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

[F. King Daniel]

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

Disco Pike is 52 in "The Cage", TOS Pike isn't. It's like saying The Riddler is 20 years older than Batman in the old Adam West series because of Gotham's version of the character.

Yes, I realise CBS want us to pretend all of Trek is one cohesive universe, and some here have bent over backwards to explain things with make-up phrases like "visual reboot" and hypothetical upgrades followed by downgrades to the USS Enterprise, and holograms that look the same to the audience but unbeknownst to us are actually less high tech... but come on. Enjoy Disco as it's own thing.

 

[Tuskin38]

After recent events, I no longer fully trust Memory Alpha as a reliable source. Especially when it comes to Discovery.

He's been banned from M-A

Disco Pike is 52 in "The Cage",

DSC Pike and TOS Pike are the same character.

 

[Lord Garth]

He's been banned from M-A

Good.

 

[lawman]

Sheer speculative headcanon:

Georgiou is as old as her personnel file says. Pike was born in 2219. And yet the dialogue in both TOS and DSC remains valid and unchanged. How?

Georgiou went back to the Academy at some midpoint in her career, as a graduate student (perhaps for the same sort of "command school" some of us have speculated about Kirk himself attending after the Farragut incident). If she did this in her mid-late 30s, anywhere around 2237-41, that would have overlapped Pike's time as an undergraduate... so she could easily have been learning new regs herself, teaching undergrads as an instructor or tutor, and drinking with them as colleagues during off hours. She would still have had her own command years before she first met Burnham in 2249. Meanwhile Pike would have been climbing the ladder himself, and earned command of the Enterprise in 2250 at the tender age of 31 — the youngest starship commander until Kirk came along, making an impression that would lead Mendez to mentally equate the two.

Pure fanwank? Indubitably. But it smooths over the rough patches well enough. Works for me.

 

[Yistaan]

Pike must have spent some time on the Ba'ku planet leading up to the Cage.

But i like the idea from @lawman better.

 

[XCV330]

Sheer speculative headcanon:

Georgiou is as old as her personnel file says. Pike was born in 2219. And yet the dialogue in both TOS and DSC remains valid and unchanged. How?

Georgiou went back to the Academy at some midpoint in her career, as a graduate student (perhaps for the "command school" some of us have speculated about Kirk himself attending after the Farragut incident). If she did this in her mid-late 30s, anywhere around 2237-41, that would have overlapped Pike's time as an undergraduate... so she could easily have been learning new regs herself, teaching undergrads as an instructor or tutor, and drinking with them as colleagues during off hours. She would still have had her own command years before she first met Burnham in 2249. Meanwhile Pike would have been climbing the ladder himself, and earned command of the Enterprise in 2250 at the tender age of the 31 — the youngest starship commander until Kirk came along, making an impression that would lead Mendez to mentally equate the two.

Sheer fanwank? Indubitably. But it smooths over the rough patches well enough. Works for me.

I was hoping Pike would mention he and Georgiou had worked together at Sirsa III, but seems like a chance to put Desperate Hours into canonicity was lost, there.

 

[lawman]

...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.

Keep in mind, though, FWIW, that during the TOS era Starfleet had a mandatory retirement age of 75 (as established in TAS "Counter-Clock Incident," the episode that introduced Robert April).

Man watching that Cage scene is just going to be so strange now, knowing these 2 guys are supposed to be the same age but look nothing like it. I suppose it's no worse than pretending Zefram Cochrane is 31 in First Contact though...

Have you even seen the movie The Natural? In that, Robert Redford was only two years younger than Wilford Brimley. Just sayin'...

(And both of them were younger than Tom Cruise is now!...)

Besides, Pike's age was already retconned a decade ago in the movie. He was old enough to have been born before the timeline split, therefore he'd be the same age in both timelines.

Or, conversely, that means he was born earlier and had a different personal history even before 2233, providing another data point validating Simon Pegg's statement that the Narada's incursion actually had ripple effects both forward and backward in the timeline...

 

[Christopher]

I think if the real/illusory Mendez minimized the age difference between Kirk and Pike so drastically, the always accurate Spock, who was right there, would have corrected him by saying "Technically, Fleet Captain Pike is older than Captain Kirk by 30 years". I can see Spock letting it slide if Pike were only older by 14 years though.

Fine -- then it was a mistake in the script in real life. This is all made up by fallible humans, and some things just have to accepted as real-life mistakes rather than taken literally in-universe. There are plenty of episodes where Spock says something about science that makes no damn sense. (The size of the Fesarius is off your scale? Then how the hell can you measure the size of a planet or a star???) It wouldn't work to attribute the error to Spock, so you just have to accept that it was an error on the part of the writer.

Roddenberry himself sometimes asked fans to accept that the underlying reality was different from what was shown onscreen, like when the Klingons were redesigned in TMP and he claimed they'd always looked that way. In his view, there was an underlying "reality" that the TV show was only an imperfect approximation of, so errors and inconsistencies could be chalked up to flaws in the interpretation rather than having to be taken literally.

Or, conversely, that means he was born earlier and had a different personal history even before 2233, providing another data point validating Simon Pegg's statement that the Narada's incursion actually had ripple effects both forward and backward in the timeline...

Uggh, how many times to I have to point out that Pegg didn't originate that idea? It came from the Okudas in the revised Encyclopedia, which Pegg presumably got an advance look at. He mentioned the idea some weeks before the equivalent excerpt from the Encyclopedia was posted online, but it takes a long time to write and assemble a book, so it was no doubt written by the Okudas quite a few months before it was publicized by Pegg.

 

[Yistaan]

Fine -- then it was a mistake in the script in real life.

I don't think anyone in the production of TOS intended for Pike to be 52 as of the Cage, regardless of what mistakes they put in Mendez's dialogue. Because if they did, they would have cast a 50+ year old man in the Cage. Roddenberry had a fit over how old Patrick Stewart looked despite being only 47.

People are using Mendez's technically incorrect dialogue as a straw man argument to knock down our questions about why Pike's age was changed, when our complaints stem from Discovery contradicting the intent of the Menagerie story. And it's getting a bit tiresome watching people use that strawman because I and several others have stated multiple times we are against the contradiction of that intent, not Mendez's actual dialogue.

In fact, I will quote below how this was covered back in page 1 of the thread, yet there are still accusations about nitpicking script mistakes on page 4 (even though I outright said on page 1 we cared more about the intent)...

The intent was that Pike was about the same age in "The Cage" that Kirk was in TOS, in his early 30s. Which should've put him in his upper 40s as of "The Menagerie."

That still puts pikes birth year in the range of 2219 like the novels did. And i wouldn't complain about that.

This is all made up by fallible humans

You're right this is stuff made up by fallible humans. However, last I checked keeping stuff like this tracked is their actual job (they get paid to do this), and generally we want people to do their job correctly and not make mistakes. Certainly in my job at least.

 

[DaveyNY]

He's been banned from M-A


DSC Pike and TOS Pike are the same character.

Geee, like I didn't see that coming.


https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/wha...o-star-trek-lore.297765/page-20#post-12793386

 

[WarpFactorZ]

I don't see the problem. First, can any of you differentiate between a 40 year old and a 50 year old person? Second, how many of you know what a 50 year old person will look in the 23rd century? Even over the last 30 years, 50 year old people have been looking younger. There's a reason they say "50 is the new 30 (or 40)".

 

[DaveyNY]

I just turned Sixty and folks keep telling me I look like I'm in my 40's.
(I just wish I felt like I was in my 40's when first getting up in the morning)

 

[Yistaan]

I don't see the problem. First, can any of you differentiate between a 40 year old and a 50 year old person? Second, how many of you know what a 50 year old person will look in the 23rd century? Even over the last 30 years, 50 year old people have been looking younger. There's a reason they say "50 is the new 30 (or 40)".

We know that James Kirk in the 23rd century was griping about growing old in Wrath of Khan on his 52nd birthday. And he looks nothing in that movie like Cage Pike (William Shatner was himself 50 in that movie).

McCoy: Damn it, Jim, what the hell's the matter with you? Other people have birthdays. Why are we treating yours like a funeral?
Kirk: Bones, I don't want to be lectured.
McCoy: What the hell do you want? ...This is not about age, ...and you know it. This is about you flying a goddamn computer console when you wanna be out there hopping Galaxies.
KIRK: Spare me your notions of poetry, please. We all have our assigned duties.
McCOY: Bull. You're hiding ...hiding behind rules and regulations.
KIRK: Who am I hiding from?
McCOY: From yourself, Admiral!
KIRK: Don't mince words, Bones, What do you really think?
McCOY: Jim, I'm your doctor and I'm your friend. Get back your command. Get it back before you turn into part of this collection. Before you really do grow old.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

We know that James Kirk in the 23rd century was griping about growing old in Wrath of Khan on his 52nd birthday. And he looks nothing in that movie like Cage Pike (William Shatner was himself 50 in that movie).

Yes, I know the dialogue from TWOK. But the point that Shatner's 50 doesn't look like Mount's "50" (45 is close enough) is precisely what I was bringing up. Not everyone who's 50 looks the same age.

 

[LJones41]

I don't see the problem. First, can any of you differentiate between a 40 year old and a 50 year old person? Second, how many of you know what a 50 year old person will look in the 23rd century? Even over the last 30 years, 50 year old people have been looking younger. There's a reason they say "50 is the new 30 (or 40)".

You've got a point.

 

[Christopher]

I don't think anyone in the production of TOS intended for Pike to be 52 as of the Cage, regardless of what mistakes they put in Mendez's dialogue.

Obviously not, but so what? Any long-running series is going to have different creators with different intentions. Creativity is a dynamic process, a process of growth and transformation. Any ongoing creative work will change over time. So clinging to original intentions is pointless. I mean, for Pete's sake, Roddenberry originally intended the Enterprise to be an Earth ship; the Federation was a retcon. Spock was originally intended to have a creepy hypnotic power over women. Pon farr was originally intended to be a one-time thing, not every 7 years. Riker was originally intended to be prejudiced against androids. Data was originally intended to have emotions. Bashir was not originally intended to be genetically engineered. Janeway was originally intended to be named Elizabeth.

So the hell with original intent. It doesn't matter. Fiction is a cumulative creation. The starting point is not the destination.

 

[Yistaan]

So the hell with original intent. It doesn't matter. Fiction is a cumulative creation. The starting point is not the destination.

I would agree if there was a strong, story-based reason to change the original intent. And I'm not sure a throwaway line literally about drinking under the table qualifies. We might just have to agree to disagree on that.

As others have pointed out, a prior cooperation between Georgiou and Pike (possibly even the one in the Desperate Hours novel or something similar) could have established a connection between the 2 just as easily.

The "I knew him at the Academy" line is getting tired (Picard says it in the game Bridge Commander, Riker is ticked off at that telepath guy for accidentally letting an Academy classmate die, Sisko punches out a Klingon who killed an Academy classmate etc.)

 

[Kor]

Maybe "The Academy" is slang for some popular bar back in San Francisco that gets frequented by cadets, officers, Starfleet retirees, etc. It's a bastion of Starfleet camaraderie, where everybody knows your name, and strong friendships are forged.

Kor

 

[WarpFactorZ]

Maybe "The Academy" is slang for some popular bar back in San Francisco that gets frequented by cadets, officers, Starfleet retirees, etc. It's a bastion of Starfleet camaraderie, where everybody knows your name, and strong friendships are forged.

Kor

Coincidentally, it's the one McCoy went to in TSFS, and also that Scotty and Keenser are at when Kirk calls them! It's actually the only remaining bar in the city.

 

[Christopher]

I would agree if there was a strong, story-based reason to change the original intent. And I'm not sure a throwaway line literally about drinking under the table qualifies. We might just have to agree to disagree on that.

As I've said, it seems obvious that the purpose is much deeper than that. Emperor Georgiou is an impostor posing as her Prime counterpart. That's a big secret, and it's the nature of fiction that secrets tend to get endangered -- and in modern serial fiction, they eventually get exposed. And the best way to put Georgiou's secret at risk and create dramatic tension is by bringing in a character who's close to Georgiou but not already in the loop about her identity, someone who can see that Mirror Georgiou is "wrong" and start probing into it. And since they were bringing in Pike, they made him that character.