By the end of the second season of Star Trek: Discovery, there was much hope and speculation for a spin-off series focusing on Captain Christopher Pike and his crew. Those hopes became a reality when Paramount announced the upcoming series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. However, Marvel Comics offered its own take on the Pike-era Enterprise years ago in Star Trek: Early Voyages, a series that took a look at the Enterprise and her crew long before the original Star Trek series.
Written by Dan Abnett and Ian Eddington with art by Patrick Zircher, Mike Collins, Steve Moncuse, and Greg Adams, Star Trek: Early Voyages begins just prior to the events of "The Cage," the original pilot episode for Star Trek: The Original Series. Star Trek: Early Voyages featured the adventures of Captain Pike and his crew approximately ten years before the five-year mission of Captain James T. Kirk. The series included Pike, Spock and Number One, as well as other lesser known characters introduced in the pilot such as Chief Medical Officer Phillip Boyce, navigator Jose Tyler, and Yeoman J. Mia Colt. In addition, several new crew members were introduced exclusively to the series including the helm officer Sita Mohindas, and nurse Gabrielle Carlotti.
Star Trek: Early Voyages alternated between single-issue and multi-part storylines, with subplots being introduced and allowed to play out over story arcs. The second issue introduced a Klingon Commander, Klage, who became a recurring nemesis for Pike. The series also notably explored the developing friendship between Spock and Pike which eventually became a very strong bond.
Other story elements included increasingly strange behavior from Doctor Boyce, growing tensions with the alien Tholians which would lead to a confrontation in a two-part story, and the twelfth issue of the series would see Colt hurled into an alternate future where Pike is Captain of the Enterprise and James Kirk is a charming rogue and captain of the cargo freighter Bounty.
However, the series was canceled after 17 issues and ended on an unresolved cliffhanger, like several of that era's Marvel Star Trek novels. Fortunately, a number of characters from Star Trek: Early Voyages were seen again in various Star Trek novels such as Where Time Stands Still by Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore, and Burning Dreams by Margaret Wander Bonanno.
While Star Trek: Early Voyages might have ended before its time, the impact it had on Star Trek endured, and it remains an early attempt to excavate the history of the same era as Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.