Assignment: Earth #1 – Brighter Than a thousand Suns – 3 months after ‘Assignment: Earth’ which is set in April 1968; so July 1968

C. JUNE – 2273?

Leonard McCoy: Frontier Doctor #4 pg. 22 – Scalpel – Epilogue – Admiral Kirk and Scotty are inspecting the new warp nacelles for the Enterprise. Once the units are shipped to Spacedock and installed the refit will be complete. Admiral Kirk’s aide, Lieutenant LaRoche interrupts to inform Kirk that she’s checked and there’s been no letter from McCoy in more than a month. Kirk tells Scotty that McCoy has been writing fairly regularly to Kirk for the past year and that the last letter he received was concerning what happened aboard the Yorktown. Kirk dismisses his concern and says that the reason McCoy hasn’t written is that probably nothing interesting has happened.

As an aside I can’t help but wonder if the miniseries was supposed to be longer, maybe five issues instead of four as both ‘Hosts’ and ‘Scalpel’ seem kind of choppy; as if they were both edited for space. ‘Scalpel’ seems especially choppy. We’re left wondering what exactly McCoy was going to do. Does he erase/reset the entire planet’s history or just the portions involving his friend Alex and his daughter Sophie. There’s never been any follow-up as far as I can tell.