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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, still an ensign at the
02:18time, got into an altercation with a Nausicaan. Somehow during the fight, the Nausicaan ended up
02:23pantsless and the young Ensign Pike ran after him, phaser in hand, only to trip and get caught on the
02:28Nausicaan's discarded pants, allowing him to get away. After the mishap, Pike's lieutenant pulled him
02:32aside and told him that security may not be the best fit for him. In the scene, he never mentioned
02:37whether or not he took his lieutenant's advice. It's possible that Pike learned from this experience and
02:41remained in security for years before serving as Robert April's first officer aboard the Enterprise.
02:477. Veena's Pike Illusion The story of the cage was retold almost
02:51exactly in the two-parter The Menagerie, but there was one detail that was changed, causing a bit of
02:56confusion among fans until recently. At the end of the cage, there was a scene of Veena and Pike running
03:01off together and holding hands. In that episode, the Pike in that scene was meant to be an illusion of
03:06Pike, created by the Talosians to keep Veena company after Pike and the Enterprise left. In The Menagerie,
03:11the same scene was used to show the real Pike running off with Veena, his injuries cured by
03:16the Talosians' illusions. In the Discovery episode If Memory Serves, in between The Cage and The Menagerie,
03:22Veena used the Talosians' powers to speak to Pike again and finally cleared up some of the confusion
03:27about what happened to the illusory Pike. She explained to him that the Talosians allowed her
03:30to live a lifetime with the illusory Pike, created from the part of him that lived on inside her mind,
03:35and told him how her relationship with this reconstruction helped her stay sane and tethered
03:40to what she once felt. Despite this, she always knew that he wasn't real, but the illusion of him
03:46was enough to fight her loneliness until he returned in The Menagerie.
03:49Number 6. The Alternate Pike's Differences
03:52The version of Pike from the Alternate Kelvin universe led the exact same life as the Prime
03:56Pike until the two timelines were split by the arrival of the Narada and the destruction of the USS
04:00Kelvin. This happened in 2233, around the time that he graduated from the Academy. Because of the
04:06divergence, The Alternate Pike wasn't paralysed by Delta radiation, though he was confined to a
04:10wheelchair 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 of
04:28the 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
04:40When the Klingon War first began in 2256, two years after the cage, Pike was leading one of the
04:45Enterprise's five year long deep space exploration missions. During the war, Starfleet ordered the
04:50Enterprise crew to continue their mission, which Pike was not too pleased about. He and the rest of the
04:55crew wanted to help defend the Federation, but Command chose to keep them away to use as a last
05:00resort. They didn't want to risk losing some of their most talented officers until they had no choice,
05:05but Discovery was fortunately able to end the conflict before the Enterprise needed to get
05:10involved. The Enterprise was also pretty far from Federation space at the time, seeing as the point
05:14of their five year mission was to chart unexplored space. Even if they were ordered to help fight in
05:18the war, their journey would take months, if not a year. Number 4. Meeting Kirk. Kirk and Pike were
05:24probably never particularly close. In fact, Kirk wasn't even aware of Pike's Delta radiation poisoning
05:30until he met the man again in the menagerie. Near the beginning of that episode, Kirk mentioned that
05:35the first time he met Pike was when he was promoted to Fleet Captain, a small detail that could give us
05:39an insight into the second season of Strange New Worlds. It's already been announced that Jim Kirk will
05:43become a recurring character in the second season. An alternate reality version of him already popped
05:48up in the Season 1 finale, Quality of Mercy, but there's no canon issues since this future never
05:54technically happened. However, continuity problems arise if Pike isn't promoted to Fleet Captain before
05:59meeting the Prime Kirk in Season 2. If Kirk's remark from the menagerie was canon, then Season 2 would
06:04show the promotion of Pike to the rank of Fleet Captain before meeting Kirk, which may mean we'll get to
06:09see him command an entire fleet of starships on some large scale mission. Number 3. The Four Pykes.
06:15In the cage, and in the reused footage in the menagerie, Captain Pike was portrayed by Geoffrey
06:19Hunter. After the series was rejected, Hunter moved on to other projects and, by the time the writers
06:24decided to bring Pike back, Hunter declined and Sean Kenny was brought in to portray the disfigured and
06:29retired Pike. Kenny already looked strikingly similar to Hunter and his heavy makeup was used to cover any
06:34noticeable differences. Decades later we got to see an alternate version of Pike in the rebooted Kelvin
06:38timeline portrayed by Bruce Greenwood. This version was able to avoid his fate from the Prime timeline
06:43but ended up dying anyway way sooner at the hands of Khan as we discussed earlier. Lastly, Anson Mount
06:48joins the cast of Discovery's second season as the Prime Captain Pike in between the episodes The Cage
06:53of the Menagerie. Mount turned Pike into one of Starfleet's kindest and most compassionate officers,
06:58a welcome change from Captain Lorca from Season 1. Immediately after taking command of Discovery Pike made it
07:03clear that he was a different kind of leader by cracking jokes with the senior staff and learning all of
07:07their names. The fans loved Mount Pike and the other returning characters from The Cage and it was
07:12actually one of the main reasons why Strange 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 Pike's
07:27legacy in the real world. According to Kenny, a couple of F-16 military pilots once told him that they had a
07:32secret Captain Pike code that they used when flying over Iraq. They explained, all we say is that a one
07:38beep or a two beep Roger? A question that only a real Trekkie would know how to answer. It's really
07:42amazing that Kenny's portrayal of Pike was able to become so iconic despite not having any lines of
07:47dialogue in the entire episode he appeared in. It's not known how widely used this Captain Pike code
07:53was in the US military, but it's fascinating that it was used at all. Number 1. Pike's Discovery Pin.
07:59Most of Star Trek Discovery's second season was classified by Starfleet Command after the crew
08:03travelled to the future to prevent the destruction of the Federation. Because of this, Pike was
08:07rarely given a chance to remember the friends he made while briefly commanding Discovery. One way
08:11that he kept the knowledge of Discovery's crew alive was by wearing a pin dedicated to them on
08:15Starfleet Remembrance Day in the Strange New Worlds episode Memento Mori. The official report stated
08:20that Discovery was destroyed along with its entire crew. While Pike was aware that they probably
08:24continued to live on in the future, he was ordered to never disclose the true story, so this pin was
08:28his only way of paying his respects to Discovery publicly. Interestingly, every character in this
08:33episode wore a Remembrance Pin for a different ship. Spock's was dedicated to the USS Congo,
08:38Chief 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.
08:46That's everything for our list today folks, if you think we missed anything let us know in the comments
08:49below. Don't forget you can get in touch with us over on Twitter at TrekCulture or over on Instagram at
08:54TrekCultureYT. You can catch myself at SeanFerrick on Twitter, or at Sean.Ferrick88 on Instagram,
09:00or at SeanFerrick on Hive. Thank you very much everyone, you are all awesome, make sure that
09:04you look after yourselves until I'm talking to you again, make sure you live long and prosper,
09:08have a wonderful day, and make it so.
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