Captain Pike's fate
May. 27th, 2023 07:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unbibiumi posted this as a reply to a post which asked if anyone else was weary of how Pike's looming delta-rays accident keeps coming up in Strange New Worlds.
Captain Pike has almost no presence in the TOS canon, so when they brought him back for Discovery, they had to use all of it, so why not shoehorn in both a trip back to Talos IV, and a flash-forward where we see the big accident? There was no reason for that to be part of the episode except to give the fans one of those forward-callbacks that made the Star Wars prequels such masterpieces.
It was the culmination of accidents. TOS had an idea to do an episode on the cheap by reusing old footage. Jeffrey Hunter wasn't available so they came up with the accident. Discovery S2, with all its Spock-teasing, was all about fanservice already and had a time travel plot, so they came up with the contrivance that in order to get the time crystals, Pike has to see the accident happen. It was near the end of the season, so all he had to do was stoically accept his fate and appear for two more episodes, and then the Discovery gets flung into the year 3000 and we'll never see Pike again, right? But he was so popular that they couldn't not do Strange New Worlds, but now they have to depict the long-term consequences of this prophecy, to the point that the season finale was kicked off by a last-ditch attempt of Pike to save a kid he just met from dying in that accident.
He deserves better. and if what happened to Number One is part of the Federation, the Federation doesn't deserve him.
Captain Pike has almost no presence in the TOS canon, so when they brought him back for Discovery, they had to use all of it, so why not shoehorn in both a trip back to Talos IV, and a flash-forward where we see the big accident? There was no reason for that to be part of the episode except to give the fans one of those forward-callbacks that made the Star Wars prequels such masterpieces.
It was the culmination of accidents. TOS had an idea to do an episode on the cheap by reusing old footage. Jeffrey Hunter wasn't available so they came up with the accident. Discovery S2, with all its Spock-teasing, was all about fanservice already and had a time travel plot, so they came up with the contrivance that in order to get the time crystals, Pike has to see the accident happen. It was near the end of the season, so all he had to do was stoically accept his fate and appear for two more episodes, and then the Discovery gets flung into the year 3000 and we'll never see Pike again, right? But he was so popular that they couldn't not do Strange New Worlds, but now they have to depict the long-term consequences of this prophecy, to the point that the season finale was kicked off by a last-ditch attempt of Pike to save a kid he just met from dying in that accident.
He deserves better. and if what happened to Number One is part of the Federation, the Federation doesn't deserve him.
