10 Things You Never Knew About Star Trek: The Animated Series
1. First Captain Of The Enterprise
Regarding the Original Enterprise, the majority of people would believe the first Captain was Christopher Pike.
The last episode of the Animated series, “The Counter Clock Incident” revolves around the Enterprise bringing Commodore Robert April and his wife, Dr. Sarah April, to Babel for a ceremony for his retirement. He has spent the last 20 years as an Ambassador at large.
The episode establishes that he was the first Captain of the Enterprise, and he was also there to see the construction of the ship in the San Francisco Ship Yards.
The writer of the episode Fred Bronson noted that, upon researching, he had discovered Star Trek had not established Pike as the first Captain. Therefore, he thought it would work to have someone in before Pike.
He reviewed the Making Of Star Trek book, in which there was a list of names Gene Roddenberry was considering for the Captain. One of those was Robert April.
Interestingly, from a Canon point of view, you might have seen his name pop up in Star Trek Discovery. In the episode, “Choose your pain”, Saru brings up a list of Starfleet’s most decorated Captains and top of list (because it was alphabetical) was Robert April.
With Strange New Worlds on the horizon, will we finally get to see a live action depiction of Captain April?