Like Chronitons Through the Hourglass

A bandaged Pike wakes in sickbay with no memory. M'Benga tells him there was a shuttlecraft accident two weeks earlier and that Spock is in a coma, needing a live heart transplant. Around him the crew behave like soap opera characters: Uhura claims to be Pike's secret daughter, La'An falls into a forbidden romance with Spock's half-brother Sybok, the hoped-for donor, and M'Benga hides a mystery illness. Pike stays grounded and eventually learns the truth. The trickster Trelane has turned the Enterprise into a soap opera for a school project on human emotion, assessed by a proctor from the Q Continuum. A recipe note mentioning Juliet's birthday makes Pike realise the drama draws on Juliet, the daughter he had with Marie Batel in an imagined life. Trelane passes his assignment, the illusion ends, and Pike begins to grieve that lost future with the counsellor Dr Chivers.