Has There Ever Been A Character Like Captain Christopher Pike?

[DrNewGod]

Hot take -- all respect to Jeffrey Hunter, but his Pike was such a stiff, uncharismatic bore. Shatner, for all his faults, is dynamic, theatrical, and memorable. Both Bruce Greenwood and Anson Mount are the superior Pike, even if we're counting just their first appearances (ST09 and Season 2, Episode 1, respectively).

Hunter's Pike was as if George Lucas wrote and directed him as a Prequel character.

Now, could Hunter gradually improve his Pike the way Stewart chilled Picard over time? Maybe, but he (and his wife) weren't all that keen about being in the show, nor should they be forced to. So I don't think Hunter was all that invested in the role, either.

That's a really good point. We only got one look at Jeffrey Hunter's Captain Pike. In Hunter's defense, the script of "The Cage" called for him to play a guy who was almost completely burned out by the weight and consequences of his responsibilities, and who gets a second wind after his experience on Talos. I watched the episode last night and noticed that, from the time he returns at the end of the show, Captain Pike was already displaying a bit of a lighter mood. What we'll never know, what would Jeffrey Hunter have done with the role?

Just as interesting to me, is what would have happened to Leonard Nimoy's interpretation of Spock? He was quoted in a documentary saying that Jeffrey Hunter was such an internalized actor that Nimoy felt that he had to be more expressive in the first pilot. When William Shatner came on board, he was so boisterously expressive that Nimoy thought the better portrayal of Spock was for him to contrast Shatner (that's in addition to Roddenberry's decision to consolidate some of Number One's characteristics into Spock).

[ChrisIII]

It's kind of interesting that in addition to the smiling Nimoy's very SHOUTY in the first three episodes he filmed (Cage, Where No Man Has gone Before, Corbomite Manuever). "THE WOMEN!" etc.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C92RvDduUyM (I don't think the Amok time excerpts don't really count)

[DrNewGod]

It's kind of interesting that in addition to the smiling Nimoy's very SHOUTY in the first three episodes he filmed (Cage, Where No Man Has gone Before, Corbomite Manuever). "THE WOMEN!" etc.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C92RvDduUyM (I don't think the Amok time excerpts don't really count)

It begs the question of when, exactly, did DC Fontana's influence over the character begin?

[numberthirty]

Crom(not even remotely kidding)

[Sutekh]

Someone mentioned Abin Sur, upthread, which got me thinking, there are quite a few people who served that narrative purpose and were kind of, storywise, meant to never be seen again, but turned out to draw enough interest to go past that.

Uncle Ben. Tony Stark's dad, Howard. Jor-El. Thomas Wayne. R.J. Brande. The 'man who came before' and 'the reason I am who I am today' is usually is shown in more of a departed fatherly light, than a previous Captain (then again, Chris Pike seems to have had a lot more to do with the kind of man Kirk turned out to be than his never-mentioned biological dad...), but it's a common trope. And most of them have gone on to spawn stories of their own, so it's not even an uncommon thing for there to be a series about Christopher Pike (or stories about Howard Stark or Thomas Wayne or Jor-El, either hypothetical or AU or set in the past or whatever).

And then there are franchise characters where this never comes up. We have no idea who was 007 *before* Bond, and, until recently, there was no mention in his parents or 'before.'

[Cyke]

Someone mentioned Abin Sur, upthread, which got me thinking, there are quite a few people who served that narrative purpose and were kind of, storywise, meant to never be seen again, but turned out to draw enough interest to go past that.

Uncle Ben. Tony Stark's dad, Howard. Jor-El. Thomas Wayne. R.J. Brande. The 'man who came before' and 'the reason I am who I am today' is usually is shown in more of a departed fatherly light, than a previous Captain (then again, Chris Pike seems to have had a lot more to do with the kind of man Kirk turned out to be than his never-mentioned biological dad...), but it's a common trope. And most of them have gone on to spawn stories of their own, so it's not even an uncommon thing for there to be a series about Christopher Pike (or stories about Howard Stark or Thomas Wayne or Jor-El, either hypothetical or AU or set in the past or whatever).

And then there are franchise characters where this never comes up. We have no idea who was 007 *before* Bond, and, until recently, there was no mention in his parents or 'before.'

Oooh, Howard Stark's a good example. He really doesn't have that much of a presence in the comics, but the MCU really, really loves using him. That he was promoted to the main cast of Agent Carter reflects that thread. Plus, both main iterations of Howard portray him as a cool cat, just like Capt. Pike by Greenwood and Mount.

[ChrisIII]

Yeah, that's a good point. In many of the Bond films, other 00s are killed but in some we eventually see replacements with the same numbers. 002 is mentioned as having died in the World Is Not Enough, yet the other surviving 00 in Living Daylights is also 002 (Not really mentioned in the film). Also, 009 is killed in Octopussy, but M mentions another 009 in The World Is Not Enough caused Renard's injury (sometimes confused with 0012, the man who was killed mentioned at the beginning of the film). 009 is also who the car is intended for in SPECTRE, but that's a separate continuity.

The books do mention the first 007 in a recent "continuation" novel though.

[ChrisIII]

Wouldn't Peggy also sort of be an example too? In the comics she was mainly known as Sharon Carter's aunt (or older sister but that was retconned) and helped work the monitors at the HQ or something like that, but was never really a major character like the MCU made her.

[AJBopp]

Pike was a pretty unique development. A one-off character brought back in a marginally successful show and closely tied to an enormously popular character of that show, except it wasn't really understood at the time how popular the character or the show actually was...

So no, from a grander perspective, there has never been a character like Christopher Pike

[PoorStudent]

So no, from a grander perspective, there has never been a character like Christopher Pike

What about from a paltry perspective? In that scenario has there been a character like Christoper Pike before?

[Malvolio]

How about Gregory Sierra's character of Lt. Lou Rodriguez on the first season of Miami Vice? Four episodes in, he's killed off by a car bomb and replaced by Edward James Olmos as Lt. Martin Castillo.

Or, speaking of Edward James Olmos, maybe we can talk about Colonel Tigh, who was barely even a two-dimensional character on the original Battlestar Galactica, but in the reboot, he's a pivotal character with plenty of depth. Granted, all the characters have more depth in the reboot than they had in the original, but I think Tigh had the biggest difference between the original and the reboot.

[DrNewGod]

How about Gregory Sierra's character of Lt. Lou Rodriguez on the first season of Miami Vice? Four episodes in, he's killed off by a car bomb and replaced by Edward James Olmos as Lt. Martin Castillo.

Or, speaking of Edward James Olmos, maybe we can talk about Colonel Tigh, who was barely even a two-dimensional character on the original Battlestar Galactica, but in the reboot, he's a pivotal character with plenty of depth. Granted, all the characters have more depth in the reboot than they had in the original, but I think Tigh had the biggest difference between the original and the reboot.

Neither of those are really the same thing. In Pike, we're talking about what (in the broadcast schedule) was a guest star character from the show's in-story past, that generates enough interest among the fan base that he keeps getting brought back as a historical figure. First in books, then in a feature film, and most recently in the franchises seventh ongoing show.

Of course, I guess we have to also ask whether it's Pike that's unique, or is it that Star Trek is so uniquely obsessed with its own history?