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Sunday, April 10, 2022

Did You Know the First Captain of the USS Enterprise...

...was Jesus Christ?
Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus Christ in King of Kings (1961)
 Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike with Leonard Nimoy as Mr Spock in Star Trek "The Cage" (1964)
Here's"six degrees of separation" trivia in only five degrees:
  • John Huston, who later did a prequel movie, The Bible: In the Beginning, directed Moby Dick, using a screenplay adapted by Ray Bradbury from the Herman Melville novel.
  • Ray Bradbury wrote the voiceovers in King of Kings spoken by Orson Welles.
  • Welles' The Shadow and Mercury Theatre co-star Agnes Moorehead served as dialogue coach to  Jeffrey Hunter (Jesus Christ) in King of Kings.
  • Jeffrey Hunter later played Christopher Pike, the first captain of the Starship Enterprise in the pilot episode of Star Trek, "The Cage".
  • Star Trek did an episode, "Bread and Circuses", about a planet where parallel evolution produced a society that resembled a 20th Century version of the Roman Empire, complete with it's own "Christians" and Jesus Christ (who doesn't appear on-camera, but is mentioned in dialogue)!

2 comments:

  1. Interestingly, when The Cage was later split into two episodes as flashback material, with Captain Pike scarred and now in a futuristic 'wheelchair', it wasn't Jeffrey Hunter who played him. I didn't realise that 'til many years later. Of course, when I first saw The Cage, I didn't know it was recycling parts of the first (then unseen) pilot episode.

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  2. The scarred Pike was played by Sean Kenny, who (unscarred) played "Lt DePaul" in "Arena" and "A Taste of Armageddon".
    Weird trivia: In EVERY Trek appearance he was ALWAYS sitting down!

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Thanx for posting!