- 5 minutes ago
From 'The Cage' to 'Strange New Worlds,' delve into the fascinating and often surprising history of Captain Christopher Pike. This video uncovers 10 facts you might not have known about the Enterprise's first captain.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
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
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
00:53a
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 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, complete
01:17with
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
01:27Christopher Pike Medal of Valour. The medal was granted to officers to recognise remarkable leadership,
01:32meritorious conduct and acts of personal bravery. Admiral Ross awarded this medal to Captain Sisko in
01:37the DS9 episode 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
01:50and a 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
02:00well into the 24th century. Number 8. His Days in Security. After working as a test pilot straight out
02:06of the academy, Pike had a brief career as a security officer. Near the beginning of the Strange New Worlds
02:10episode 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,
02:18got into an altercation with a Nausicaan. Somehow, during the fight, the Nausicaan ended up pantsless
02:23and the young 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
02:37he took his Lieutenant's advice. It's possible that Pike learned from this experience and remained in security
02:42for years before serving as Robert April's first officer aboard the Enterprise. Number 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 detail
02:54that was changed, causing a bit of confusion among fans until recently. At the end of the cage, there
02:59was a scene of Veena and Pike running off together and holding hands. In that episode, the Pike in that
03:04scene
03:04was meant to be an illusion of Pike created by the Talosians to keep Veena company after Pike and the
03:10Enterprise left.
03:10In the Menagerie, the same scene was used to show the real Pike running off with Veena, his injuries
03:16cured by the Talosians' illusions. In the Discovery episode If Memory Serves, in between the cage and
03:21the Menagerie, Veena used the Talosians' powers to speak to Pike again and finally cleared up some
03:26of the confusion about what happened to the illusory Pike. She explained to him that the Talosians allowed
03:30her to live a lifetime with the illusory Pike, created from the part of him that lived on inside her
03:35mind,
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
03:45was enough to fight her loneliness until he returned in the Menagerie.
03:496. The Alternate Pike's Differences The version of Pike from the alternate Kelvin universe
03:54led the exact same life as the Prime Pike until the two timelines were split by the arrival of the
03:59Narada
03:59and the destruction of the USS Kelvin. This happened in 2233, around the time that he graduated from the
04:05academy. Because of the divergence, the alternate Pike wasn't paralysed by delta radiation, though he
04:10was confined to a wheelchair at the end of the 2009 film because of his torture at the hands of
04:14Nero.
04:14In the next film, Into Darkness, he's still recovering from these injuries, but is able to
04:18walk again with the help of a cane. The alternate Pike was killed in Khan's attack on the Daystrom
04:22conference room, never getting the chance to return to Veena on Talos IV. In fact, it's possible that Veena and
04:28the rest of the crew of the SS Columbia never crashed on Talos IV either, given that the crash
04:32happened in 2236 in the Prime timeline, three years after the timelines diverged.
04:385. Why He Missed the Klingon War When the Klingon War first began in 2256,
04:43two years after the cage, Pike was leading one of the Enterprise's five-year-long deep space
04:48exploration missions. During the war, Starfleet ordered the Enterprise crew to continue their mission,
04:52which Pike was not too pleased about. He and the rest of the crew wanted to help defend the Federation,
04:57but Command chose to keep them away to use as a last resort. They didn't want to risk losing
05:02some of their most talented officers until they had no choice, but Discovery was fortunately able
05:07to end the conflict before the Enterprise needed to get involved. The Enterprise was also pretty far
05:12from Federation space at the time, seeing as the point of their five-year mission was to chart
05:16unexplored space. Even if they were ordered to help fight in the war, their journey would take months,
05:21if not a year.
05:214. 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 when
05:36he was promoted to Fleet Captain, a small detail that could give us an insight into the second season
05:40of Strange New Worlds. It's already been announced that Jim Kirk will become a recurring character in
05:45the second season. An alternate reality version of him already popped up in the Season 1 finale,
05:50Quality of Mercy. But there's no canon issues, since this future never technically happened.
05:55However, continuity problems arise if Pike isn't promoted to Fleet Captain before meeting the Prime
06:00Kirk in Season 2. If Kirk's remark from the Menagerie was canon, then Season 2 would show the promotion of
06:05Pike to the rank of Fleet Captain before meeting Kirk, which may mean we'll get to see him command an
06:10entire
06:10fleet of starships on some large scale mission. 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
06:24writers decided 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 to
06:34cover any noticeable differences. Decades later we got to see an alternate version of Pike in the rebooted
06:38Kelvin timeline, 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 of 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 taking
07:01command of Discovery, Pike made it clear that he was a different kind of leader, by cracking jokes with the
07:06senior staff and learning all of their names. The fans loved Mount 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.
07:16Number 2. The Military Pike Code In an interview with StarTrek.com, Sean
07:20Kenny, who played the wheelchair-bound Pike in The Menagerie, was asked about his experiences meeting
07:24the 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 Pike
07:33code that they used when flying over Iraq. They explained, all we say is that a one-beep
07:38or 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
08:03travel to the future to prevent the destruction of the Federation. Because of this, Pike was rarely
08:07given a chance to remember the friends he made while briefly commanding Discovery. One way that
08:11he kept the knowledge of Discovery's crew alive was by wearing a pin dedicated to them on Starfleet
08:15Remembrance Day in the Strange New Worlds episode, Memento Mori. The official report stated that Discovery
08:20was destroyed along with its entire crew. While Pike was aware that they probably continued to live on
08:25in the future, he was ordered to never disclose the true story, so this pin was his only way of
08:29paying
08:29his respects to Discovery publicly. Interestingly, every character in this episode wore a Remembrance
08:34pin for a different ship. Spock'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
08:45Gorn
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 at
08:52TrekCulture or over on Instagram at TrekCultureYT. You can catch myself at SeanFerrick on Twitter or
08:58at Sean.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.