Just how old is Capt Pike? (based on 1 line in Saints of Imperfection)

[Yistaan]

Mendez's line about Pike being "about Kirk's age" was flawed from the very beginning, TBF.

Kor

Ok forget mendezs line. Does pike look 52 to you in the cage?

It also disrupts the cages plotline as talosians would vastly prefer the, uh, gametes of a 30 something for their breeding program, not a 50 something.

It also disrupts the older mentor dynamic Boyce had woth Pike as Mr. Hoyt actually was 50 something on filming the Cage.

 

[Christopher]

Does Pike look 52 in the Cage to you? Jeffrey Hunter in real life then was 38, and the character age should match that at least regardless of whatever Mendez said.

These are actors playing fictional characters. Sometimes a character is played by different actors who look significantly different from each other, like the green-eyed Kirstie Alley and the brown-eyed Robin Curtis. And a 50-something James Cromwell played Zefram Cochrane at a point when he canonically should've been in his 30s. If anything, it's become a recurring trend to cast middle-aged actors as characters who were played younger in TOS -- DSC has now done it with both Harry Mudd and Pike.

Which makes sense if you think about it, since people in the '60s aged faster due to all the smoking and drinking and air pollution and leaded gasoline. Remember how "The Deadly Years" assumed that people in their 60s were decrepit and senile? Today we have multiple actors playing action heroes into their 70s. Fifty is the new thirty-five.

 

[Lord Garth]

Ok forget mendezs line. Does pike look 52 to you in the cage?

Nope. He looks about 40 in "The Cage". He's probably 52 in "The Menagerie". But he's also horribly scarred. Kirk, as a Captain who's 33 or 34, is in a position that's beyond his years. Mendez, without even thinking, probably thought of Kirk as being in his 40s.

 

[Yistaan]

Nope.

Thanks to Discovery, pike is now 52 in the cage.

 

[Lord Garth]

Thanks to Discovery, pike is now 52 in the cage.

What makes you think Georgiou went to the Academy right from when she was 18? In the Army, the cut-off age to join is 42. One of my friends was 30 when he joined. And, I used to work at a college and we saw older students all the time. Georgiou could've joined when she was older. Not everyone is the "traditional age".

 

[Tuskin38]

But discovery aged him 17 years to 2202 for a cringeworthy drinking line to make him Georgiou's classmate.

How was that cringeworthy?

Thanks to Discovery, pike is now 52 in the cage.

There is no evidence of that yet.

 

[Lord Garth]

The fact that Georgiou is a Lieutenant in "The Brightest Star" but doesn't look like she's in her 20s tracks with the idea that she was a non-traditional student at the Academy.

"But oh no! It's Discovery!" Fine. I'll use an example from Older Trek, if it helps at all. Tuvok was 29 when he graduated from the Academy and the Excelsior was his first assignment, according to "Flashback".

 

[Henoch]

Pike could be 52 in the CAGE if he experienced excessive time dilation in his career, so, he physically is 38-40. The earlier days of space exploration with warp drive was probably less reliable than in the TOS era, leading to higher chances that extended periods at near light speed was needed just to return to a repair base or get met by a warp tug. In THE PARADISE SYNDROME, the Enterprise was under impulse for 2 months and help could not get to them during that period, so, 10-20 years earlier, it would be even worse. In WNMHGB, Kirk said Starbases were years away, but they were extremely lucky to be next (few light days) to Delta Vega for repairs.

 

[mythme]

while not officially "canon", the computer app for the first Kelvin Trek movie gave Pike's Academy entrance date as 2223. ("Into Darkness" would say he was endorsed by Admiral Marcus.) This would predate Nero's incursion.

What makes you think Georgiou went to the Academy right from when she was 18? In the Army, the cut-off age to join is 42. One of my friends was 30 when he joined. And, I used to work at a college and we saw older students all the time. Georgiou could've joined when she was older. Not everyone is the "traditional age".

The holo-personnel file in "The Butcher's Knife" states that Georgiou was born in 2202 and entered the Academy in 2220, so unless it is verbally stated otherwise later (which in my book, supersedes barely readable on-screen print), she was 18.

If you count both these references, Pike was a "freshman" and Georgiou was a "junior" during their time together at the Academy.

(The same app noted above also gives Pike's birthdate as 2205, thus he would have been 18 when admitted into the Academy also.)

 

[Lord Garth]

Personnel Files need to die. They're shooting themselves in the foot with information they might not want to stick to in the future.

Realistically, more people are familiar with the JJ Abrams Films than "The Cage" and "The Menagerie" at this point. So we either have to accept Pike's age was retconned and ignore Mendez's stupid line which was wrong to begin with (unless anyone really wants to believe Pike was 20 when he was Captain in "The Cage")... or we have to ignore Georgiou's barely legible personnel file. Take your pick.

 

[Christopher]

Pike could be 52 in the CAGE if he experienced excessive time dilation in his career, so, he physically is 38-40. The earlier days of space exploration with warp drive was probably less reliable than in the TOS era, leading to higher chances that extended periods at near light speed was needed just to return to a repair base or get met by a warp tug. In THE PARADISE SYNDROME, the Enterprise was under impulse for 2 months and help could not get to them during that period, so, 10-20 years earlier, it would be even worse.

Didn't we already cover this in another thread? The Enterprise was pacing an asteroid in "The Paradise Syndrome," so it would've been moving at a fraction of a percent of lightspeed at best, so time dilation would've been negligible. (And it shouldn't have been under impulse. The asteroid obviously wasn't under thrust, so there's no reason why the ship should've been. There are huge problems with the way the episode depicted the physics of the event.)

 

[Mudd]

Pike was clearly in his mid-to-late thirties at the time of "The Cage" and therefore might have been as old as fifty thirteen years later at the time of "The Menagerie."

Jeffrey Hunter was thirty-seven or thirty-eight when he filmed the pilot. Again, this works out to the character being fiftyish during the events of "The Menagerie."

STD takes place about ten years before TOS? Okay, that puts Pike in his early fifties.

The timeline makes sense.

Now, the line "about your age" in "The Menagerie," while canon, is simply a mistake on Roddenberry's part. Pike's at least a decade older thank Kirk. The entire envelope story, written hurriedly to extend the first pilot into two episodes, is slapdash, implausible and chock full of convenient and arbitrary stuff, so it's not surprising that a "D'oh!" moment like that made it in to the final cut.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Does Pike look 52 in the Cage to you? Jeffrey Hunter in real life then was 38, and the character age should match that at least regardless of whatever Mendez said.

He reads as older than Shatner.
Stewart was playing a character a decade or more older than himself.

 

[Henoch]

Didn't we already cover this in another thread? The Enterprise was pacing an asteroid in "The Paradise Syndrome," so it would've been moving at a fraction of a percent of lightspeed at best, so time dilation would've been negligible. (And it shouldn't have been under impulse. The asteroid obviously wasn't under thrust, so there's no reason why the ship should've been. There are huge problems with the way the episode depicted the physics of the event.)

Yes, and I had no intention to suggest the Enterprise had any time dilation (I authored most of it). Only that help is months to years away, so, you are on your own to get back. If high speed impulse is your only avenue, then you do it.

 

[Greg Cox]

Mendez's line about Pike being "about Kirk's age" was flawed from the very beginning, TBF.
In my head canon, I chalk it up to Mendez being way older than either of them, so from his perspective they were both still a couple of young whippersnappers.

Kor

Honestly, that works for me. I'm pushing sixty and, yeah, the distinction between a twenty-year-old and a thirty-year-old is often lost on me. And I'm terrible at remembering how old my various nieces and nephews are. Kirk and Pike both seem like the younger generation to Mendez.

As Christopher correctly points out, casual dialogue should not be treated as encyclopedia entries. And, in real life, people tend to be notoriously sloppy about time.

"Oh, I've been writing Trek books for twenty years or so . . . ."
"Closer to thirty."
"Seriously?"

 

[Yistaan]

At the end of the day, the intent (regardless of how Mendez's line ended up reading) was that Pike was around 34 (Kirk's Deadly Years age) at the time of the Cage in 2254. So that is clear cut birthyear of 2220 for Pike, or as the novels put it, 2219. And it seems the Discovery writers destroyed this intent with their new line implying Pike being Georgiou's classmate (and her age and academy attendance years are already canon per an on-screen datafile).

The entire premise of the Menagerie of Pike being disabled WAY before his time is also lessened as Pike is now canonically 65 as of the Menagerie now. Yes a 65 year old still has a Starfleet career ahead of him, but still 17 years less than a 48 year old would have.

I'm really hoping this line is a "Chekhov's gun", so to speak, and that Pike brings it up when he triumphantly exposes Mirror Georgiou as an impostor, saying "The real Georgiou would know I was never a student at the academy at the same time as her."

Honestly, that works for me. I'm pushing sixty and, yeah, the distinction between a twenty-year-old and a thirty-year-old is often lost on me. And I'm terrible at remembering how old my various nieces and nephews are. Kirk and Pike both seem like the younger generation to Mendez.

As Christopher correctly points out, casual dialogue should not be treated as encyclopedia entries. And, in real life, people tend to be notoriously sloppy about time.

"Oh, I've been writing Trek books for twenty years or so . . . ."
"Closer to thirty."
"Seriously?"

At the end of the day, everyone should just forget Mendez's line and I'm almost sorry I mentioned it. But what it establishes is that the intent of the Menagerie writers was that Pike was 30 something at the time of 'The Cage'. That's still a birth year of 2219, WAY younger than the 2202 birth year Discovery now has for Pike.

Discovery writers went against the intent of the Cage writers, and it's not even clear for what reason (unless like I suggested the whole classmates thing is a fiction fabricated by Pike to expose Georgiou)

 

[Yistaan]

sorry double post

 

[Tuskin38]

At the end of the day, the intent (regardless of how Mendez's line ended up reading) was that Pike was around 34 (Kirk's Deadly Years age) at the time of the Cage in 2254. So that is clear cut birthyear of 2220 for Pike, or as the novels put it, 2219. And it seems the Discovery writers destroyed this intent with their new line implying Pike being Georgiou's classmate (and her age and academy attendance years are already canon per an on-screen datafile).

The entire premise of the Menagerie of Pike being disabled WAY before his time is also lessened as Pike is now canonically 65 as of the Menagerie now. Yes a 65 year old still has a Starfleet career ahead of him, but still 17 years less than a 48 year old would have.

I'm really hoping this line is a "Chekhov's gun", so to speak, and that Pike brings it up when he triumphantly exposes Mirror Georgiou as an impostor, saying "The real Georgiou would know I was never a student at the academy at the same time as her."

Or you're just looking at it too closely.

 

[Christopher]

At the end of the day, the intent (regardless of how Mendez's line ended up reading) was that Pike was around 34 (Kirk's Deadly Years age) at the time of the Cage in 2254. So that is clear cut birthyear of 2220 for Pike, or as the novels put it, 2219. And it seems the Discovery writers destroyed this intent with their new line implying Pike being Georgiou's classmate (and her age and academy attendance years are already canon per an on-screen datafile).

Evolution, not destruction. They didn't "destroy" anything when they changed Kirk's middle initial to T or put a "di" in front of "lithium" or dropped Picard's caricatured pride in his French-ness after season 1. Any act of creation requires adjustment along the way, as first-draft ideas are improved upon, refined, or replaced. With novels or movies, all of that revision and refinement is done before the work comes out, but in an ongoing series, it necessarily has to happen while the work is in progress. That is not "destruction" any more than when an artist paints over their initial rough pencil sketch or a musician records another take of a performance. It's creation. It's how creation works. No creative work is perfect to start with; it has to be perfected gradually.

The entire premise of the Menagerie of Pike being disabled WAY before his time is also lessened as Pike is now canonically 65 as of the Menagerie now. Yes a 65 year old still has a Starfleet career ahead of him, but still 17 years less than a 48 year old would have.

Which is much less of an issue today than it was 50 years ago, and logically would be much less of an issue in the future. Picard was 58 when he first took command of the Enterprise-D, 74 as of Nemesis, and there was no indication that he was considering retirement.

 

[Tim Thomason]

He reads as older than Shatner.
Stewart was playing a character a decade or more older than himself.

Stewart was playing a character 13 years older than he was during TNG.

If we assume a ~2202 birthdate, then Hunter will have played a character retroactively 14 years older than he was (and about ten years older than Mount and four years older than Greenwood).

Picard was a super-active health nut, at least in his youth, and Pike might be the same. Gives him a few extra years to become as highly decorated as Georgiou.

And the differences between a 50-year-old and a 30-year-old male in regard to fertility are minimal. If the Talosians were looking for highest sperm count, they wouldn't have picked the Captain. It would've been some unassuming Crewman magically transported from Deck 8.