Bruce Greenwood on Playing Captain Pike and His Relationship with Kirk

Journalist Edward Gross posted at the Earth's Mightiest website an exclusive audio interview with Star Trek actor Bruce Greenwood (Pike) in which he talks about his role as Batman in the upcoming animated movie Batman Under The Red Hood and of course, Star Trek. Here is an excerpt.

In attempting to "find" the character of Captain Christopher Pike, actor Bruce Greenwood really had nothing but Jeffrey Hunter's portrayal of the character in the first Star Trek pilot, "The Cage," was all he had to go on.

"I think the fundamental difference between the Hunter Pike and the Greenwood Pike is that our dilemmas are different," says Greenwood, most recently seen in the National Treasure films as President of the United States. "Hunter's being that he was terribly ambivalent about his place in the Federation; he was torn by whether or not he wanted to go back and have a smaller life or that of a commander. My Pike doesn't have an internal wrestling match the way the earlier one did, but he does have second thoughts and misgivings about the way Starfleet is training officers as by-the-book products that may not, at the end of the day, be what's required for a great leader. So he keeps his eye out for that kind of special young man and as it happens, Kirk seems to fill that bill.

"A mentorship develops between them," he adds, "and, as young heroes are wont to be, Kirk is tremendously cocky, has tremendous ability but also dodges responsibility, and that is something that gives Pike tremendous pause. When you're charged with a task like the Kobyashi Maru exercise and you essentially dodge the real point of the exercise with cleverness and cunning, I'm thoroughly unimpressed. I suppose the dilemma for Pike is that he has to second guess his belief in Kirk and Kirk, of course, has to reconfirm his value."

The audio interview can be found here:http://www.earthsmightiest.com/fansites/justiceleague/news/?a=6903

http://trekweb.com/articles/2010/04/28/Bruce-Greenwood-on-Playing-Captain-Pike-and-His-Relationship-with-Kirk.shtml