Review

Culture

Film & TV

Leading

8 August 2025

6 min read

Great storytelling elevates this Star Trek hero to messiah status

Before Captain Kirk, came a compelling commander

Giles Gough

Giles Gough is a writer and creative who hosts the God in Film podcast.

The other captain.

Last month saw the release of the third season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the prequel series that follows the crew of the USS Enterprise before one James T. Kirk took the captain’s chair. Not only does the show have the heady mix of fun and serious subject matter, it also has something quite rare for Star Trek; a messiah figure.

Ever since its first airing in 1966, Star Trek has presented a utopian view of the future. The show’s creator, Gene Roddenberry created a world where humanity had grown up and had moved past its petty squabbles. In Roddenberry’s twenty-third century, prejudices around race, class or sex were non-existent. There were, however, some groups that could not get a look in. One topic that got very little representation was sexuality, the other was religion.

Representation of differing sexualities would become something that Star Trek would eventually excel at depicting. Religion, however, has not fared quite so well. Star Trek’s staunchly secular universe is clearly a reflection of Gene’s views. What is interesting though, is the way that in a franchise so resistant to even the idea of God, is how concepts related to him seem to seep into the storytelling. The use of a Messiah figure, specifically a character who sacrifices their life to save others is hardly new in Star Trek. At least two captains come to mind. But there is something particularly novel about Captain Christopher Pike.

For those who are in need of a bit of trivia, Pike, not Kirk, was the first captain of the Enterprise to be depicted. In an unaired pilot, Captain Pike is portrayed by matinee idol, Jeffrey Hunter. This captain is seasoned, world weary, and very serious. Perhaps a little too serious as the network at the time didn’t like the show in that form. They did however, take the unconventional step of ordering a second pilot, which was lighter, and more colourful in tone. Reports differ wildly as to whether Hunter quit or was fired, but one way or another, he did not return to reprise the role of Captain Pike when the show went to series. Instead, the character of Pike was replaced with James T. Kirk, played by a young William Shatner.

This then presented the show with a problem. The production company had an entire episode’s worth of footage costing $645,000 (around $6.5m today) that was unusable in its current state. The novel solution to this problem was to write a framing story where Spock mysteriously commandeers the Enterprise and kidnaps now Fleet Captain Pike. When Spock turns himself in for court martial, he presents video footage in his defence. Footage which just so happens to be selected shots from the unaired pilot. There was just one problem with this. Jeffrey Hunter was unavailable for filming, so they had to cast another actor in the role. As the episodes would show Jeffrey Hunter’s Pike on screen, it would make the recasting look obvious. So actor Sean Kenney was slathered in burns makeup, put in a restrictive wheelchair and only able to communicate through a series of beeps, with Roddenberry writing in an explanation of how Captain Pike had been seriously injured in an explosion on a ship saving some cadets, and was now suffering from ‘locked in syndrome’.

When Star Trek: Discovery’s second season came around, they chose to include characters such as Captain Pike (now played by Anson Mount) and Spock (Ethan Peck) to serve as a backdoor pilot for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Rather than steering clear of the convoluted backstory, they leaned into it, having a confident, able-bodied Pike receive a premonition of his own terrible fate. He is told at the time that he can escape if he gives up, but if he goes ahead in completing the mission, it will seal his fate. In that moment, Pike rallies himself by saying:

“You’re a Starfleet Captain, you believe in service, sacrifice, compassion and love. No, I'm not going to abandon the things that make me who I am because the future…it contains an ending I hadn't foreseen for myself”.

Discovery simply had too much plot in it to resolve Pike’s story satisfactorily, so when Strange New Worlds launched, it gave Pike the chance to fully unpack his trauma.

The first episode of Strange New Worlds sees Captain Pike considering retirement from Starfleet. After all you can’t have an accident in space if you never go on a spaceship right? However, he’s drawn back into captaining the Enterprise in order to rescue his first officer, Una, who is trapped on a primitive planet. After saving her, Pike resumes command of the Enterprise. Una is aware of Pike’s vision of the future, and is desperate to dissuade him of walking into a situation that will leave him so disfigured. At which point, Pike tells her he knows the names of all the cadets he saves on that day. “Stay the course, save their lives” he tells her.

In the season one finale of the show, Pike meets a young boy, Maat, who is eager to join Starfleet, and Pike realises he is one of the cadets that he is unable to save. He is about to write a letter to the boy, trying to tell him about his future, when a future version of himself arrives. Throughout the course of the episode, Pike learns that if he avoids his fate and stays in command of the Enterprise, he will inadvertently start a war with the Romulans that will result in Spock’s death. “Every time we change the path, he dies” his future self tells him. This furthers Pike’s resolve to stay the course.

When viewed through this particular lens, Captain Pike’s story in Strange New Worlds is in effect, one long extended Garden of Gethsemane scene. In both cases we see a man, fully aware of the impact his sacrifice will have for the future, but at the same time, still feeling nervous, scared, and wanting to reject the bad hand he’s been dealt. But in both cases, both Jesus and Captain Pike recommit themselves to their mission and their fate. There are no shortage of heroes in sci-fi/fantasy, who sacrifice themselves in the heat of the moment. But a character who has multiple chances for escape, one who has time to consider the torturous weight of his own destiny, and still decides to go through with it? This elevates the character from a simple ‘hero’ to a ‘messiah figure’.

As a result of this, watching Strange New Worlds has now taken on an experience similar to watching The Chosen, the multi-season show centred around Jesus and his disciples. Both shows have an effortlessly charismatic central character who leads those around them with grace and humility, and the more you fall in love with these characters, the more you’re reminded that something absolutely horrendous is going to happen to them. Whilst we know it must happen, it still makes us anxious at the thought of going through it.

Over thirty years since Gene Roddenberry’s death, it’s hard to tell what he would have thought about the evolution of one of the first characters he wrote for Star Trek. On the one hand he might have rejected it out of hand for its parallels with the story of Jesus, a religion he disdained. Or he might just love it for what it is; really, really good storytelling.

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Explainer

Belief

Books

Creed

Poetry

23 May 2025

6 min read

Why a book? The words that change the world and me

Living by a literature that’s imbibed in countless cultures.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

A man sits on a pier intently reading a book on his lap.

Ben White on Unsplash.

I have a belief system, a story that I live by, a lens through which I perceive the world. That doesn’t make me unusual or in any way different to you – we all have those, whether we’re aware of them or not. What may make me different to you is that mine are primarily explained to me through a book – or, more accurately, a library of sixty-six books – which we call the Bible.

The story that I live by, that I breathe in and out, is bound. It sits within a cover, it moves through pages, it unfolds according to a contents page – it has genre, it has authors, it has punctuation.

And I’ve never really found this odd.

I think it’s because I’m what Charles Taylor would call a ‘storied creature’, my default is to make sense of the world on a largely imaginative level. I’m also quite romantic; poetically inclined, one could say. It sometimes feels as though words flow through my veins – if you were to cut me open, I may just bleed a puddle of my favourite Jane Austen monologues straight onto the floor. And so, my personality happens to lend itself spectacularly well to living my life according to a spiritual, sixty-six book wide, library. I’ve never really had to wrestle with the strangeness of such a thing, I’ve never sat down and stared the oddness of it in the eye, I’ve never even really asked myself (or God): why a book?

I feel I should pause here, and offer a quick Rory Stewart-esque explainer, just so that we’re all on the same page.

What I, and Christians through time and place, call the Bible is an anthology of sixty-six books, written by around forty authors, in three languages, over the span of 1,400-ish years. Within it, one can find poetry, narrative, apocalyptic literature, erotic literature, lists and figures, instructions and explanations. It is – year in and year out – the bestselling book in the world, with over 100 million copies sold or gifted each year. The New York Times Bestseller List actually omits it from its rundown, because otherwise it would always be so boringly there – sitting comfortably right at the top. No other book ever comes close. Words from this anthology of literature are graven into the floors and walls of the Houses of Parliament, they’re woven into almost every work of Shakespeare, they’re spray-painted clumsily onto billboards in the city I call home.

And so, I guess, in one way, the answer to my question – why a book? – is all of that. The peculiar far-reaching resonance of the methodology speaks for itself. I think of Robin Williams’ impassioned monologue in Dead Poets Society…

‘No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion.’

… And I get it. I understand why it was literature that was compiled, why language and words were the tool of choice. For better and for worse, biblical words and ideas have changed the world – they have been ‘the making of the western mind’, just ask Tom Holland. And so, pragmatically, one could argue that the Bible being a book (or a book of books) means that it has successfully imbedded itself in countless cultures, while also transcending them. It’s gone further, lasted longer, sunk deeper than any other form of communication could. Such is the power of words.

But to stop my pondering there feels like I’d be stopping short. I’m not sure that a distant, pragmatic, academic answer is one that I feel satisfied with.

So, this morning, I sat down with a cup of tea, a pen, my notebook, and a newfound curiosity - and I asked myself, and God, why a book?

Why poetry?

Why story?

Why wordplay?

Why have I – an educated, arguably disenchanted, most definitely left-brained, twenty-first century adult - been so willing to let these things mould my interior life? Why am I so moved by them? Moved to action, moved to tears, moved to rage. How can I read something that was written a millennia ago, in a part of the world I have never trod on, and somehow feel as if it is a love letter written exclusively to my own soul?

I think that those are the real questions - the questions to which I have both a thousand and zero answers.

And, like any work of literature, it does not give its meaning up easily – it requires me to sit with it, to excavate it, to gnaw on it like a dog with a bone.

Zero answers, because I fundamentally think that it’s a spiritual thing, a God-designed thing, a thing that sits beyond any explanation I could piece together. The God that I believe exists wants me to know about him, wants me to learn and study, wants me to get glimpses of how thinks, how he works, he feels about me – and you. That’s a wild and wonderous thing. That reality leads me be stunned not only at the methodology, but the desire behind it, as St. Augustine wrote,

‘the whole Bible does nothing but tell of God’s love’.

And so, this literature, to me, is a source of truth, leaning into Iain McGilchrist’s inkling that,

‘the fact that religions and mystical and spiritual traditions have always had to use language in a poetic way doesn’t mean that what they’re talking about is not real, it means it is ultimately real.’

The biblical literature uses words to take us to the edge of them.

And, like any work of literature, it does not give its meaning up easily – it requires me to sit with it, to excavate it, to gnaw on it like a dog with a bone.

Sometimes reading it feels like a balm on my heart, other times it feels like a wrestle in the dirt. But I guess that’s the beauty of it being a book, right? My worldview sits within a piece of literature that is adorned with my scribbles, tear stains, tea spills. A book that meets me every single day, ready to read me as I read it, giving my as many questions as it does answers.

So, why a book? Because now that I think about it, it is odd. The powerful resonance of words for all cultures at all times, perhaps? Or the way that poetry was designed to make a bee line for the deepest parts of us? Or the fact that it is only through language that we can talk about the things that go beyond it?

There are a thousand human-sized answers, if you really need them. I happen to enjoy the mystically-charged zero answers, myself.

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