TOS Enterprise Captain's on tv

[James Wright]

I'd like to get your opinion on something, if you don't mind that is!
We've seen Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike of TOS Enterprise and William Shatner as Kirk, Captain of same said ship after Pike but if the series had made a complete run do you think we might've gotten to see Robert April (supposedly) the first Captain of the Constitution class Enterprise, who could have depicted April?


James

 

[Gorn Captain]

Well, my first thought was Paul Newman, but he was already too famous by the time of TOS to realistically appear as April. So it should either be a 60's TV person or a 70's star who wasn't a star yet.

Wait, is April supposed to be English? How about a pre-007 Roger Moore?

 

[M'Sharak]

I'd like to get your opinion on something, if you don't mind that is!
We've seen Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike of TOS Enterprise and William Shatner as Kirk, Captain of same said ship after Pike but if the series had made a complete run do you think we might've gotten to see Robert April (supposedly) the first Captain of the Constitution class Enterprise, who could have depicted April?

It might have been a good role for John Dehner, a solid character actor quite active at that time, but who never appeared on Star Trek. Always thought that was a shame.

 

[HIj'Qa]

I've always envisioned Gene Roddenberry in the role.
Probably Robert Young, of Marcus Welby MD, would be my professional actor of choice

 

[M.Robison]

I'd like to get your opinion on something, if you don't mind that is!
We've seen Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike of TOS Enterprise and William Shatner as Kirk, Captain of same said ship after Pike but if the series had made a complete run do you think we might've gotten to see Robert April (supposedly) the first Captain of the Constitution class Enterprise, who could have depicted April?

It might have been a good role for John Dehner, a solid character actor quite active at that time, but who never appeared on Star Trek. Always thought that was a shame.

Oh good choice! John Dehner...playing Pat Garrett opposite Newman in "The Left Handed Gun" was my favorite!

 

[M.Robison]

Perhaps I am reaching here, but I always liked Gregory Peck...

 

[Christopher]

We've seen Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike of TOS Enterprise and William Shatner as Kirk, Captain of same said ship after Pike but if the series had made a complete run do you think we might've gotten to see Robert April...?

No, we wouldn't, because originally, "Robert April" was just one of several abandoned names for the character that was eventually named Christopher Pike -- just as Jean-Luc Picard was initially Julien Picard and Kathryn Janeway was initially Elizabeth Janeway. The idea that Robert April was the name of a separate person who preceded Pike as captain of the Enterprise, as opposed to simply a rejected name for the same character, was invented by Fred Bronson (under the pseudonym John Culver) in the 1974 animated episode "The Counter-Clock Incident."

I suppose it's possible that if TOS had continued for two more years, and if Bronson had gotten to pitch for the show, he might've come up with the same idea. But there's no guarantee it would've happened. And Bronson was only 25 when he wrote for TAS; at the time TOS was around, he might not have been in a position to sell a story to the show.

 

[AtoZ]

I'd like to get your opinion on something, if you don't mind that is!
We've seen Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike of TOS Enterprise and William Shatner as Kirk, Captain of same said ship after Pike but if the series had made a complete run do you think we might've gotten to see Robert April (supposedly) the first Captain of the Constitution class Enterprise, who could have depicted April?

It might have been a good role for John Dehner, a solid character actor quite active at that time, but who never appeared on Star Trek. Always thought that was a shame.

Dehner was a vastly underrated charActer actor who gave a GREAT performance in the all-but-forgotten gem The Night Stalker as a self-educated, self-reflecting police captain bent on long circuitous monologues.

Dehner is missed and would have done Star Trek proud, IMO.

 

[James Wright]

I dunno, hey maybe they could've gotten an actor who had played Doctor Who!?

James

 

[Christopher]

^That's as anachronistic as assuming they would've had the concept of April as a distinct character to begin with. Few people in the US had even heard of Doctor Who until the mid-'70s, and most people outside of New York didn't get the show until the early '80s.

 

[James Wright]

I know that the Star Trek novels TAS and comics aren't considered canon when it comes to the series but April has made appearances in 2 or 3 novels, 1 episode of TAS and several TOS comics so there are referances to him as Captain of the Enterprise, it's up to all of us as fans to make up our own minds on the matter, don't you believe?

James

 

[Christopher]

Of course fans can believe whatever they want. But that's not the topic of the thread. The question you asked was, if TOS hadn't been cancelled, would Robert April have appeared on the show? You didn't ask about what fans in 2009 can believe; you asked about what might theoretically have happened if Star Trek had lasted into 1970 or 1971 (assuming that by "a complete run" you mean the five years stated in the main title narration). And since the concept of Robert April as the first captain of the Enterprise didn't even exist until 1974, the answer to the question "Would April have appeared on a 1970 or 1971 episode of TOS?" is almost certainly "No." At that time, "Robert April" was merely one of several abandoned names for Christopher Pike.

 

[James Wright]

If GR hadn't totally abandoned(if the character was totaly abandoned?) but fleshed out the character of Robert April, giving more backstory to the character if TOS had continued until 1973, who do you think would've played him?

Is that better?

James

 

[Christopher]

If GR hadn't totally abandoned(if the character was totaly abandoned?) but fleshed out the character of Robert April, giving more backstory to the character if TOS had continued until 1973, who do you think would've played him?

He didn't abandon the character. He just changed his name. The character who was named Robert April in the June 29, 1964 story outline for "The Cage" was the exact same character who was named Christopher Pike in the actual filmed pilot. The story was basically the same, but some of the names were changed from the outline to the production. Jeffrey Hunter was hired to play a character named Captain Robert April, a character who was abducted and caged by telepathic aliens and had a romance with a woman named Vina. But then the character's name was changed to Captain Winter and then finally to Captain Christopher Pike just before shooting began. It's quite common for TV characters to have their names changed during pre-production as the producers search for the best name and sometimes have trouble getting legal clearance for their first picks. But those various discarded names don't represent separate characters. As far as Gene Roddenberry was concerned, "Robert April" was the same character as Christopher Pike, just with a different name. It was Fred Bronson, a decade later, who took that discarded character name and had the idea of making it a separate character.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I think the key to the question is determining whose idea it was to have April as the first captain of the Enterprise, Bronson's or Roddenberry's, or someone else entirely (Dorothy Fontana, maybe?). If it was Roddenberry's answer to the question of "who was the Enterprise's first captain?" then it's entirely possible we might've seen a fourth or fifth season story about the ship's early days under Captain April (the precedent had been set with "The Menagerie", since prior to that point, Pike was no different than April, Winter, or Kirk, a different name for the same embryonic character, in this case played by another actor in an unaired pilot).

I'd like to think we'd have gotten something a bit less groan-inducing than "The Counter-Clock Incident", but depending on whose idea it was to drag the April name out of retirement, yeah, it's possible.

 

[RichMerk]

In the TAS episode, April looked a little like an old Kirk, so I'm sitting here trying to think of a Shatner-esque actor...

Lee Majors

 

[Christopher]

I think the key to the question is determining whose idea it was to have April as the first captain of the Enterprise, Bronson's or Roddenberry's, or someone else entirely (Dorothy Fontana, maybe?).

Roddenberry didn't have much to do with TAS, which is why he later started calling it non-canonical. It was Fontana's show.

Since character names get changed all the time in show development, I doubt that anyone directly involved in the production of TOS would've thought of "Robert April" as a possible first captain of the Enterprise. That strikes me as more of a fanwank. The name Robert April became known to the public courtesy of The Making of Star Trek, which included the story outline for "The Cage" in which the captain who later became Pike was referred to as April. To someone directly involved with the production, the name would just be one of countless discarded ideas, not standing out from all the rest. To a fan, though, one who'd read TMoST cover to cover several times, the name "Robert April" would get drilled into the memory.

Also, according to Memory Alpha, Bronson asked to pitch for TAS. It wasn't a case where the producers came to him and asked him "Hey, would you like to do an episode introducing the first captain?" He went to them and pitched episode ideas. So it's very likely that the idea to create a character named Robert April who was the captain before Pike originated with Bronson.

 

[Captain Robert April]

We need to get Dorothy Fontana on this. She'd be the one in a position to who asked what and who had which idea when.

 

[number6]

Well, get on it, man... Don't you have her on your speed dial or something??

 

[Christopher]

We need to get Dorothy Fontana on this. She'd be the one in a position to who asked what and who had which idea when.

If she remembers. It's paradoxically easier for us fans to keep track of details like that, since we have the luxury to review them over and over again, while the writers and producers who actually made those decisions had to make them and move on to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing...