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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.
00:20With 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.
00:30In Equality of Mercy, the finale of the first season of Strange New Worlds, Pike encountered his
00:35future self who came to warn Pike not to prevent the injury that left him paralysed and disfigured
00:41in order to protect the future of the Federation. To convince Pike that he was telling the truth,
00:45his counterpart told him about how their first horse, the creatively named Sir Nasalot,
00:50broke his leg in a rainstorm and had to be put down when Pike was a child. Pike was heartbroken
00:54and cried for a week over his loss but never told anyone, explaining that it's hard to give a tragic
00:59backstory with such a silly name. Earlier we also saw Pike riding one of his horses in the snow near
01:04the start of the first episode. Something that you may not have noticed is that Pike's love of horses
01:08was actually a small callback to the cage. When the Talosians were trying to get him to fall in love
01:13with Veena, they created an illusion of Pike's old home in Mojave, complete with his two beloved horses,
01:19Tango and Mary Lou. Number 9. His medal. Pike was such an important figure in Starfleys
01:24history that one of their most impressive medals was named after him, the Christopher Pike Medal
01:28of Valour. The medal was granted to officers to recognise remarkable leadership, meritorious
01:32conduct and acts of personal bravery. Admiral Ross awarded this medal to Captain Sisko in the DS9
01:37episode Tears of the Prophets for retaking the station and fighting back against the Dominion.
01:41Several episodes later, in Take Me Out to the Holosuite, the Vulcan Captain Solok bragged to Sisko that
01:46he had just received his second Christopher Pike Medal. The medal featured an image of Pike's face and
01:50a ribbon in the original series' red, yellow and blue colour scheme, but unfortunately we didn't
01:55get a good shot of it in the show. Still, it's cool that Pike was still being recognised for his
02:00service well into the 24th century. Number 8. His days in security. After working as a test pilot
02:05straight out of the academy, Pike had a brief career as a security officer. Near the beginning of the
02:09Strange New Worlds episode Children of the Comet, Captain Pike told his senior staff a story of one of
02:14his most embarrassing moments as a security officer. Apparently Pike, still an ensign at the time, got into an
02:19altercation with a Nausicaan. Somehow, during the fight, the Nausicaan ended up pantsless and the
02:24young ensign Pike ran after him, phaser in hand, only to trip and get caught on the Nausicaan's
02:29discarded pants, allowing him to get away. After the mishap, Pike's lieutenant pulled him aside and
02:33told him that security may not be the best fit for him. In the scene, he never mentioned whether or
02:37not he took his lieutenant's advice. It's possible that Pike learned from this experience and remained in
02:42security for years before serving as Robert April's first officer aboard the Enterprise. Number 7.
02:48Vena's Pike illusion. The story of the cage was retold almost exactly in the two-parter The Menagerie,
02:53but there was one detail that was changed, causing a bit of confusion among fans until recently.
02:58At the end of the cage, there was a scene of Vena and Pike running off together and holding hands.
03:02In that episode, the Pike in that scene was meant to be an illusion of Pike created by the Talosians to
03:07keep Vena company after Pike and the Enterprise left. In the Menagerie, the same scene was used
03:13to show the real Pike running off with Vena, his injuries cured by the Talosians illusions.
03:18In the Discovery episode, If Memory Serves, in between the cage and the Menagerie, Vena used the
03:23Talosians powers to speak to Pike again and finally cleared up some of the confusion about what happened
03:27to the illusory Pike. She explained to him that the Talosians allowed her to live a lifetime with the
03:31illusory Pike, created from the part of him that lived on inside her mind, and told him how her
03:36relationship with this reconstruction helped her stay sane and tethered to what she once felt.
03:42Despite this, she always knew that he wasn't real, but the illusion of him was enough to fight her
03:47loneliness until he returned in the Menagerie. 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 Vena on Talos IV. In fact, it's possible that Vena 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,
05:13seeing as the point of their five year mission was to chart unexplored space. Even if they were
05:18ordered to help fight in the war, their journey would take months, if not a year.
05:224. Meeting Kirk Kirk and Pike were probably never particularly close. In fact,
05:27Kirk wasn't even aware of Pike's Delta radiation poisoning until he met the man again in the
05:32Menagerie. 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
05:40second season 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
06:04the 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.
06:133. The Four Pikes. In the cage, and in the reused footage in the Menagerie, Captain Pike was portrayed
06:19by Geoffrey Hunter. 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
06:29and retired Pike. Kenny already looked strikingly similar to Hunter, and his heavy makeup was used
06:33to cover any noticeable differences. Decades later we got to see an alternate version of Pike in the
06:37rebooted Kelvin timeline, portrayed by Bruce Greenwood. This version was able to avoid his fate from the
06:42Prime timeline, but ended up dying anyway way sooner at the hands of Khan as we discussed earlier.
06:47Lastly, Anson Mount joins the cast of Discovery's second season as the Prime Captain Pike in between the episodes
06:53the cage in the Menagerie. Mount turned Pike into one of Starfleet's kindest and most compassionate
06:57officers, a welcome change from Captain Lorca from Season 1. Immediately after taking command
07:02of Discovery, Pike made it clear that he was a different kind of leader, by cracking jokes with
07:06the senior staff and learning all of their names. The fans loved Mount's Pike, and the other returning
07:11characters from the cage, and it was actually one of the main reasons why Strange New Worlds was greenlit.
07:152. The Military Pike Code. In an interview with StarTrek.com, Sean Kenny, who played the wheelchair-bound
07:21Pike in the Menagerie, was asked about his experiences meeting the fans when he dropped a really
07:25interesting fun fact about Pike's legacy in the real world. According to Kenny, a couple of F-16
07:30military pilots once told him that they had a secret Captain Pike code that they used when flying
07:34over Iraq. They explained, all we say is that a one beep or a two beep Roger? A question that only a
07:40real Trekkie would know how to answer. It's really amazing that Kenny's portrayal of Pike was able to
07:44become so iconic, despite not having any lines of dialogue in the entire episode he appeared in. It's not
07:50known how widely used this Captain Pike code was in the US military, but it's fascinating that it was
07:56used at all. 1. Pike's Discovery Pin. Most of Star Trek Discovery's second season was classified by
08:01Starfleet Command 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 a
08:13pin 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
08:22Pike was aware that they probably continued to live on in the future, he was ordered to never
08:26disclose the 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,
08:40and La'Anne's pin named the SS Puget Sound, the ship that she was aboard as a child when the Gorn
08:45killed her family. That's everything for our list today folks, if you think we missed anything let
08:49us know in the comments below. Don't forget you can get on Twitter with us over on Twitter
08:52at TrekCulture or over on Instagram at TrekCultureYT. You can catch myself at SeanFerrick on Twitter or at
08:58Sean.Ferrick88 on Instagram or at SeanFerrick on Hive. Thank you very much everyone, you are all
09:04awesome, make sure that you look after yourselves until I'm talking to you again, make sure you live
09:07long and prosper, have a wonderful day, and make it so.
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