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Here is an article that appeared in today's paper about a new Trek Series
that will be premiering on CBS All Access in 2021.   This replaces Star Trek
Discovery and continues the story on Captian Pike and the Enterprise crew
which proceeded James T. Kirk.


Kirk 2.0: Capt. Pike of Star Trek a welcome new icon
By Ted Anthony
Associated Press

In the beginning, in the Star Trek universe, there was only Captain Kirk. At
least to the general public.

When the Starship Enterprise first whooshed across American television
screens on Sept. 8, 1966, William Shatner as James T. Kirk was the smart leader
sitting in the captain’s chair. He was stouthearted, eloquent,  curious, fair.
Kennedy like, even.  He was a principled explorer committed to spreading New
Frontier values to the 23rd century stars.

And yet: Kirk could also be something of an interstellar Don Draper a brooding,
arrogant, a top-down manager who earned his privilege but also often presumed
it. Despite being progressive for his era, he could be condescending to anyone
but his top right hand men — and sometimes creepily appreciative of the women
he encountered.

But Kirk had actually been preceded as captain of the Enterprise by Christopher
Pike — a stoic, vague figure played by Jeffrey Hunter in a rejected 1964 Trek
pilot who made only a fleeting appearance in the original series, mainly so the
pilot footage could be recycled.  The character reappeared in two recent movie
reboots, portrayed ably by Bruce Greenwood, but was never a foundational
fixture of Star Trek lore.

Until now.

Trek aficionados were thrilled this month to learn that Pike (now played by
Anson Mount ), his first officer Number One (Rebecca Romijn) and the still
-evolving, pre-Kirk version of Spock (Ethan Peck) would be  following up their
season-long stints on “Star Trek: Discovery” with a brand-new show.  Called
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, it is set in the decade before Kirk takes
command.

And as played today by Mount, Captain Pike — now framed through a creative
lens that has captured 54 years of captaining by Kirks, Picards, Siskos,
Janeways and Archers may be the finest, most intuitive leader that the Star
Trek universe has ever produced.

Both within the show’s world and our own, Captain Pike is a breath of fresh
air,Jessie Earl, whose Trek-focused “Jessie Gender” YouTube videos explore
social and political issues, said in an episode about Pike last year.

Pikk's lack of ego makes him a perfect model of leadership worth aspiring to,
Earl said. Pike represents what `Star Trek has always been about: showing us
what we could be if we strove to actively pursue and cultivate the best parts
of ourselves.


It's not accidental that Pike  is the son of a father who taught science AND
comparative religion an embodiment of the empiricism-faith equation that Star
Trek and its captains have always espoused. In many ways, in fact — even more
so than Chris Pine in the movie reboots Pike functions as James T. Kirk 2.0.

Both are utterly principled and committed to their missions.  But where Kirk
could be arrogant, Pike is steadfast. Where Kirk was expansive and welcomed
attention, Pike is wary of it — but seamlessly claims center stage when
needed. Most of all, where Kirk was deeply committed to his responsibility
to ship and crew —  crippled by it, even — Mount ’s Pike adds the view of
himself as a humble servant-leader who derives his sense of command not only
from the success of his mission but directly from the successes of his crew.

This is very much in line with how the captains who came after Kirk evolved
the notion of command in Star Trek through changing times.

Jean-Luc Picard in the 1987-94 Next Generation” series and movies, and in this
years Star Trek: Picard reframed the captaincy as both more cerebral and less
dogmatic. Benjamin Sisko from Deep Space Nine was effectively sharing authority
with an alien race in whose backyard his space station sat.

The strong and intuitive Kathryn Janeway from Voyager was the first woman to
lead both a starship and the series it populated. And Jonathan Archer, the
captain of an earlier version of the Enterprise, was both authoritative and as
the most far-flung Starfleet explorer of his era — deeply self-doubting at
times.

Even on Discovery, putting aside the troubled Capt. Gabriel Lorca of the shows
first season, the real leader of the show is Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-
Green) an amalgam of conflicts and setbacks and self-recriminations who
emerges as the ship’s biggest influencer because of her difficult road, not in
spite of it.

And lets not forget Kirk himself the aging iteration from the 1980s movies that
Shatner shepherded into someone who was more introspective, sometimes
regretful and more willing to listen.

All of these are ingredients that, in 55 years, led the character of Pike from
its 1964 iteration (I can't get used to having a woman on the bridge) to the
current version (Starfleet is a promise. I give my life for you. You give your
life for me. And nobody gets left behind).

Of the many “Star Trek” sequels and movies that have emerged over the decades,
this will be the first live-action one to take place aboard the starship that
started it all — that original Enterprise.

And while television storytelling has come many light years since the original
series era, to hear the producers and actors tell it, “Strange New Worlds will
strive for the sensibility of the original — a spirit of exploration
and optimism, and even nonserialized, single episode arcs.

We are going to get to work on a classic Star Trek show that deals with
optimism and the future, Mount said from quarantine this month in a YouTube
video revealing the show.

They'll also be exploring the rich history of the original Enterprise itself, a
ship so storied that a mail-in campaign by fans in the mid-1970s led NASA to
rename the first space shuttle after it.  Lovingly reconceived to appear in
the second season of Discovery, it is sleek and moody and rich with the colors
and layout that made it so compelling in the 1960s updated for today's HD
audiences but holding onto the soul of its low-budget predecessr.

And smack in the middle, in a chair familiar to generations of fans, will sit
Christopher Pike, charged with embodying everything in a half century of Trek
that made captains effective and memorable.

James T. Kirk was a master class in leadership for the 1960s, just as Jean-Luc
Picard was a thoughtful, more introspective model for the carpeted, richly
paneled bridge of the late-1980s Enterprise-D.

But yanking a thinly developed character from the beginning of “Star Trek lore
and offering him up as a model of leadership for the 2020s — well, that's not
an easy task. “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, expected in 2021, will be doing
that every week.

In first developing the character that would evolve into Captain Pike, Trek
creator Gene Roddenberry described him this way: "He is a complex personality
with a sensitivity and warmth which the responsibilities of command often
forces him to hide".

That was 1964. Today, for this latest captain of the Enterprise, sensitivity
and warmth are no longer hidden.  They are right there front and center, along
with all the complexity. And Star Trek - which even in its darkest hours is
about building a brighter future is better off for it.


 -=>  Al Kaiser  n1api@cox.net  <=-

Toodeloo!

Al Kaiser - Meriden, CT, 26-May-2020 at 8:07.
Fido : 1:142/926 - Internet : n1api@cox.net

.!. Don't make me laugh!  Fortunally for you I was raised on Vulcan,
.!. we don't do funny.
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