Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Captain Pike

Australian Cinephile

A look at some of the most fascinating facts about Star Trek's first captain.

Transcript

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

01:03of his horses in the snow near the start of the first episode. Something that you may not have

01:06noticed is that Pike's love of horses was actually a small callback to The Cage. When the Telosians were

01:12trying to 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 recognize 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 recognized 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

02:12his senior 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 officer

02:46aboard the Enterprise. 7. Veena's Pike Illusion

02:49The story of the cage was retold almost exactly in the two-parter The Menagerie, but there was one

02:54detail that was changed, causing a bit of confusion among fans until recently. At the end of the cage,

02:59there was a scene of Veena and Pike running off together and holding hands. In that episode,

03:03the Pike in that scene was meant to be an illusion of Pike, created by the Talosians to keep Veena company

03:09after Pike and the Enterprise left. In the Menagerie, the same scene was used to show the real Pike

03:14running off with Veena, his injuries cured by the Talosians illusions. In the Discovery episode

03:19If Memory Serves, in between the cage and the Menagerie, Veena used the Talosians powers to speak

03:24to Pike again and finally cleared up some of the confusion about what happened to the illusory Pike.

03:29She explained to him that the Talosians allowed her to live a lifetime with the illusory Pike,

03:32created from the part of him that lived on inside her mind, and told him how her relationship with

03:37this reconstruction helped her stay sane and tethered to what she once felt. Despite this,

03:42she always knew that he wasn't real, but the illusion of him was enough to fight her loneliness

03:47until he returned in the Menagerie. Number 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 the SS

04:29Columbia never crashed on Talos IV either, given that the crash happened in 2236 in the Prime timeline,

04:36after the timelines diverged. 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

04:55the crew wanted to help defend the Federation, but Command chose to keep them away to use as a last resort.

05:01They 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. 4. Meeting Kirk Kirk and Pike were probably

05:25never particularly close. In fact, Kirk wasn't even aware of Pike's Delta radiation poisoning until he

05:30met the man again in the menagerie. Near the beginning of that episode, Kirk mentioned that the

05:35first 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 up

05:49in the Season 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

06:04the promotion of Pike to the rank of Fleet Captain before meeting Kirk, which may mean we'll get to see

06:09him command an entire fleet of starships on some large scale mission. Number 3. The Four Pikes.

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

06:24writers decided to bring Pike back, Hunter declined, and Sean Kenny was brought in to portray the

06:28disfigured and retired Pike. Kenny already looked strikingly similar to Hunter, and his heavy makeup

06:33was used to cover any noticeable differences. Decades later we got to see an alternate version of Pike

06:37in 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. In an interview at StarTrek.com,

07:19Sean Kenny, who played the wheelchair-bound Pike in The Menagerie, was asked about his experiences

07:24meeting the fans when he dropped a really interesting fun fact about Pike's legacy in the real world.

07:28According to Kenny, a couple of F-16 military pilots once told him that they had a secret Captain

07:33Pike 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

07:41to answer. It'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

07:51widely used this 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.

08:05Because of this, Pike was rarely given a chance to remember the friends he made while briefly

08:09commanding Discovery. One way that he kept the knowledge of Discovery's crew alive was by wearing

08:13a pin dedicated to them on Starfleet Remembrance Day in the Strange New Worlds episode Memento Mori.

08:18The official report stated that Discovery was destroyed along with its entire crew. While Pike

08:23was aware that they probably continued to live on in the future, he was ordered to never disclose

08:27the true story, so this pin was his only way of paying his respects to Discovery publicly.

08:31Interestingly, every character in this episode wore a Remembrance Pin for a different ship.

08:36Spock's was dedicated to the USS Congo, Chief Kyles honoured to the USS Shenzhou, and Laanne's pin

08:41named the SS Puget Sound, the 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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