Scene Summaries

Scene One

James Kirk enters a bar where he tries to pick up Uhura, who quickly shuts him down.  After getting the crap kicked out of him by four guys he was antagonizing, Captain Pike walks in and lectures Kirk about how he is wasting his life.  Pike seems to know Kirk, presumably through his Kirks father who Pike said was a hero.

Scene Two

Fast Forward three years later, Kirk is a cadet at Starfleet Academy and is apparently a bit of a hellraiser.  He is currently under review pending an incident involving the Kobayashi Maru Test.  Meanwhile an emergency is taking place on planet Vulcan and many cadets are re assigned to ships to help with a possible evacuation of Vulcan.  Kirk isn't invited along, but is smuggled aboard by his friend Leonard McCoy who is apparently already the ships doctor.  Somewhere along the line Kirk discovers that the emergency on Vulcan is actually a Romulan trap and convinces Captain Pike and his first Officer Spock.

Scene Three

Captain Pike transports to somewhere and leaves Spock in command, with Kirk as his first officer.  At some point near here, Kirk, Sulu and engineer Olsen transport to an orbital platform to fight some Romulans, but apparently Olsen doesn't survive the curse of the Star Trek red shirts, his flight suit is red and he is killed.  Kirk and Sulu seem to fail their mission somehow and it looks like Vulcan is going to be annihilated so Spock leaves Chekov in command of the Enterprise while he beams to the surface to rescue his parents and the Vulcan council.

Scene Four

Spock kicks Kirks ass off the Enterprise to an ice planet where Kirk meets old Spock (Nimoy).  Nimoy gives Kirk some futuristic transporter formula that will help him get off the planet.  Scotty is introduced as being assigned to a shitty position on an outpost on this ice planet because of an accident involving Admiral Archers* prized pet Beagle.

Canon Error

From what I understand of Star Trek history, if it is to be believed that Admiral Archer is the same Jonathon Archer from STENT he would then be pushing nearly one hundred years old if not that old already.  In addition, For the biographical display seen in "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II", writer Mike Sussman wrote a final section of text that didn't end up being visible on screen, stating that Archer "...died at his home in upstate New York in the year 2245, exactly one day after attending the christening ceremony of the first Federation starship Enterprise, NCC-1701".