Forget Kirk, Star Trek Just Officially Made Christopher Pike the Enterprise’s Most Important Captain

Throughout Star Trek history, there’s been one massive debate: which Enterprise captain is the best? For some, the answer is the OG; James T. Kirk, the natural frontiersman. Others prefer Jean-Luc Picard, the consummate professional, who ran a very different kind of ship. Every captain has their own unique style, and you sometimes get the feeling the captains wouldn’t necessarily get on all that well.

But there’s another, related question: Which Enterprise captain was the most important to the Federation, and even to humanity? Kirk saved the planet Earth countless times (once by saving the whales too), but he also made so many missteps. Picard will never outlive the time he spent as Locutus, when he was assimilated into the Borg Collective and his knowledge was used against the Federation. That said, he too has also saved Earth and so many other worlds. But it seems they all pale in comparison to Christopher Pike.

Strange New Worlds’ Time Travel Paradox Means Pike is Responsible for All Human History

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 4 has just kicked off with an epic time travel story that took the Enterprise back 65 million years. There, Pike discovered the solar system was home to not one but two sentient species: a Martian race and a species of arachnids known as the Dol’drm, who lived on an ill-fated fifth planet. The Enterprise crew naturally feared accidentally rewriting history – they even worried about what would happen if they killed the wrong dinosaur – but eventually realized they were part of the Star Trek timeline all along.

The Martian Battle Commander Cassell stole antimatter from the Enterprise, using it as a weapon to destroy the Dol’drm planet. It turned out that was what always had to happen; their world became the asteroid belt, while a chunk of debris became the Chicxulub asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Gravitational changes in the solar system led to Mars’ orbit shifting, turning the planet into the one we know. All of human history hinged on the Enterprise traveling back 65 million years. But here’s the catch: Captain Pike had a single moment where he could have changed it all.

The Enterprise moved into range to shoot down Battle Commander Cassell’s antimatter weapon. It was the logical thing to do; Pike could save an entire planet, and Star Trek‘s established time travel rules meant he should prevent the Enterprise’s own tech being used in this way. We’re all familiar with the butterfly effect, the idea the smallest change can have massive ripple effects on the future; a planet-ending antimatter shot is definitely a big potential change. But Pike had a hunch, and he chose not to neutralize the antimatter attack. He gambled everything, and in so doing cemented a paradox in place that ensured humanity evolved.

Only Captain Pike Could Make this Call in Star Trek

Only one Enterprise captain could possibly have made that choice. As the episode itself reminded us, Pike has spent years contemplating questions of time travel, fate, and destiny. This is the man who already learned his own future, and who’s wrestled with the idea his own fate is fixed. He’s already seeing the patterns in the present, recognizing how his future is taking shape around him. Pike has consigned himself to this, understanding that his personal tragedy is part of a future worth fighting for.

This gave Pike a unique perspective, 65 million years ago. He was the only captain who would have been able to spot the differences between this distant time and the future he knew, and to instinctively begin joining the dots between them. If Picard’s nemesis is the Borg, and Kirk’s is Khan Noonien Singh, then there’s a sense in which time itself is Christopher Pike’s foe; he knows how it works, more intimately than anybody else, and thus he’s developed the instincts for it. His own crew reacted in shock when he told them not to intercept the antimatter shot, but he was right.

When it comes to Enterprise captains, then, Christopher Pike is undoubtedly the most important of them all. Without him, history itself would never have happened; humanity would never have evolved, while the Federation would never have been formed. According to Spock, survivors of the Martian race scattered across the galaxy and influenced so many other species; they have the signature Vulcan pointed ears, which seems significant. Had any other captain been there, the entire galaxy would have been different.

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