It’s only hope and rumors at this point, but there’s no reason to give up on the dream of a Star Trek spin-off series with Captain Pike and Spock. We’ve got ideas for what such a show should touch on and what it should avoid.
Star Trek is entering a new golden era with Discovery well underway and multiple series either in the works or about to hit the digital airwaves on CBS All Access. There are potentially more series in the pipeline yet to be announced, and the one that most catches the imagination would be a series that involves Spock and Captain Christopher Pike on the Enterprise.
These characters were re-introduced in Discovery’s second season, portrayed by Ethan Peck and Anson Mount respectively. They may have been planned as single-season characters, but this duo has proven to be far too dynamic and popular among Star Trek fans to allow to disappear into the mist so easily now that their use on Discovery has come to an end.
While CBS hasn’t promised any such series, there’s no reason to give up on the hope until it’s ruled out by the powers that be.
That being said, we’ve got plenty of ideas for what such a series should and shouldn’t do. We have the top five things they should make sure to do, and two things they should stay away from.
First contact
A series with Spock and Pike would have the unique opportunity to have the first word on a variety of races in the Star Trek universe. Discovery did it first with a mix of new (Kelpians, for example) and old races (Klingons, Tellarites and Vulcans, etc), but this series would have the ability to put its own spin on things.
Discovery re-imagined the Klingons, and it wasn’t the first series to do so as TOS Klingons changed by the movies, and changed again through the years.
A Spock and Pike series could lay the groundwork for the first formal relations with the Cardassians, for example. They are a complicated race with whom relations devolved into war, but nothing is known yet about how the Federation and Cardassians first encountered each other.
Perhaps an incident incited the animosity, or maybe their cultural differences were simply too much to overcome. Either way, this series would have the opportunity to tell the story in its own way, and its a race that would require no re-imagining.
Character development
Doctor Boyce, anyone? The doctor in Captain Pike’s first appearance, The Cage, Doctor Boyce has existed in virtual exile from the fandom’s memory for decades.
Boyce gave Pike advice when he was down, poured him a drink on a house visit to his quarters. There was a deep offscreen relationship between these two, and the character could be an essential addition to the group.
Whether it be Boyce, Cadet Thira Sidhu (introduced in the Short Trek “Ask Not”) or other characters, this series would have the chance to do something Discovery has not done especially well through two seasons: Develop its secondary characters.
More Number One
We got a taste of the legendary Number One in Star Trek Discovery’s second season, but it wasn’t enough. We learned a bit more about her in the Short Trek Q&A, but it still isn’t enough.
Number One was Gene Roddenberry’s way of introducing powerful women to the American television viewing public, and she’s sure to be a fixture in any series set on the Enterprise with Pike and Spock.
Of all the exciting possibilities available to us if this series is to get off the ground, stories about Number One tickle the imagination the most.
Away missions
In a pre-Kirk era, captains are still leading away teams with their senior staff. Even though it’s completely insane for a ship’s captain, first officer, doctor and potentially the bulk of its command crew to go on away missions, this series would function in a time where Starfleet hasn’t learned that lesson yet.
That opens the door for plenty of Pike, Spock and Number One missions planetside. And considering the vast regions that Star Trek’s productions have at their disposal for filming (Toronto and its surrounding region for Discovery, California for Picard), this series would have the chance to deliver the franchise’s best exterior shots to date.
More interiors
We need to see more shots of the interior of the Enterprise. Perhaps the biggest indicator CBS has plans to make this series happen, there’s no way they would create the massive sets for the Enterprise’s bridge and engineering without plans to use them extensively in the future.
Make more sets and show them! We want to see the inside of this ship.
Time travel
It’s always messy and almost always provides a deus ex machina to solve its problems. Star Trek has delved deep into time travel many times with varying levels of success, including sending Discovery almost a millennia into the future.
It’s not always a bad thing, but it’s often risky and often ends up sacrificing any character or situational development by the time all is said and done. Star Trek at its best develops its characters, and it can do so most optimally by being comfortable in its skin and occupying its space.
Let’s stay in the 23rd century as much as possible, shall we?
No technological leaps
Discovery reinvented how technology works in the 23rd century. Holographic displays for communications replaced the regular old view screen, and that wasn’t even commonly used in Star Trek until the later seasons of Deep Space Nine.
Discovery was a show that didn’t have to operate on a shoestring budget and create special effects with tinsel and mirrors, but it did go out of its way to create technology whose disappearance would be difficult to explain.
This Pike and Spock series doesn’t need to rely upon these tech tricks and should avoid them if at all possible.