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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. In Equality of Mercy, the finale of the first season
00:33of Strange New Worlds, Pike encountered his future self who came to warn Pike not to prevent the injury
00:39that left him paralysed and disfigured in order to protect the future of the Federation. To convince
00:44Pike that he was telling the truth, his counterpart told him about how their first horse, the creatively
00:48named Sir Nasalot, broke his leg in a rainstorm and had to be put down when Pike was a child. Pike was
00:54heartbroken and cried for a week over his loss but never told anyone, explaining that it's hard to
00:58give a tragic backstory with such a silly name. Earlier we also saw Pike riding one of his horses
01:03in the snow near the start of the first episode. Something that you may not have noticed is that
01:07Pike's love of horses was actually a small callback to the cage. When the Talosians were trying to
01:12get him to fall in love with Veena, they created an illusion of Pike's old home in Mojave, complete with
01:17his two beloved horses, Tango and Mary Lou. Number 9. His Medal. Pike was such an important figure in
01:23Starfleet's history that one of their most impressive medals was named after him, the Christopher Pike
01:28Medal of Valour. The medal was granted to officers to recognize remarkable leadership,
01:32meritorious conduct and acts of personal bravery. Admiral Ross awarded this medal to Captain
01:36Sisko in the DS9 episode Tears of the Prophets for retaking the station and fighting back against
01:41the Dominion. Several episodes later in Take Me Out to the Holosuite, the Vulcan Captain Solok bragged to
01:46Sisko that he had just received his second Christopher Pike Medal. The medal featured an image of Pike's face and a
01:51ribbon in the original series red, yellow and blue colour scheme, but unfortunately we didn't get a
01:55good shot of it in the show. Still, it's cool that Pike was still being recognized for his service
02:00well into the 24th century. Number 8. His Days in Security. After working as a test pilot straight
02:05out of the academy, Pike had a brief career as a security officer. Near the beginning of the Strange
02:09New Worlds episode Children of the Comet, Captain Pike told his senior staff a story of one of his most
02:14embarrassing moments as a security officer. Apparently Pike, still an ensign at the time, got into an altercation
02:19with a Nausicaan. Somehow, during the fight, the Nausicaan ended up pantsless and the young ensign Pike
02:25ran after him, phaser in hand, only to trip and get caught on the Nausicaan's discarded pants, allowing him to get away.
02:31After the mishap, Pike's Lieutenant pulled him aside and told him that security may not be the best fit for him.
02:35In the scene, he never mentioned whether or not he took his Lieutenant's advice. It's possible that Pike learned
02:40from this experience and remained in security for years before serving as Robert April's first officer aboard the Enterprise.
02:467. Veena's Pike Illusion The story of the cage was retold almost exactly
02:52in the two-parter The Menagerie, but there was one detail that was changed, causing a bit of confusion
02:56among fans until recently. At the end of the cage, there was a scene of Veena and Pike running off
03:01together and holding hands. In that episode, the Pike in that scene was meant to be an illusion of Pike,
03:06created 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 the
03:16Talosians' 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 to what she once felt.
03:41Despite 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 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
04:34timeline three years after 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 the
04:55crew 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
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
05:43will become a recurring character in the second season. An alternate reality version of him already
05:48popped up in the season one finale, Quality of Mercy, but there's no canon issues since this future
05:53never technically 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
06:09to see him 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 Hunter.
06:20After the series was rejected, Hunter moved on to other projects, and by the time the writers decided to bring Pike back,
06:25Hunter declined, and Sean Kenny was brought in to portray the disfigured and retired Pike. Kenny
06:30already looked strikingly similar to Hunter, and his heavy makeup was used to cover any noticeable
06:34differences. Decades later we got to see an alternate version of Pike in the rebooted Kelvin timeline,
06:39portrayed 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.
06:47Lastly, Anson Mount joins the cast of Discovery's second season as the Prime Captain Pike in between the
06:52episodes The Cage and the Menagerie. Mount turned Pike into one of Starfleet's kindest and most
06:56compassionate officers, a welcome change from Captain Lorca from Season 1. Immediately after
07:01taking him out 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 with 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
07:27the 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,
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
07:50how widely used this Captain Pike code was in the US military, but it's fascinating that it was used
07:56at all. Number 1. Pike's Discovery Pin. Most of StarTrek Discovery's second season was classified
08:01by Starfleet 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 pin
08:14dedicated 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. Spock's was
08:36dedicated to the USS Congo, Chief Kyles honored 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,
08:48let us know in the comments below. Don't forget you can get in touch with us over on Twitter at
08:52TrekCulture 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 long and
09:07prosper. Have a wonderful day, and make it so.
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