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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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