Yes I've never understood the refusal to even consider whether someone who said something in Trek was simply wrong.
I'm not sure Discovery can create time travel to alter the Cage.
Sounds like he's but even considering it twenty years on.
Just how old is Capt Pike? (based on 1 line in Saints of Imperfection)
- Thread starter Yistaan
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Joe Tyler dodged bullet there.
Considering the age difference is now minimal, the Talosians should just have captured Dr. Boyce. Unlike with that uncooperative stooge Pike, Dr. Boyce would have had no problem doing what Vina and the Talosians were asking of him.
According to the original Star Trek pitch, Dr. Boyce was 51 years old. So, obviously, he was younger than Pike and must've looked up to the man.
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...
Another thing that is disrupted with Pike's new age is that his "young prodigy" status as a young captain heading up one of the most prominent ships, (similar to Kirk being listed as the youngest officer to be promoted to captain on the official site) is removed as Pike would now be 48 upon taking command of the Enterprise in 2250 (as opposed to his previously assumed age of around 31/32).
In fact, there's a trend to "humanize" or dumb down Pike in Discovery now (give him an F in astrophysics, imply he did a lot of drinking, and couldn't memorize regulations as fast as cadet Georgiou).
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They're different people. There's no reason they should look the same at the same age.
John Hoyt seems to be one the guys who was always old.
Which was never canonical anyway. Not everyone in Trek has to be the best of the best at everything. He's a good leader and a good decision maker; can't that be valued for its own sake?
Jeffrey Hunter was in his late 30s or early 40s when portrayed Pike in the early 2250s. Anson Mount was 45 years old when he shot Season Two and will be 46 years old in a few days. And the series is now set in 2257. I think the real problem is the Memory Alpha Wiki page.
This could've worked if someone of lesser stature made that type of mistake. Georgiou seems pretty high up in Section 31 and researched enough to have something over Leland. So I don't think she'd be that careless when it comes to looking up Pike's file. Leland would be an asset too, when it comes to giving her information about him.
Except not everyone at Trek is the best at everything. Picard got the Enterprise at nearly 60. Archer around 40. Sisko was a burnt out officer given DS9 to shake up his spirits. We're not told Janeway's birth year but we don't get the impression she's a young prodigy either.
We are told Kirk's age of 34 and the official site says he's the youngest to be promoted to captain at the time. Mendez's line, regardless of being technically incorrect, shows the intent of writers to align Pike agewise, during his Enterprise tenure, with young prodigy Kirk.
Despite your claim, Trek is not actually overrun with young geniuses (that's Star Wars and their 9 year old podracers and 14 year old queens). We even have criminals like Tom Paris and older criminals like Chakotay around.
Someone (not me!) has now updated Pike's Memory Alpha birthdate to 2202 to match the line in the latest Discovery episode. Alex Marcus recruiting Pike was also added in from the Kelvin timeline to adjust for the shift of Pike's Starfleet entry to before 2233.
After recent events, I no longer fully trust Memory Alpha as a reliable source. Especially when it comes to Discovery.
This is all a plot by Discovery writers to stop us from prying into the real question--what's Number One's name? Now, we will all be distracted by arguing what's Captain Pike's age? How sneaky. 
Is there someone on Twitter we can politely ask why the writers decided to amp up Pike's age to match Georgiou's?
Is there someone on Twitter we can politely ask why the writers decided to amp up Pike's age to match Georgiou's?
Didn't claim that.
Who has the higher tolerance for alcohol?
That my first instinct was to shout "Challenge accepted!" might be a hint.
TOS already altered "The Cage," when "The Menagerie" repurposed footage from the end of "The Cage" showing Vina going back underground with an illusion of Pike to represent Pike's actual return to the planet 13 years later. It also altered the pitch the Keeper's voice. This is fiction, after all, a creative work, and alteration is part of how creativity happens. The way something was originally intended is not an immutable absolute, because it's all just stories, and it's the nature of stories to get changed in the retelling.
Huh? He got the Enterprise because he was the best -- because he was already a legendary captain from his 22-year tour in command of the Stargazer. Roddenberry basically recycled TNG's cast from the abortive Phase II revival -- Decker and Ilia became Riker and Troi, Xon became Data, and the older, seasoned veteran Kirk became Picard. The idea was that Picard was the legendary older captain serving as the mentor to the up-and-coming Riker, who was intended to be the action lead in the Kirk mold.
Which has nothing to do with whether he was the best, because "fastest" rarely means "best" in anything outside of racing. Experience is what makes a good captain, usually.
Or rather, because DS9 was expected to be a post of relatively low importance, until the wormhole was discovered.
That seems self-evident to me -- because they wanted to establish a history between Pike and Georgiou so that he'd get suspicious about her changes in behavior. 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.
Then I don't understand your post saying:
Keeping Pike's status of being a young captain doesn't even remotely equate to making "everyone in Trek the best of the best at everything." So why was the post saying that there?
I was saying that characters, particularly those who have been in the novelverse for a long time after very brief appearance in canon, tend to end up with this sort of thing attached to them - best ever, youngest ever, first to do this, first <species> in Starfleet, child protegy, tactical genius, etc. My point was that the characters who are actually on screen in Trek are, as you pointed out, rarely so overblown. And we don't tend to like it when they are (eg KelvinKirk in st09). So Pike getting a starship command at a reasonable age to be a Captain is what I'd expect.
Ah, but this raises the question of where the real Mendez ended and the illusory Mendez began.
Kor
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.
Literally in the same scene when Kirk minimizes the time Spock served with Pike saying "Spock served with him for several years," Spock himself immediately clarifies: "Eleven years, four months, five days."
