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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
00:26about 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.
00:53Pike 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 get
01:12him to fall in love with Veena, they created an illusion of Pike's old home in Mojave, complete with his
01:17two 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, 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.
01:42Several 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 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
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.
02:467. 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,
02:55causing a bit of confusion among fans until recently. At the end of the cage, there was a
02:59scene of Veena and Pike running off together and holding hands. In that episode, the Pike in that
03:04scene was meant to be an illusion of Pike, created by the Talosians to keep Veena company after Pike and
03:09the Enterprise left. In The Menagerie, the same scene was used to show the real Pike running off with Veena,
03:15his injuries cured by the Talosians' illusions. In the Discovery episode If Memory Serves,
03:20in between the cage and the menagerie, Veena used the Talosians' powers to speak to Pike again and
03:25finally cleared up some of the confusion about what happened to the illusory Pike. She explained to him
03:29that the Talosians allowed her to live a lifetime with the illusory Pike, created from the part of
03:34him that lived on inside her mind, and told him how her relationship with this reconstruction helped her
03:39stay sane and tethered to what she once felt. Despite this, she always knew that he wasn't real, but the
03:45illusion of him was enough to fight her loneliness until he returned in the menagerie. Number 6,
03:50The Alternate Pike's Differences. The version of Pike from the alternate Kelvin universe led the exact
03:55same life as the Prime Pike until the two timelines were split by the arrival of the Narada and the
04:00destruction of the USS Kelvin. This happened in 2233, around the time that he graduated from the Academy.
04:05Because of the divergence, The Alternate Pike wasn't paralysed by delta radiation, though he was
04:10confined to a wheelchair at the end of the 2009 film because of his torture at the hands of Nero.
04:14In the next film, Into Darkness, he's still recovering from these injuries, but is able to walk
04:18again with the help of a cane. The Alternate Pike was killed in Khan's attack on the Daystrom conference
04:23room, never getting the chance to return to Veena on Talos IV. In fact, it's possible that Veena and the
04:28rest of the crew of the SS Columbia never crashed on Talos IV either, given that the crash happened in
04:332236 in
04:34the Prime timeline 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 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
04:56defend the Federation, but Command chose to keep them away to use as a last resort. They didn't want to
05:02risk losing
05:02some of their most talented officers until they had no choice, but Discovery was fortunately able to
05:07end the conflict before the Enterprise needed to get involved. The Enterprise was also pretty far from
05:12Federation space at the time, seeing as the point of their five-year mission was to chart unexplored space.
05:17Even if they were ordered to help fight in the war, their journey would take months, if not a year.
05:22Number 4. Meeting Kirk Kirk and Pike were probably never particularly close. In fact, Kirk wasn't even aware
05:28of Pike's Delta radiation poisoning until he met the man again in the menagerie. Near the beginning of
05:34that episode, Kirk mentioned that the first time he met Pike was when he was promoted to Fleet Captain,
05:38a small detail that could give us an insight into the second season of Strange New Worlds.
05:42It's already been announced that Jim Kirk will become a recurring character in the second season,
05:46an alternate reality version of him already popped up in the season one finale, Quality of Mercy,
05:51but there's no canon issues since this future never technically happened. However, continuity
05:56problems arise if Pike isn't promoted to Fleet Captain before meeting the Prime Kirk in Season 2.
06:01If Kirk's remark from the menagerie was canon, then Season 2 would show the promotion of Pike
06:05to the rank of Fleet Captain before meeting Kirk, which may mean we'll get to see him command an
06:10entire fleet of starships on some large-scale mission. Number 3. The Four Pikes. In the cage,
06:15and in the reused footage in the menagerie, Captain Pike was portrayed by Geoffrey Hunter. After the series
06:20was 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
06:38timeline, portrayed by Bruce Greenwood. This version was able to avoid his fate from the Prime
06:43timeline, 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
06:52the episodes 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 command of Discovery, Pike made it clear that he was a different kind of leader, by cracking jokes
07:05with the senior staff and learning all of their names. The fans loved Mount's Pike, and the other
07:10returning characters from The Cage, and it was actually one of the main reasons why Strange New Worlds was
07:15greenlit. Number 2. 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 interesting
07:26fun fact about Pike's legacy in the real world. According to Kenny, a couple of F-16 military
07:30pilots once told him that they had a secret Captain Pike code that they used when flying over Iraq.
07:35They explained,
07:36All we say, is that a one beep or a two beep Roger? A question that only a real Trekkie
07:41would know how to answer.
07:42It's really amazing that Kenny's portrayal of Pike was able to become so iconic, despite not having
07:47any lines of dialogue in the entire episode he appeared in. It's not known how widely used this
07:52Captain 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 StarTrek 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 commanding
08:10Discovery. 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.
08:19The official report stated that Discovery was destroyed, along with its entire crew.
08:22While Pike was aware that they probably continued to live on in the future,
08:26he was ordered to never disclose the true story, so this pin was his only way of paying his respects
08:30to Discovery publicly. Interestingly, every character in this episode wore a Remembrance Pin
08:35for a different ship. Spock's was dedicated to the USS Congo, Chief Kyles honored to the USS Shenzhou,
08:40and Laanne's pin named the USS 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 in touch with us over on Twitter
08:52at TrekCulture or over on Instagram at TrekCultureYT. You can catch myself at SeanFerrick on Twitter,
08:58or at Sean.Ferrick88 on Instagram, or at SeanFerrick on Hive. Thank you very much everyone,
09:03you are all awesome, make sure that you look after yourselves until I'm talking to you again,
09:06make sure you live long and prosper, have a wonderful day, and make it so.
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