Synopsis:

With the USS Enterprise temporarily disabled, Christopher Pike becomes acting captain of the starship Discovery in a race against time to find Spock and avoid the destruction of all sentient life in the universe. Star Trek Discovery Season 2 introduces Captain Pike, Spock and Number One to modern Trek and serves as a backdoor pilot for Star Trek Strange New Worlds (SNW). Many viewers are eager for more SNW but not interested in committing to the first two seasons of Discovery (29 episodes, as it's a very serialized show). I took it upon myself to trim the 14 episodes of Discovery's second season into a 4 episode prequel to SNW. It no longer references any Discovery season 1 events and cuts all side stories, primarily concentrating on Pike and Spock. I call it Star Trek Strange New Worlds Season Zero.

Intentions:

Star Trek Strange New Worlds' first episode opens with a Captain Pike who has been broken by a recent incident. Somehow he's seen a glimpse of his tragic future. I was eager to know more about this and learned that Star Trek Discovery held the answer. Unfortunately the only way to get to that story was to watch the first two full seasons. I decided to make a smaller, more familiar version that feels as close to SNW as possible given the material.

Change List:

Editing Details: My goal was to tell the most efficient version of the story. Michael Burnham is the central character of Discovery and it would have been impossible to remove her, but I managed to make her part of an ensemble. I tried to hold onto major character moments involving Spock and Pike. And almost any scenes involving Number One, as her screen time was more limited. Cuts and Additions: Flawed as Discovery is in general, season 2 gave me plenty of material to work from. With cutting 14 down to 4 (reasonably short) episodes, an exhaustive change list is just not possible. Instead, I'll run through the major elements: -I open with Paramount's required Star Trek fan content verbiage, then the FE warning clip, followed by title cards for the project (all accompanied by the first few bars of the Discovery main theme). -Episode I (A Sense of Discovery - 39 minutes) starts with the first and last couple minutes of the bonus feature Short Trek episode Q&A, allowing me to begin the story with Spock and the Enterprise. The rest is parts of Discovery Season 2 episodes 1, 2, 4 and 5 (1 starts things off, followed by a short scene from 2, followed by 5 then 4 driving the episode plot). Ends with Discovery credits and end credit music from SNW. -Episode II (Not Every Cage is a Prison - 41 minutes) is primarily episode 8 as the A story & part of episode 7 as a B story, with a scene from episode 4 (an additional scene with Number One) at the beginning. Ends with Discovery credits and end credit music, a variation on the Discovery theme that matches the tone of the episode. -Episode III (Through the Valley of Shadows - 50 minutes) has pieces of Discovery episodes 9, 10, 11 and 12, in that order. Ends with Discovery credits and end credit music, a different variation on the Discovery theme that matches the tone of the episode. -Episode IV (Such Sweet Sorrow - 47 minutes) is entirely made up of the two-part finale, eps 13 and 14, significantly reduced in length. 13 makes up the first quarter of the runtime and 14 is the rest. Ends with Discovery credits and end credit music from SNW again, to tie the project into the larger series. -I did use some random ship establishing shots and reactions from other Discovery season 2 episodes as needed.

Other Sources:

Bonus feature Short Trek "Q&A" Star Trek Strange New Worlds intro and themes

Special Thanks:

krausfadr for meticulous notes on how to make the edit just a bit more polished And ArtisDead for guiding me through the submission process, improving my poster, and being the creator of sliced bread. Supposedly.