Hair Trek: Capt. Kirk's Toupee To Janeway's Bun, Our Future's Simply Hair Raising
Our Star Trek future seems all about the care of hair so let's dare to share in their fair hair affair.
Hair em scare em. In the original Captain Kirk, William Shatner’s case, his hair must have gotten quite a big scare and was suddenly no longer there. With Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) his hair left its former chrome dome home long before the good Starfleet commander took his Starship on its legendary adventures.
And so goes Star Trek’s long running hair affair.
What of Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) and that careening cataloging of her various greatly admired hairdos? From her legendary Buns of Steel to her French Twist, Janeway got more attention for her hairstyles than the daring decisions she made trying to get her starship crew safely home from a troublesome Delta Quadrant.
Some of our more famous future explorers ditched the salon or barbershop deck all together. After a few seasons, Captain Ben Sisko - Avery Brooks - simply buzzed all of his hair off, Starfleet clean and neat.
Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard, Captain of Enterprise 1701-D also escaped hairstyle comparisons - but suffered a slew of bawdy bald jokes.
Is it fair to compare their hair? Or, perhaps, is it rare to compare their hair? It seems that Star Trek is one of the most hair conscious sci-fi vehicles around. Let’s share their hair affair.
Captain James T. Kirk
The hair affair started with the now iconic Rocket Man, William Shatner as the first - for a series anyway - commander of the USS Enterprise. Jeffrey Hunter as Chris Pike actually was the first first, however, Pike only served as Starfleet Captain for the first Star Trek pilot, The Cage.
When you think about it, Bill Shatner needing wigs to properly portray James T. Kirk may have been the best, most special special effect ever portrayed in any Star Trek. At no time can you really tell Shatner’s sporting a toupee. It’s said Shatner was so fond of the high quality of his television show’s character’s wigs, he’d swipe them regularly. Dare to swipe that hair!
Captain Jean-Luc Picard
Bald! OK. Next!
Seriously, Patrick Stewart being bald may have spared him for hairstyle jokes perse, but the lingering question of why couldn’t our human species have cured male pattern baldness by Trek’s era indeed lingered.
Of course if anyone had simply asked Jean-Luc Picard if he enjoyed his smooth head, he may have responded thusly, “I do indeed, and Earth Medical developed a genetic course for baldness years ago - I simply choose to go au naturel.”
There’s the hair raising spirit, Jean-Luc! No matter if Klingons consider long, thick coiffed hair a more masculine or strong attribute, especially for a leader, you keep on flashing that chrome dome for all the galaxy to see and admire. Picard can be seen these days on Paramount + in Star Trek: Picard, and yes, he’s as bald as he ever was and will probably always be so. Make it so - bald!
Captain Ben Sisko
Another bald Star Trek Captain? Really now. Well, kinda sorta.
Ben Sisko - when he started his tenure at Deep Space Nine - wasn’t bald. In season four, actor Avery Brooks shaved his head and voila another future bald man was now large and in charge. But it wasn’t because Brooks wanted hair and Paramount asked him to shave it off and become a baldy. It was quite the opposite.
There were two main reasons Paramount bigwigs wanted Brooks to have hair when DS9 first launched. First, coming off Next Generation with Patrick Stewart’s Picard being bald, studio execs felt it would be confusing or weird to have two Trek bald commanders right after the other. Also, Brooks had made his name playing the character Hawk in the crime drama, Spenser: For Hire, where he was bald and sported a goatee. Studio brass felt fans would be too focused on that old character to welcome Brooks into his new Star Trek family as Sisko.
Captain Kathryn Janeway
Can a Starship Captain properly lead without hairstyle approval from the mass of fans who may object to said hairdo? Or maybe it was more studio brass who felt the sass about her hair.
Ask Kate Mulgrew who played Kathryn Janeway for seven seasons on Voyager. Her hairstyles changed so much, they were more lost along the way than her Starship.
Fans were treated to a wide variety of looks for Captain Janeway when it came to her ever morphing hair.
Muglrew had this to say about her fair hair affair.
“When I joined ‘Voyager’ at the eleventh hour, we had nothing but hair problems. Short? Long? With a hairpiece? Without a hairpiece? All the concerns were about my hair—the hair being the trademark of the woman, right?” —Kate Mulgrew, TV Guide Star Trek Special, Spring 1995
Captain Chris Pike
On Paramount + Anson Mount plays trailblazer Captain Christopher Pike in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and though he’s gotten raves for his performance, something other than his acting prowess is getting more than a fair amount of attention.
It appears Mount’s dynamic coif is getting the limelight more than his character’s lines or actions. If this keeps up, perhaps the next Star Trek spin-off will be Strange New Hairdos. Mount’s memorable mop looks like a nest of finely brushed Tribbles resting on his head. A Tribble on one’s head is not a bad thing. That’s all perfectly and appropriately themed, thank you very much.
Mister Mot
Do blue, bald barbers cut hair better? No, it’s not some ancient mariner song, it’s what TNG’s crew dealt with on their Enterprise.
On Next Generation, there worked a barber in the hair salon, a talkative chap named Mister Mot. He impressed all who saw him as an alien and colored blue and he was also bald. Mister Mot didn’t have much work when the Enterprise D’s Captain sat down in his barber chair. Of course when Guinan, played by Whoopi Goldberg, came for a styling visit, it’s a sure bet she was his only client for his entire shift.
To baldly go....Great stuff
Love it! 💙