms of timeline. As such, this story is steeped in continuity so I’ll try and take it a bit at a time.

The Enterprise and Romulans almost come to blows (in the Next Generation season 1 finale The Neutral Zone) over colonies apparently ‘scooped up’ from The Neutral Zone. We later learn that this is due to the Borg but this incursion was never really addressed in the series. It is now as Legacy suggests the Romulans brought the Borg ship down, as shown in the opening scene.

The stardate 48975.2 puts us squarely between seasons 3 and 4 of Deep Space Nine and after the movie Generations. The Enterprise D has been destroyed so I’ve assigned Picard and his crew to The Farragut- the ship that picks them all up after the Enterprise has been destroyed. (The main reason for this when the script was first written was because I didn't have a model of the Enterprise E but given all the continuity, I decided to keep it that way.)

In Deep Space Nine, season 3 ends with the revelation that the shape shifting Founders have already infiltrated the Alpha Quadrant.  This is why Picard doesn’t readily accept Sisko until he shows some blood- a way of proving identity that they use in the series.

The end of the story ties in with the DS9 season 4 opener The Way of the Warrior which sees Worf join the DS9 crew after a leave of absence at the Klingon monastery on Boreth- hence he is unable to appear in Legacy. Those are Klingon ships heading to Deep Space 9 determined to take on the Dominion.

Legacy also uses one of my favourite characters, the half human/ half Romulan villain Sela last seen in TNG’s season 5 Unification attempting to invade Vulcan. That story also sees Ambassador Spock defect to Romulus where we see him at the start of Legacy.