In what episode did Christopher Pike appear as Captain of the Enterprise?

Answer 1

Pike appeared in the pilot of "Star Trek", which is not really considered part of the series, because so much was changed after the pilot. Basically, the studio didn't like it and the viewers didn't like it, so Rodenberry went back to the drawing board. He got an almost entirely new cast for the second "pilot." Leonard Nimoy was in the old pilot, and he did play Spock, but was the second officer rather than the first officer. Majel Barrett was also in the pilot, not as Christine Chapel, but as the first officer. And of course, Pike (Jeffrey Hunter) was the Captain, and Kirk was nowhere to be seen.

In this episode, the crew visits a planet where the mega-brained natives can control the thoughts of us puny, weak-minded humans--and project illusions into our minds. The crew are not initially aware of the real natives, but, in what would become a common theme in the series, meet a good-looking, humanoid woman, who falls in love with the Captain. (The big-brained guys keep the Captain prisoner, and he makes a determined effort to escape--they find out that we humans would rather die than endure even pleasant, kind captivity, so we're too violent to be the slave race they wanted.) It turns out that the woman is not good-looking at all, but is hideously deformed from her ship's crash landing on the planet. The big-brain guys have the power to "repair" the essential functions of her body, but somehow cannot restore her to her former beautiful self. Her good looks are, in fact, just a mental image that the big-brain guys have placed in her mind, as well as the minds of the Enterprise crew. (Addendum: The natives of the planet ended up destroying themselves with their power of illusion.) When the crew leaves, they offer to take the chick with them, but she doesn't want to leave because, even though she has ZERO human interaction here, she's PRETTY here. Yeah, right. What good does pretty do you if there's not a human male around for 10,000 light years?

Later on, when the series was in full swing, they took that pilot and inserted it, scene by scene, into another episode ("The Menagerie"). This is, to my knowledge, the only two-part episode of the original Star Trek series. In this episode, which is set some years later than the events in the pilot, Pike is handicapped so badly from "delta-particle" radiation poisoning that he can only survive in a special wheel chair. This chair not only keeps him alive, but is his only means of mobility OR communication. (This is one of the many times when science REALITY far surpasses science fiction. The chair, in the 23rd century, is capable of communicating only yes or no answers, but we ALREADY, just a few decades after the show, can provide people in this state with a MUCH wider range of communicative ability. But I digress.)

At the beginning of the episode, Pike and a collection of Starfleet Admirals are on board the Enterprise. Spock, either in conspiracy with Pike or on his own initiative, takes control of the Enterprise and locks the rest of the crew out. He sets the ship on a course for the planet that Pike et al visited in the pilot. Remember, Spock was on that crew, as second officer. Apparently, he had a lot of, dare-I-say, feelings for Pike, and wanted to take him back to this planet, where, at least in his mind, he would be young, and healthy, and no longer crippled. Due to the events that happened in the pilot, the Federation has quarantined this planet, forbidding anyone to visit it. So, Spock is kind of in double trouble here. The episode is split between the present and the past. In the present tense, the plot is the court martial that is convened by the admirals charging Spock with mutiny. The past tense is just video computer logs from the original mission that was portrayed in the pilot. These video logs are presented as evidence in Spock's court martial.

I know it's easy to find the old scifi stuff stupid and/or corny, but this episode (two-part episode based on the original pilot) was particularly bad. Anyway, they get Pike back to the planet, he re-unites with the woman, and they are both young and beautiful again, if only in their own minds. Spock is acquitted and turns control of the Enterprise back over to Kirk.