His first screened appearance in Trek was in "The Menagerie", where he is scarred to uncognisability, completely immobile (in fact, he's encased in a "wheelchair" up to the neck, and there's no obvious way to get him in or out of it), and his communication is limited to making a light flash once for yes, twice for no. Now, this story was a brilliant device to reuse the very expensive footage from the show's original (unaired) pilot, and that fact, combined with the unavailability of the actor who originally played Pike, did put serious restrictions on the writers. The scarring was quite a crafty move in that respect, and the inability to speak solved the voice problem. So I can deal with all that. But even in the 1960s, before much of the communication tech we have today, you only needed two appreciably different signals in order to communicate even very complex messages (eg through Morse Code or binary code). That possibility was never even mentioned. Furthermore, the whole point of the episode is to get Pike, illegally, back to a planet run by huge-brained aliens who once kidnapped him and attempted to use him as part of a breeding programme, so that he can live the rest of his life unencumbered by his body in a fantasy world in his head. Blech.
In the new movie, Pike still ends up in a wheelchair, but of course he stays photogenic and capable of speech. He's shown, without explanation (the nature of his injuries is unclear) in a wheelchair at the end of the movie. It appears to be a manual, but its configuration is such that there's no way he could push it properly--and there's an attendant standing right there waiting to push him. He shows sufficient arm function, IMHO, in that scene that he'd be fully capable of self-propelling a suitable wheelchair. It seems simply to be assumed that Pike is now unable to be captain of the Enterprise. It bothers me, especially since one again he was injured heroically saving others...
I don't believe that disability will ever be a thing of the past. And, human nature being what it is, I suspect that the more science/medicine can do to reduce the number of people living with disabilities of various kinds, the worse the discrimination and access problems faced by the people who do have or acquire disabilities will become.
I'd like to see someone like myself in a canon I follow now and then. Not a crip!genius. Not a Davros. And not a jock-in-a-chair who can do anything he wants. Just an ordinary person (as ordinary as the rest of the characters in the canon) who uses a chair and/or doesn't walk well, someone with a progressive disorder who isn't obsessed with "cures" that never seem to get out of the animal trials... Someone who is portrayed as having hopes and dreams and fears and love affairs just like everyone else. And someone who speaks up when there's no ramp, or when people assume things, or when someone makes stupid joke number 1,204,696 about speeding tickets. Wishful thinking?
But if not in the canon, perhaps I can one day see it in the fic? The only trouble is, I don't want to write it, and the folks who could do it justice tend to be able-bodied and hamstrung by fears of appropriation and causing offence.
Re: here via metafandom
His first screened appearance in Trek was in "The Menagerie", where he is scarred to uncognisability, completely immobile (in fact, he's encased in a "wheelchair" up to the neck, and there's no obvious way to get him in or out of it), and his communication is limited to making a light flash once for yes, twice for no. Now, this story was a brilliant device to reuse the very expensive footage from the show's original (unaired) pilot, and that fact, combined with the unavailability of the actor who originally played Pike, did put serious restrictions on the writers. The scarring was quite a crafty move in that respect, and the inability to speak solved the voice problem. So I can deal with all that. But even in the 1960s, before much of the communication tech we have today, you only needed two appreciably different signals in order to communicate even very complex messages (eg through Morse Code or binary code). That possibility was never even mentioned. Furthermore, the whole point of the episode is to get Pike, illegally, back to a planet run by huge-brained aliens who once kidnapped him and attempted to use him as part of a breeding programme, so that he can live the rest of his life unencumbered by his body in a fantasy world in his head. Blech.
In the new movie, Pike still ends up in a wheelchair, but of course he stays
photogenic andcapable of speech. He's shown, without explanation (the nature of his injuries is unclear) in a wheelchair at the end of the movie. It appears to be a manual, but its configuration is such that there's no way he could push it properly--and there's an attendant standing right there waiting to push him. He shows sufficient arm function, IMHO, in that scene that he'd be fully capable of self-propelling a suitable wheelchair. It seems simply to be assumed that Pike is now unable to be captain of the Enterprise. It bothers me, especially since one again he was injured heroically saving others...I don't believe that disability will ever be a thing of the past. And, human nature being what it is, I suspect that the more science/medicine can do to reduce the number of people living with disabilities of various kinds, the worse the discrimination and access problems faced by the people who do have or acquire disabilities will become.
I'd like to see someone like myself in a canon I follow now and then. Not a crip!genius. Not a Davros. And not a jock-in-a-chair who can do anything he wants. Just an ordinary person (as ordinary as the rest of the characters in the canon) who uses a chair and/or doesn't walk well, someone with a progressive disorder who isn't obsessed with "cures" that never seem to get out of the animal trials... Someone who is portrayed as having hopes and dreams and fears and love affairs just like everyone else. And someone who speaks up when there's no ramp, or when people assume things, or when someone makes stupid joke number 1,204,696 about speeding tickets. Wishful thinking?
But if not in the canon, perhaps I can one day see it in the fic? The only trouble is, I don't want to write it, and the folks who could do it justice tend to be able-bodied and hamstrung by fears of appropriation and causing offence.