Complex Numbers

Coming Up the Pike

My penultimate effort for February's "Journalistic Intentions"  [18+]...

Pike

In the original Star Trek series, James Kirk was the captain of the Enterprise. Everyone knows that. If the Sentinelese ever decide to stop killing everyone who sets foot on their island, and decide to join the rest of the world in peaceful harmony, we'd be all like, "Cool. Cool. One question: who's the captain of the original Enterprise?" And they'd be like, "Jim Kirk."

But that's not how it was supposed to go. The original pilot episode featured a Spock who wasn't emotionless, a Majel Barrett character who was, and a captain named Pike. (Roddenberry probably thought one-syllable names containing hard consonants were more "manly," which is amusing coming from a guy named Roddenberry.)

Most people with even a casual interest in Trek know this, too, because they reused the pilot for scenes in a two-part episode, thus cementing it as canon in the future history they created. It's even canon, in a different way, in the alternate universe that was J.J. Abrams' fault.

The first guy who portrayed Christopher Pike was Jeffrey Hunter, which, to be fair, would also make a great name for a square-jawed starship captain. Later, a prequel series would feature a captain named Jonathan Archer, which is close enough.

Sad story about Hunter, though. He turned down further work in Trek, wanting to concentrate on his film work or whatever. Reasonable decision for an actor, I suppose. But in 1968, while working on a movie, Hunter got injured in an on-set explosion. A few months later, before the original series aired its last episode, he died of a maybe-related cause.

If he'd stayed with Trek, that probably wouldn't have happened. But then, we wouldn't have William Shatner to make fun of, or the Spock who has become a cultural icon, or, and I cannot emphasize this enough, the utter awesomeness that is the Trek series Strange New Worlds, a prequel to the original series with Anson Mount as Captain Pike.

It's because of Anson Mount that when some nerd asks me "Kirk or Picard," I can no longer answer "Trick question. It's Sisko." Nope. Chris Pike all the way.