Every Version Of Christopher Pike On Star Trek

[1001001]

Jeffrey Hunter conveyed everything I needed to know about Captain Pike, and I can imagine the great adventures he had along with his crew of the Starship Enterprise. He's an interesting character and I would like to close the book on him. Greenwood was planted as the Obiwan Kenobi role for Chris Pine's JJ Kirk; the mentor to teach Kirk something... but I wish I knew what it was? Mount is only there on Disco just to make their character Burnham look better, the latter versions of Pike were positioned to support the lead actor and not make an impression they would have their own series. Objectives were different from "The Cage" to JJTrek and Disco.

I really don't get all the TOS Pike stuff. He was in a failed pilot, and then his footage was edited into another episode. That's it!

Greenwood was much better. He basically saved Kirk from a meaningless life. He also kicked Kirk in the ass when he needed it.

As for Mount (no spoilers for DSC here!), he is fantastic in DSC, IMHO, and is not playing second fiddle to anyone.

 

[fireproof78]

Jeffrey Hunter conveyed everything I needed to know about Captain Pike, and I can imagine the great adventures he had along with his crew of the Starship Enterprise. He's an interesting character and I would like to close the book on him. Greenwood was planted as the Obiwan Kenobi role for Chris Pine's JJ Kirk; the mentor to teach Kirk something... but I wish I knew what it was? Mount is only there on Disco just to make their character Burnham look better, the latter versions of Pike were positioned to support the lead actor and not make an impression they would have their own series. Objectives were different from "The Cage" to JJTrek and Disco.

Save for the fact that Boyce calls Pike out for not acting like himself. So, odds are, we didn't know everything about PIke, and that his presentation would likely change.

As for Kelvin Pike-he was there as a mentor to teach Kirk how to be both a leader and a Starfleet officer. Not that hard.

As for Mount, that is not accurate to his presentation at all in the show, and, to me, misses a lot of character development.

The assertion that these Pikes are somehow less for not being the lead is absurd, at best. I love Hunter's Pike but I'm not going to claim that he was fully developed character like the newer iterations.

 

[Lance]

For me, I was absolutely delighted by the decision to include Pike in the 2009 movie. To me, that character was a very important 'missing link' to Star Trek's mythology, and every chance we had to flesh him out a little more and raise his profile and importance was welcome. Tbh, the Mount version of Pike hits it so out of the park I almost feel like DSC didn't actually begin until the second season. Frankly, I'm of a view that the show should've been about Chris Pike all along. (No disrespect to the other cast, but all the mucking about with Georgio and Lorca in season one feels like time wasted when *this* could have been the show we started with).

 

[Mudd]

"The Menagerie" was a very big deal when it first ran, to many of us who watched the show early on - it literally changed Star Trek, enlarged it in an unexpected way through its improvisation, and I'd say probably is as responsible for the existence of fannish fascination with Trek chronology and the "Star Trek Universe" as any other event in the franchise's history.

So no, that "one episode" was not a small thing at all.*

*It was also, obviously, the only reason that there was a "Christopher Pike" that anyone gave a fuck about for Bruce Greenwood to play with such charm.

 

[Lance]

"The Menagerie" was a very big deal when it first ran, to many of us who watched the show early on - it literally changed Star Trek, enlarged it in an unexpected way through its improvisation, and I'd say probably is as responsible for the existence of fannish fascination with Trek chronology and the "Star Trek Universe" as any other event in the franchise's history.

So no, that "one episode" was not a small thing at all.*

*It was also, obviously, the only reason that there was a "Christopher Pike" that anyone gave a fuck about for Bruce Greenwood to play with such charm.

It was one of Roddenberry's more brilliant ideas. Almost as soon as TOS was greenlit there were memos circulating about The Menagerie, Gene using it as a reassurance of a stopgap if broadcast were to unexpectedly catch up with production (which it did). The Menagerie arguably saved Star Trek from premature cancellation, when Desilu actually ran out of episodes to send to the network. I'd love to have known just how early Gene Roddenberry had already been thinking about repackaging The Cage as a regular episode, because it was near enough to a genius move. Broadcast shows had used footage from unbroadcast pilot episodes before, but never as cleverly as The Menagerie did in, as you say, expanding and enlarging the fictional universe. I even wonder if this idea was formulating in Roddenberry's mind as early as when he recast the lead with Shatner and made the decision to rename him James Kirk?

 

[Mudd]

It made the whole thing more "real," in a way that's hard to describe. Arguably, this has not been an unalloyed blessing as fans tend to take the whole STU way too seriously - but it's probably contributed a lot to the longevity of the phenomenon and the depth of the core fandom's fascination with it.

Which is why it was so terribly satisfying to see clips of "The Cage" used, without explanation or excuse, at the beginning of that show the other week.

 

[GNDN18]

It made the whole thing more "real," in a way that's hard to describe. Arguably, this has not been an unalloyed blessing as fans tend to take the whole STU way too seriously - but it's probably contributed a lot to the longevity of the phenomenon and the depth of the core fandom's fascination with it.

Which is why it was so terribly satisfying to see clips of "The Cage" used, without explanation or excuse, at the beginning of that show the other week.

For me, Star Trek was the only show I knew of that had a history. Something about the production values of “The Cage” made it seem like it really happened 13 years before TOS. It wasn’t a gimmicky flashback: it was an entirely different, yet similar, Enterprise.

To a young boy, it seemed as if the producers went to great lengths to make this film within a film, even hiring a name guest star to play the first (sic) captain of the Enterprise. And Nimoy looked so young.

The verisimilitude of those too-perfect record tapes had a profound effect on the way I viewed the STU; I wanted more.

 

[Mudd]

Exactly so.

The Enterprise existed before Kirk, McCoy and the stories we were watching. People aged. They were people in a universe that wasn't created to be about them.

 

[Lance]

It definitely had the same allure to me. And again, when Mirror, Mirror picks up the baton and namedrops Captain Pike being assassinated (complete with shocked reaction from Kirk), it feels like it's got real weight behind it. Kinda like how all that stuff in the original Star Wars hinted at a big backstory we could fill in inside our minds.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Yes, Greenwood was great in that avuncular, paternal role, but he didn't make any sense as Pike. Pike was established as being a near contemporary of Kirk, not Kirk's dad.

Greenwood's Pike was a totally different character with a namecheck for the fans. Captain April might have been a better choice, but wouldn't have landed the wheelchair gag at the end of ST09.

Anson Mount is just perfect and is killing it as Pike. But at the same time I can buy him as the same guy as Hunter played. Pike in The Cage is clearly depressed and morose, and I can completely believe he grew into Mount's version of the character.

Anson Mount's Pike is also significantly older than Kirk, who would be 24 at the current time of Disco (which is one year before and one universe over from the bulk of ST'09). That he went to the academy with Captain Georgiou from 2220-2224 bumps his age up from Hunter-Pike novels that assume his academy tenure in the 2240's.

 

[Timo]

The effort to make Hunter's Pike younger was gravely misguided IMHO, when the whole point was that this was the hero character of the past. Fortunately, none of that had an impact on any of the onscreen Pikes, just one the novels.

Pike in DSC is a good thing. I don't want too much of that good thing; I want Pike gone at the end of S3, at least from his CO position. DSC is not about Pike. But he has a place there.

Pike now also has a canonical place among Starfleet legends. Previously, he was just this name dropped every now and then in the specific Enterprise context, a possible no-name whose only claim to celebrity was his bizarre eventual fate. The Kelvin movies suggested he was a bit more than that, perhaps a successful and popular recruiter or something. DSC now paints an all-new (in canon terms) picture where Pike is a decorated celebrity, as well as an all-new (in canon terms) picture where the Enterprise is a special ship and thus possibly an automatic celebrity-making machine.

A chicken and an egg... Did Pike distinguish himself enough to earn the command of a Constitution? Or did a random skipper placed in command of one of those expectedly make good and so gain a place in the list of Starfleet's Most Decorated? The more age we cede to Pike, the more likely that he did some earning first.

Considering that list, we could eventually also see April, and learn that April was to Pike what Pike was to Kirk. But that IMHO would be a loss - I'd much prefer to both see an all-new character as Pike's mentor, and an all-new approach to April.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tomalak]

The "Christopher Pike Medal of Valour" was a bit of a hint of his legendary heroism, although it may have been in commemoration of his self-sacrifice to save those cadets.

 

[Phoenix219]

Jeffery Hunter will always have a special place in Trek history. But even I, the huge Discovery fan that I am, have to admit that Mount has knocked the cover off the ball with his version of Pike.

As far as Bruce Greenwood goes, and I am a huge fan of the Abrams films, his version felt flat to me. Almost more of how I envisioned Robert April.

100% on Robert April. Or what Archer should have been. (Actually, Archer should have just been April. I'd have taken a retcon of April being on the NX, and a direct Pike to Kirk on the NCC)

 

[Timo]

It's pretty difficult to do unique, outstanding characters when you do starship skippers, I guess.

Plenty of room there still for April's story. Which hopefully only tangents on the Enterprise, and might involve an all-new hero ship in the early 23rd century if there's ever the need. Alas, DSC has now limited things by deciding that April indeed was somebody, a decorated celebrity on par with Archer and Georgiou and Pike; it would have been nicer to reserve the option to deal with a known character before he or she attained any sort of fame, something we never managed with anybody but Kirk in TOS, and just possibly Pike in "The Cage". (None of the TNG characters were known from any other context before we first saw them, Picard was a celebrity already anyway, and Burnham was infamous right off the bat).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[RPOW0614]

I liked the original Pike. From what little I have seen and read about the new season of DSC (waiting to get CBSAA after season ends and binge) Mount is doing a great job as Pike. The only other thing I have seen him in before was "Inhumans" and that was a mess of a show. But still, Mount was very good in it and had a commanding presence even with the handicap of not being able to speak. So far all the people to portray Pike have done great jobs.

 

[johnnybear]

As much as I prefer Jeff Hunter as Pike, I must admit that Mount is good as Captain Pike and is probably the best actor in the Discovery show! It has to be said though that Sean Kenney was an excellent choice as the disfigured Pike in The Menagerie in 1967 as he and Hunter were very similar in looks! I doubt that they'd take the time to cast an actor with the best looks to another actor in todays television!
JB

 

[The Old Mixer]

The only other thing I have seen him in before was "Inhumans" and that was a mess of a show.

And this would be my opportunity to plug Hell on Wheels, because it was an awesome show, Mount was awesome in it, and his co-star was Colm Meaney, who was also awesome in it.

 

[Lance]

It has to be said though that Sean Kenney was an excellent choice as the disfigured Pike in The Menagerie in 1967 as he and Hunter were very similar in looks! I doubt that they'd take the time to cast an actor with the best looks to another actor in todays television!

It must be said I agree and, furthermore, think that Kenney could have pulled off a convincing Jeff Hunter both without makeup and vocally, based on his performance in other TOS episodes as Lt
DePaul.

 

[Phoenix219]

As much as I prefer Jeff Hunter as Pike, I must admit that Mount is good as Captain Pike and is probably the best actor in the Discovery show! It has to be said though that Sean Kenney was an excellent choice as the disfigured Pike in The Menagerie in 1967 as he and Hunter were very similar in looks! I doubt that they'd take the time to cast an actor with the best looks to another actor in todays television!
JB

Really? I don't think there is much similarity between them at all. It gets a pass because of "disfigurement."

 

[Lance]

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying Sean Kenney was 1:1 Jeff Hunter. But there's certainly more than a superficial similarity between him and Hunter. This screenshot of Kenney could be Chris Pike if you didn't know better.