Kirk and Pike's command styles: your thoughts?

Now after SNW has been aired, I start to feel that Pike is actually a bit similar to Kirk. Or maybe not? Pike is so informal, friendly, easy going, and a very sharp decision maker. He can be bold, but very calculative. I don't know how they will portray the new Kirk in the future. But the Kirk that we know have multiple type of personality. From the normal and formal, also strong leadership in TOS, to rebellious, gungho, rules breaker type of the movie and DS9, to a another type of personality in Kelvin version. So what kind of character is James T Kirk? Will he be more easy going than Pike, or actually like a formal Kirk in TOS? Or maybe somebody who can make a very bold / a bit reckless decision that capable to make Spock and McCoy suffer a sudden heart attack?

What make Kirk very special, to an extend that Sisko willing to cross the line just to get his handshake?

 

I think both have their own merits and their own style of command. I keep asking myself if Pike recommended Kirk for the Enterprise or if it was Starfleet's recommendation.

Also I keep thinking about if Pike was around during the movies (TMP to TUC), would he have done what Kirk did and stole the Enterprise to get Spock-o's sole back? if so, would he have blown it up as well?

 

It’s not “Kirk’s style vs Pike’s style”, it’s “Modern Trek style vs pre-Modern Trek style”. I enjoy, in varying degrees, current Trek, but their obsession with creating insta-families with the crew is annoying. Watching the original, they came off as a team with strong camaraderie and later close friends. Ditto for pre-DSC trek. Modern Trek wants to jump to the ‘family’ stage with only a season or two under each show’s belt (DSC & PIC) without the crew or audience really getting to know these characters or see that growth. I enjoy the shorter seasons, but that doesn’t help. Longer seasons and repeats helped older shows cement those intermediary steps between acquaintance and family in the mind of the audience.

 

Kirk appears to have had a bit of a shorter fuse than Pike, even with his friends. When they are in crisis mode and he's frustrated and wanting answers, he's prone to raising his voice and demanding results, as if he can get them by sheer force of will.

 

I'm not sure how true that is. In SNW, you have the old hands (Pike, Una, Spock, M'Benga and Ortegas) who have been together or years and show a familiarity. And then the "noobs" (Chapel, Uhura, La'an and Hemmer) who aren't quite as familiar with the way the Enterprise is run.
The original series started in medias res, with the crew knowing each other for years. Relationships were well established between Kirk and Spock, McCoy and Kirk, Spock and McCoy. I don't think we saw that growth, it's just there. Kirk and Scotty have a well established rapport, as well. The lower ranks have an easy familiarity too. Even Spock is known to join in the "fun" on occasion. New crew like Chekov easily blend in.
TNG, Voyager, DS9 and Enterprise are different as we meet their crews at launch, as it were. Still they become friends and family pretty fast. How soon was it that O'Brien and Bashir became Holodeck buddies? Or Troi and Crusher were working out together?

 

Pike is the same way. like he told burnham in "Brother": "I don't mind dissenting
opinions, I really don't, but they have to come with solutions."

 

In a similar vein but not necessarily in the form of 'dissenting opinions', one of my personal rules as a navy officer was: "Never go to the boss with a problem without a solution already in hand."

 

Cage Pike seems much more serious than Kirk. It was why Spock risked going to Talos. I think Spock thought Pike a better Vulcan than he was.

Kirk’s influence helped lighten Spock’s outlook.

 

I dunno, Kirk was rather serious early on. Spock a little lighter than he would become.

 

He just had a touch of what T’pol had with Pa’nar…or Tolaris’s teachings to Sybok may have rubbed off

 

First, what about Bruce Greenwood's interpretation of Captain Pike? He seems to have been forgotten in all this.

Secondly, a better comparison "study" would be to compare the different Pikes (Jeffery, Bruce and Anson), and then compare those Pikes with the different Kirks (Bill, Chris and, soon, Paul). Ultimately, it's how those characters are written AND how the actors playing those roles can pull it off.

Then again, you can always say that the Temporal Cold War is responsible for how those characters can act differently, even though they are the same. I guess it's like when your parents got together to conceive you, but at different times, resulting in you not quite being you, but you, unless you came out as a girl, instead of boy.

 

I always felt that in early episodes of TOS that Kirk and Pike were written the same way, that they were basically the same character, but that eventually William Shatner's performance became something of a hook for writing Kirk after awhile. There probably are some early TOS episodes where Jeffrey Hunter's Pike would have fit in fine and some later episodes where only William Shatner's Kirk would have done them justice, IMO.

As far as Pike in SNW, I think he's quickly come into his own. A big part of that may do with Anson Mount's sometimes everyman take on the character, but it could also be because Pike is written as being an unpretentious and approachable captain in SNW, with more interactions with crewmembers than we're used to seeing. Otherwise, I think the command styles of Pike and Kirk are the most similar to one another, with their personal friendships being the biggest difference. As mentioned upthread, Kirk seems to demonstrate more command distance--but he's not above consoling crewmembers...especially the female ones.

 

Yep, the captain character didn't evolve much between the proposals, pilots and first scripts of Season One. Shows what a specific actor can bring to the table.

 

The interesting thing for me is that Mount didn't even try to match Jeffrey Hunter's performance style as Pike. He certainly could have, but nobody wanted him to. I liked Hunter fine, but he was definitely a bit detached from his crew, Boyce partially excepted. (Similar to the underlying C.S. Forester material, of course.)

In-universe, what I'm going with is that the Talosians' illusions made Pike realize that the important thing is connection, rather than worrying about "success;" all the Talosians did was offer him stuff. DSC and later Pike is different, and better

 

I rationalize his behavior by thinking that in "The Cage" Pike was at his worst (he had experienced a great tragedy). It was by no means representative of his usual behavior

 

Boyce even says Pike isn't acting like himself. So, clearly Pike was having a bad day.

 

Thing is: In The Cage pilot we never saw Christopher Pike's 'normal' command style.

Pike was still recovering both physically and mentally from an incident just a week earlier where on a landing party, he was still questioning his Command Decisions due to the fact that members of the Landing party were either killed outright, or badly injured.

It affected him so much he was considering resigning his Commission. At the end of the episode he seems to have a better handle on everything, and at that point, is more like his old self.
^^^
But we the audience never got to see that part of him because this was the only Star Trek episode to feature him in an active role until Star Trek Discovery Season 2.

 

Kirk did the hard things himself to get things done.
Pike can afford to be a nice guy since he has such a tough enforcer in Chief Kyle - because he's so mean.

 

Ah yes, I think Kirk is more Cowboy type of Character. Well, maybe he is really been portrait as a Cowboy in Space.