Captain Pike's age difference in new universe?

[Kelso]

I think we can just dismiss Mendez's line about Pike and Kirk's ages. In Cage/Menagerie, Pike is obviously older than 20+ anyway.

You can't just go dimissing Star Trek canon! Has the world gone crazy?

That would be like dismissing Chekov's onscreen age of 22 just because the actor was 31, or dismissing that TMP happened two years after TOS just because the actors were ten years older!

Is nothing sacred anymore?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Wouldn't be the first time a line of dialogue could be ignored. That thing about Khan being "200 years ago" in DS9's "Doctor Bashir, I Presume" for instance. That line has been flat-out denounced by its own writer as a mistake that never actually "happened".

 

[SeamusShameless]

When pretty much everyone lives to be well over 100 years old, a 35 year old and a 50 year old could be considered to be "about the same age".

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ That's probably the easiest explanation. Mendez said Pike was ABOUT Kirk's age, after all. Enough room to be ambiguous.

 

[Timo]

More importantly, Mendez was in the habit of using clipped phrases. He didn't say "Chris Pike is about your age, Jim". He responded to Kirk's statement of meeting Pike when Pike was promoted to Fleet Captain. And he responded with "About your age. Big, handsome man, vital, active."

I find it extremely difficult to believe that the writer of the episode would not have meant that Pike was about Kirk's current age back when he was promoted to Fleet Captain. That's the context of the phrase. Obviously, Pike isn't a vital and active man when the phrase is uttered. So there's no reason to think he would be Kirk's age when the phrase is uttered, either.

Pike is the older Kirk, a frightening reminder that this could be our Kirk's future as well - an example of cruel fate crushing the hopes of even the most heroic characters.

And Jeff Hunter looks the part, even if his shirt cuffs feature less brass than Kirk's. There's plenty of grey there, and much of it (all of it?) is probably makeup added to give the youthful Hunter an aura of experience. Whether the "live puppet" cast as Pike for the purposes of the two-parter was supposed to be of a different, less experienced age is doubtful. Sure, he's blonde rather than salt-and-pepper. But he's also scarred beyond recognition; for all we know, the doctors have given him young man's hair as inadequte compensation for his dreadful fate.

The basic issue remains: it's quite implausible that the writer would have attempted to indicate that Pike and Kirk are of the same birthyear. That's not something the episode would call for - Pike is supposed to be the precedent, the past, the Kirk-before-Kirk.

Now, we cannot nail down Pike's age by "The Menagerie" dialogue, because we have no proof of anything beyond him being alive and in Starfleet 13 years before the episode. At that point, he could have held any rank or rating, as long as he served alongside Spock in some capacity, and later became his CO and captain. Certainly there's no reason to start thinking that the character would be younger than Jeff Hunter in "The Cage", and little reason to insist even that he would have been as young.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CommanderRaytas]

Age in Trek is a lot like warp speed--a very elastic concept.

The Star Trek universe suffers from the same problem the Dark Tower one has, too: as the Beams fall, time becomes elastic and unreliable. The only difference is, Stephen King did it on purpose. ST writers just can't count.

 

[thumbtack]

Pike appears far older in the new universe due to overwhelming lifelong stress, brought on by never having the chance to meet Captain Robau, his hero and man-crush.

At last, a plausible explanation.

 

[Kelso]

Timo- Nice bit of retcon work, but it's not supported by the episode itself.

The truth of it is that the line doesn't make a damn bit of sense- but then neither does anything else in "The Menagerie" framing story. It's a jumbled mess.

Insisting on a strict adherence to it is pretty absurd... but so is everything else in this thread, so why not?

So, I'll stick to my position that that kid what played McLovin' would have been a better choice for Pike. At least it makes more sense than the OP's position. And mine is supported by The Canon.

 

[CommanderRaytas]

Canon, shmanon. You can always reorganise it in your head....which, I think, is what most of us do anyway, on a regular basis.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Some fans do it so often, they've lost the ability to recognize and accept a mistake or a retcon. It's always, "No, that's not a mistake! It makes perfect sense because [crazy explanation here]"

 

[Timo]

In this case, I think it's just the reverse...

There's no reason to think of the phrase as a mistake. It would be insane of anybody, writer, rewriter, director, to deliberately try and indicate that Pike and Kirk are of the same age, and completely impossible for them to insert this specific phrase there "by accident". But there's no room for a mistake here, no reason to plead accident: the plot demands that Kirk be the new Pike, that Pike be the old Kirk - that's what the framing is all about, shoehorning the earlier pilot into the "past" of the current show.

As spoken, the phrase does make perfect sense, always did. Pike was of Kirk's age once. Long ago. That's important to establish, so that the audience knows that then was then, now is now. All the information about the past being the past is collected in the teaser of the episode, so that the audience knows Pike and Spock served together some dozen years ago.

It takes a truly perverted mind to read the line as anything else, really. An obsession to find "mistakes" where none exist is probably required.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CommanderRaytas]

It's on the fanbrat checklist, that one. I think all fanbrats, regardless of the fandom, retcon like hell and throw tantrums when canon doesn't tag along.

 

[Dukhat]

Pike was canonically about Kirk's age. And this was coming from a guy [Mendez] who was played by a 39 year old actor.

Wow, Malachi Throne was 39 at the time? I'll be 39 in six months, and I don't look anywhere as old as he did in that episode. He looks as old as my dad does now.

As for this topic, I prefer to think that TOS got it wrong, and Star Trek '09 got it right.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

The only onscreen reference to Pike's age is Mendez' comment that he is about the same age as Kirk.

Didn't that actually mean that Pike was that age during the events of The Cage/Menagerie?

Nope.

MENDEZ: You ever met Chris Pike?
KIRK: When he was promoted to Fleet Captain.
MENDEZ: About your age. Big, handsome man, vital, active.

Pike was canonically about Kirk's age. And this was coming from a guy [Mendez] who was played by a 39 year old actor.

Yeah, this is an example of sloppy writing on the envelope story by Roddenberry, and is best ignored. Pike looks to be Kirk's age in the flashbacks set, according to Spock, "thirteen years ago," and therefore ought to be past fifty at the time of "The Menagerie." This is an instance of the folks who made Trek 2009 paying attention and correcting an obvious error in TOS.

 

[M'Sharak]

Pike was canonically about Kirk's age. And this was coming from a guy [Mendez] who was played by a 39 year old actor.

Wow, Malachi Throne was 39 at the time? I'll be 39 in six months, and I don't look anywhere as old as he did in that episode. He looks as old as my dad does now.

Throne was two months shy of turning 38 at the time "The Menagerie" was being filmed in October 1966.

 

[Timo]

Pike looks to be Kirk's age in the flashbacks set, according to Spock, "thirteen years ago," and therefore ought to be past fifty at the time of "The Menagerie."

...And the dialogue confirms this. If you insist on reading it some other way, feel welcome - but you'll be going against both reason and the writer's original intent, so I fail to see the benefit.

Really, what's with you people? The writers may each have their own wild ideas on how phasers work or how fast Kirk's spaceship is, but they don't get basic sitcom stuff wrong. Not within the confines of a single episode. When tasked with writing a story about two different time periods, they'll pay extra attention to getting that part right.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Pike looks to be Kirk's age in the flashbacks set, according to Spock, "thirteen years ago," and therefore ought to be past fifty at the time of "The Menagerie."

...And the dialogue confirms this.

Entirely wrong.

About your age. Big, handsome man, vital, active.

Perhaps you can torture logic to use the fact that Kirk says he met Pike years ago as an excuse to claim that Mendez is remarking upon Pike's age at the time the two met, but that's ridiculous. Reading the line as if Mendez actually speaks the same version of English as everyone else, he's observing that Kirk and Pike are about the same age. That's what "about your age" means, not "well, when you met him he was about the age that you are now."

Roddenberry just screwed this up. There's a lot that's illogical or nonsensical about the present-day envelope for "The Menagerie" and this is just one example of it.

 

[I Grok Spock]

The whole point of the line is to set up the OMGWTF is that reveal by establishing that Pike was just like our hero prior to the accident.

Except maybe the "big" part.

 

[Chaos Descending]

Pike looks to be Kirk's age in the flashbacks set, according to Spock, "thirteen years ago," and therefore ought to be past fifty at the time of "The Menagerie."

...And the dialogue confirms this.

Entirely wrong.

About your age. Big, handsome man, vital, active.

Perhaps you can torture logic to use the fact that Kirk says he met Pike years ago as an excuse to claim that Mendez is remarking upon Pike's age at the time the two met, but that's ridiculous. Reading the line as if Mendez actually speaks the same version of English as everyone else, he's observing that Kirk and Pike are about the same age. That's what "about your age" means, not "well, when you met him he was about the age that you are now."

Roddenberry just screwed this up. There's a lot that's illogical or nonsensical about the present-day envelope for "The Menagerie" and this is just one example of it.

"Big, handsome man, vital, active." is describing a radiation scarred, mute, invalid in an electric wheelchair?

Come on.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Nope, that would be more of what's called "sloppy writing" - Roddenberry is only concerned there - as I Grok Spock correctly notes - with setting up the "Oh My God" reveal.

We're not meant to ask "why doesn't Mendez tell Kirk what's going on instead of playing "Get a load of that!" at the expense of Pike's privacy and dignity, any more than the writer cares to explain what Uhura has been doing instead of monitoring and reporting on routine Starfleet message traffic in the months since Pike's injury (Spock having apparently taken on a censor's role aboard ship by intercepting any and all of the "subspace chatter" that Mendez is putatively surprised to discover hasn't made its way to Kirk).

You still haven't presented a shred of plausible argument that Mendez meant to refer to Pike at some arbitrary point in the past by using colloquial English in a thoroughly opaque and idiosyncratic fashion instead of as a native speaker would.