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A look at some of the most fascinating facts about Star Trek's first captain.
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00:00Ah, Christopher Pike. The one who started it all, the first captain of the Enterprise.
00:06That's if we don't count Robert April. The first one on screen. Well that's if we don't count the
00:11fact that The Cage wasn't actually aired for quite a few years after it was made. Listen,
00:16that's not important right now because these are all things we might discuss in this article.
00:21With that in mind, I'm Sean Ferrick for Trek Culture and here are 10 things you didn't know
00:27about Captain Pike. Number 10. His horses. In Equality of Mercy, the finale of the first
00:33season of Strange New Worlds, Pike encountered his future self who came to warn Pike not to prevent
00:38the injury that left him paralysed and disfigured in order to protect the future of the Federation.
00:43To convince Pike that he was telling the truth, his counterpart told him about how their first horse,
00:48the creatively named Sir Nasalot, broke his leg in a rainstorm and had to be put down when Pike was a
00:53child. Pike was heartbroken and cried for a week over his loss but never told anyone, explaining
00:58that it's hard to give a tragic backstory with such a silly name. Earlier we also saw Pike riding one
01:02of his horses in the snow near the start of the first episode. Something that you may not have noticed
01:07is that Pike's love of horses was actually a small callback to The Cage. When the Telosians were trying
01:12to get him to fall in love with Veena, they created an illusion of Pike's old home in Mojave,
01:17complete with his two beloved horses, Tango and Mary Lou. Number 9. His medal. Pike was such a
01:23important figure in Starfleet's history that one of their most impressive medals was named after him,
01:27the Christopher Pike Medal of Valour. The medal was granted to officers to recognise remarkable
01:31leadership, meritorious conduct and acts of personal bravery. Admiral Ross awarded this medal
01:36to Captain Sisko in the DS9 episode Tears of the Prophets for retaking the station and fighting back
01:40against the Dominion. Several episodes later, in Take Me Out to the Holosuite, the Vulcan Captain
01:45Solok bragged to Sisko that he had just received his second Christopher Pike Medal. The medal
01:49featured an image of Pike's face and a ribbon in the original series Red, Yellow and Blue colour
01:54scheme but unfortunately we didn't get a good shot of it in the show. Still, it's cool that Pike was
01:58still being recognised for his service well into the 24th century. Number 8. His days in security.
02:04After working as a test pilot straight out of the academy, Pike had a brief career as a security
02:08officer. Near the beginning of the Strange New Worlds episode Children of the Comet, Captain Pike told his
02:12senior staff a story of one of his most embarrassing moments as a security officer. Apparently Pike,
02:17still an ensign at the time, got into an altercation with a Nausicaan. Somehow during the fight,
02:22the Nausicaan ended up pantsless and the young ensign Pike ran after him, phaser in hand, only to
02:27trip and get caught on the Nausicaan's discarded pants, allowing him to get away. After the mishap,
02:32Pike's lieutenant pulled him aside and told him that security may not be the best fit for him. In the
02:36scene, he never mentioned whether or not he took his lieutenant's advice. It's possible that Pike
02:40learned from this experience and remained in security for years before serving as Robert April's first
02:45officer aboard the Enterprise. Number 7. Veena's Pike illusion. The story of the cage was retold
02:51almost exactly in the two-parter The Menagerie, but there was one detail that was changed, causing
02:55a bit of confusion among fans until recently. At the end of the cage, there was a scene of Veena and
03:00Pike running off together and holding hands. In that episode, the Pike in that scene was meant to be an
03:05illusion of Pike, created by the Talosians to keep Veena company after Pike and the Enterprise left.
03:10In the Menagerie, the same scene was used to show the real Pike running off with Veena, his injuries
03:16cured by the Talosians' illusions. In the Discovery episode, If Memory Serves, in between the cage and
03:21the Menagerie, Veena used the Talosians' powers to speak to Pike again and finally cleared up some of
03:26the confusion about what happened to the illusory Pike. She explained to him that the Talosians allowed
03:30her to live a lifetime with the illusory Pike, created from the part of him that lived on inside
03:35her mind, and told him how her relationship with this reconstruction helped her stay sane and
03:40tethered to what she once felt. Despite this, she always knew that he wasn't real, but the illusion
03:45of him was enough to fight her loneliness until he returned in the Menagerie. Number 6, The Alternate
03:51Pike's Differences. The version of Pike from the alternate Kelvin universe led the exact same life as
03:56the Prime Pike until the two timelines were split by the arrival of the Narada and the destruction of the
04:00USS Kelvin. This happened in 2233, around the time that he graduated from the Academy. Because of
04:06the divergence, the alternate Pike wasn't paralysed by delta radiation, though he was confined to a
04:11wheelchair at the end of the 2009 film because of his torture at the hands of Nero. In the next film,
04:15Into Darkness, he's still recovering from these injuries, but is able to walk again with the help
04:19of a cane. The alternate Pike was killed in Khan's attack on the Daystrom conference room, never getting
04:24the chance to return to Veena on Talos IV. In fact, it's possible that Veena and the rest of the crew
04:28of the SS Columbia never crashed on Talos IV either, given that the crash happened in 2236 in the Prime
04:35timeline, three years after the timelines diverged. Number 5, Why He Missed the Klingon War. When the
04:40Klingon War first began in 2256, two years after the cage, Pike was leading one of the Enterprise's
04:46five year long deep space exploration missions. During the war, Starfleet ordered the Enterprise crew
04:51to continue their mission, which Pike was not too pleased about. He and the rest of the crew wanted to
04:56help defend the Federation, but Command chose to keep them away to use as a last resort. They didn't
05:01want to risk losing some of their most talented officers until they had no choice, but Discovery
05:06was fortunately able to end the conflict before the Enterprise needed to get involved. The Enterprise
05:11was also pretty far from Federation space at the time, seeing as the point of their five year mission
05:15was to chart unexplored space. Even if they were ordered to help fight in the war, their journey would
05:20take months, if not a year. Number 4, Meeting Kirk. Kirk and Pike were probably never particularly
05:26close. In fact, Kirk wasn't even aware of Pike's Delta radiation poisoning until he met the man again
05:32in the menagerie. Near the beginning of that episode, Kirk mentioned that the first time he met Pike was
05:36when he was promoted to Fleet Captain, a small detail that could give us an insight into the second
05:40season of Strange New Worlds. It's already been announced that Jim Kirk will become a recurring
05:44character in the second season. An alternate reality version of him already popped up in the
05:49season 1 finale, Quality of Mercy, but there's no canon issues since this future never technically
05:54happened. However, continuity problems arise if Pike isn't promoted to Fleet Captain before meeting
05:59the Prime Kirk in season 2. If Kirk's remark from the menagerie was canon, then season 2 would show the
06:04promotion of Pike to the rank of Fleet Captain before meeting Kirk, which may mean we'll get to see him
06:09command an entire fleet of starships on some large scale mission. Number 3, The Four
06:14Pike's. In the cage, and in the reused footage in the menagerie, Captain Pike was portrayed by
06:19Geoffrey Hunter. After the series was rejected, Hunter moved on to other projects, and by the
06:23time the writers decided to bring Pike back, Hunter declined, and Sean Kenny was brought in to portray
06:28the disfigured and retired Pike. Kenny already looked strikingly similar to Hunter, and his heavy
06:33makeup was used to cover any noticeable differences. Decades later we got to see an alternate version of
06:37Pike in the rebooted Kelvin timeline, portrayed by Bruce Greenwood. This version was able to avoid his
06:42fate from the Prime timeline, but ended up dying anyway, way sooner at the hands of Khan as we
06:46discussed earlier. Lastly, Anson Mount joins the cast of Discovery's second season as the Prime
06:51Captain Pike in between the episodes The Cage and the Menagerie. Mount turned Pike into one of
06:55Starfleet's kindest and most compassionate officers, a welcome change from Captain Lorca from season 1.
07:00Immediately after taking command of Discovery, Pike made it clear that he was a different kind of leader,
07:05by cracking jokes with the senior staff and learning all of their names. The fans loved Mount's Pike,
07:10and the other returning characters from The Cage, and it was actually one of the main reasons why
07:14Strange New Worlds was greenlit. Number 2. The Military Pike Code
07:18In an interview at StarTrek.com, Sean Kenny, who played the wheelchair-bound Pike in The Menagerie,
07:22was asked about his experiences meeting the fans when he dropped a really interesting fun fact about
07:27Pike's legacy in the real world. According to Kenny, a couple of F-16 military pilots once told him that
07:32they had a secret Captain Pike code that they used when flying over Iraq. They explained,
07:36all we say, is that a one beep or a two beep Roger? A question that only a real Trekkie would know how to answer.
07:42It's really amazing that Kenny's portrayal of Pike was able to become so iconic,
07:46despite not having any lines of dialogue in the entire episode he appeared in. It's not known how widely used
07:52this Captain Pike code was in the US military, but it's fascinating that it was used at all.
07:57Number 1. Pike's Discovery Pin. Most of Star Trek Discovery's second season was classified by Starfleet
08:02command after the crew travelled to the future to prevent the destruction of the Federation. Because
08:06of this, Pike was rarely given a chance to remember the friends he made while briefly commanding Discovery.
08:10One way that he kept the knowledge of Discovery's crew alive was by wearing a pin dedicated to them
08:15on Starfleet Remembrance Day in the Strange New Worlds episode, Memento Mori. The official report
08:19stated that Discovery was destroyed, along with its entire crew. While Pike was aware that they
08:23probably continued to live on in the future, he was ordered to never disclose the true story,
08:28so this pin was his only way of paying his respects to Discovery publicly. Interestingly,
08:32every character in this episode wore a Remembrance Pin for a different ship. Spock's was dedicated to
08:37the USS Congo, Chief Kyles honoured to the USS Shenzhou, and La Anne's pin named the SS Puget Sound,
08:43the ship that she was aboard as a child when the Gorn killed her family. That's everything for our
08:47list today folks. If you think we missed anything let us know in the comments below. Don't forget you can
08:50get in touch with us over on Twitter at TrekCulture or over on Instagram at TrekCultureYT. You can catch myself
08:56at SeanFerrick on Twitter or at Sean.Ferrick88 on Instagram or at SeanFerrick on Hive. Thank you
09:02very much everyone, you are all awesome, make sure that you look after yourselves until I'm talking to
09:06you again, make sure you live long and prosper, have a wonderful day, and make it so.
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