I've always thought that Pike as a substantive lieutenant is a bit of a stretch but WNMHGB suggests that the single strip covers all junior officers (ensign to lieutenant commander) with two stripes worn by all senior officers (commanders and captains), so Pike was a LCDR, rather than CMDR (Kirk in WNMHGB?) or CAPT (Kirk from Man Trap onwards), it's still not great but it's an improvement.
Yep, the whole thing evolved substantially before the “proper” final version of TOS emerged. My point is that trying to extrapolate Pike’s rank back to The Cage therefore doesn’t work because the uniform markings were just different in the pilots, the same as the rest of the costumes in the pilots. Similarly, the use of the broken stripe in The Cage does not equate to the later use of the single broken stripe in TOS (and, FWIW, it’s a different braid). It’s more like single solid stripe for all officers and broken stripe for CPOs.
That's all in the universe where Star Trek is fake and the heroes are but impostors who get paid for pretending, though. In-universe, the visuals of "The Cage" are as much or as little part of the pseudoreality as the visuals of regular TOS episodes are - they appear in a regular TOS episode, after all. And the bloated pseudoreality now covers centuries, yet with a more or less consistent rank system where the braid is the same from the 2150s to the 2370s while a competing pip system remains the same for the same timespan. So it's sort of embarrassing to try and double-pretend that "Starfleet had a different system for a decade", yet dull and boring to decide that none of it is supposed to hold together anyway. So far, we're getting good data that adds to fictional consistency without either contradicting it or being too straitjacketed by it. Erring on either direction is certainly possible in the near future, and even likely. But it's still fun to pretend that Pike actually had a career, with twists and turns. Timo Saloniemi
"The Cage" was never aired as an official episode. But "The Cage" was cut into the official episode "The Managerie" - as visions created bei the Talosian. Remember how the "repaired" Vina. The Talosians obviously have a weird understanding, how humans have to look. So it's not unrealistic to assume, they also didn't get the uniforms right. Maybe the uniforms from the Pike-era in "The Managerie" were just part of an incomplete vision. So no real problem.
True. The "CPO" stripe is essentially a ladder, whereas the "JG"/"broken" stripe is either unconnected lozenges or a thin braid.
Yes, but when they decided to produce Kirk-Star-Trek in 1966, everything about Pike-Star-Trek became irrelevant. There was a new concept with many changes. Another crew (except Spock), many changes on the bridge.... It only became official canon, when in was included into "The Managerie" - as a talosian telepathic vision. Maybe the talosians were colorblind, that would explain the wrong uniform-colors, maybe they never thought about the stripes, so they imagined it a little bit wrong. Hey, the talosians even believed, their recreation of Viva could be right
I'm not quite getting the Vina bit. Surely the exterior looks would be dictated by what the Talosians could or could not repair about the innards? Human doctors today can't set a spine straight in most cases, and they know what a human is supposed to look like inside. The Talosians didn't. (And no, neither did Vina - none of us here do - so the mindreading stuff wouldn't help any.) Our TOS heroes do question what they see of Pike's adventure. But what they question is the high level of detail! So if the Talosian illusion can be faulted for anything, it's excess accuracy... Timo Saloniemi
I know it won't happen but I would love to see some characters, or nods at least, from the Early Voyages comic. I was a big fan of that series. From what we've seen so far, Nhan is intriguing, though I hope she reports to a Chief Grace. I'm not sure I really want Number One to get a name. I'm not a fan of the current Trek Lit. name Una. I preferred Morgan Primus, but I know they won't use that one. Side note: I was hoping to see some of the TOS "The Cage" crew in Star Trek 2009, and felt that was a missed opportunity.
I'm not. Everybody knows "Number One" is a common nickname for a ship's first officer. Why does it have to be any more complicated than that?
I think referring to her as just Number One in DSC is fine, since she is probably only going to show up a couple times, but if they were to do a spin off? She'd need to have a name.
Actually, it was added to the TOS syndication package and aired on BBC America, and other local stations that still broadcast TOS episodes - so it now has become an 'official' episode even though it never aired on NBC during the Network run from 1966-1969.
Yes, NOW it is official. But when Kirk-Trek began, Roddenberry started something new, and Pike-Trek had no meaning anymore (at this moment). So we should not take it more relevant for continuity, than it was intended to be. Especially when the problem is just the uniforms or the look of the Enterprise-bridge.
Actually, I'd suggest it's actually the opposite. Referring to her as "Number One" while she's Pike's XO is somewhat justifiable (though only if she's depicted as having no friends on the crew) but as "Acting Captain" she should really have a name.