“The Cage”
Written by Gene Roddenberry
Directed by Robert Butler
Season 0, Episode 1 (unaired pilot)
Production episode 6149-01
Original air date: October 4, 1988
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s log: We see the Enterprise flying through space, and the camera goes into the bridge, where Captain Christopher Pike sits in the command chair, Number One and Jose Tyler at the navigation console in front of him, and some dude in a blue shirt standing to his right not doing anything in particular. Folks are also at the rear consoles, and Spock walks up to stand beside Pike. They’ve detected something, but they’re not sure what it is, heading straight for them. It turns out to be a radio wave—an old-style distress signal that was designed to cause the type of interference they detected to get attention.
The call came from a ship that crashed in the Talos system. Spock checks, and the distress call comes from the S.S. Columbia, a ship that disappeared eighteen years ago—Tyler points out that a radio wave would take that long to get from Talos to where they are. But there’s no indication that they survived the crash, or that even if they did, they survived for eighteen years. Pike orders Number One to continue to the Vega Colony to take care of their own sick and wounded after the battle they had on Rigel VII.
Pike goes to his quarters, and summons Dr. Boyce. Boyce concurs with Pike’s not responding to the distress call, and also mixes Pike a drink in order to loosen him up to talk about what’s really bothering him. The captain blames himself for what happened on Rigel VII, and admits to being sick and tired of the responsibility of command. He’s considering not just taking leave the way Boyce has been bugging him to, but resigning and maybe going back home or going out and doing something else. There’s a whole galaxy out there for him—but Boyce thinks that there’s only one place for Pike.
Spock reports that there’s another message indicating survivors. Pike reads the transcript of the message that is provided by the printer (!), and then decides to check it out.
Yeoman Colt hands him reports he asked for, which doesn’t thrill him, as he’s not used to having a woman on the bridge, thus reminding us all that this was filmed in 1964. When Number One shoots him a look, he says that she’s “different, of course,” but does not elaborate, which is probably for the best.
When they settle into orbit of Talos IV, Spock and some other dude bring him more printouts (!) showing that it’s got an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere and the gravity is 0.9 Gs. Tyler is picking up metal fragments that could be part of a crashed ship. Pike leads a six-person landing party, leaving Number One in charge of the ship, saying he wants to leave his most experienced officer behind, just in case. Pike, Spock, Tyler, Boyce, and two random dudes put on spiffy gray jackets and beam down to a canyon. They find plants that vibrate and make a nifty humming noise that stops when you hold them still. When Spock realizes this, he grins widely.
One of the random dudes spots a settlement filled with a bunch of grizzled old men—and one really hot blonde. The latter is identified as Vina, whose parents are dead and who was born right when the ship crashed.
Even as introductions are performed, we see that they are under observation by aliens with big-ass heads (or, based on the makeup design, big ass-heads).
Pike reports to Number One, ordering her to prepare to beam up the survivors and their stuff. Vina says that Pike seems healthy, “a prime specimen.” At the same time, Boyce reports that the survivors are way too healthy for people who crash landed. The survivors explain that there’s a secret to their health, and Vina takes Pike off to show him.
Suddenly Vina and the colonists and the settlement all disappear, the big-headed aliens kidnap Pike and take him underground. The rest of the landing party fires on the doorway, but it has no effect. Spock reports back to Number One saying that there were no survivors and the captain is missing.
Pike wakes up to find himself in a cage. (Gee, what a great title.) Other cages have alien creatures in them. Two Talosians approach and reveal themselves to be telepathic. They also sound almost bored as they predict Pike’s every response, though they find him adaptable if somewhat limited in intelligence. To Pike’s chagrin, they say that the “experiment” will begin soon.
Back on the Enterprise, Spock briefs Number One, followed by Boyce expressing great apprehension and caution in dealing with the Talosians. Spock believes that any attempt to use force to get to the below-ground dwelling of the Talosians would just provoke their ire, but Tyler thinks they have to do all they can to rescue Pike. Number One agrees with Tyler and orders engineering to prepare to transmit ship’s power to a laser cannon.
The Talosians observe Pike trying to find a way to bust out of his cage, and then they create the illusion of Rigel VII, the site of the crew’s recent battle—except this time, instead of his fellow crew members, it’s just him and Vina. A huge warrior attacks with an axe and shield, just like he did two weeks ago—but Pike is curious as to why he’s seeing Vina again. He’s also not interested in being an animal performing for his supper, and he won’t fight the Rigellian.
But he can’t very well not defend himself, and so he grabs a mace and shield and fights. However, he continues to question the scenario and Vina. Eventually, Pike kills the Rigellian—
—and then he winds up back in the cell, but this time Vina is with him. Vina tries to get him to play along with the illusion, to have any dream he wants, and she can be any woman he wants. Pike, though, keeps questioning, probing, trying to figure out what the Talosians are after.
Number One and a landing party beam down with a huge laser cannon, but it has no effect on the outcropping through which the Talosians kidnapped Pike. Or, as Boyce points out, it doesn’t appear to have an effect. They have no way of knowing if it’s an illusion.
Vina offers to answer at least some questions if he’ll then join her in some dream or other. She admits that they can’t actually make Pike do anything, but they can make him see and feel anything. Thousands of centuries ago, the Talosians fought a horrible war, destroying the surface. The survivors retreated underground and developed their mental powers, but it became almost like a narcotic. They can’t repair the machines left behind, they just observe other species for entertainment.
Their conversation is interrupted by Vina being punished by the Talosains and disappearing. Pike is still not convinced that she’s real, though she insists she’s as human as he is. Later, they feed Pike with a liquid protein concoction, which the Keeper says can appear to be any food he wishes. When he threatens a hunger strike, the Keeper makes him think he’s in the middle of a fire.
After he drinks the protein gunk, he jumps at the transparency, at which the Keeper flinches. That gets Pike’s attention: sudden violent emotions can catch them off guard. Pike tries to question the Keeper on that subject, but the Talosian ignores his queries and instead confirms that the S.S. Columbia really did crash on Talos IV, but Vina was the only survivor. They’re obviously trying to pair the two of them up—Vina actually refers to them as “Adam and Eve” at one point—and then Pike finds himself in a park near his hometown of Mojave. He and Vina have ridden horses—Pike recognizes one horse as Tango, one of his horses from home—to the park and have a picnic. Pike refuses to give into the illusion—despite Vina protesting that she gets headaches when he talks strangely—and keeps hammering away, trying to learn the truth of why he’s in “a menagerie, a cage” (what great ideas for titles!). Do they need a new race of humans to operate the machinery they no longer understand? A colony of slaves? Or what?
Vina finally admits they can’t get through primitive emotions, but you can’t sustain them long enough for it to matter. She also admits that they picked Pike over everyone else in the landing party because he matches her own notions of an attractive man—at which point he finally admits that he thinks she’s hot, too.
She also speculates that the reason why he hasn’t embraced the illusions so far is because they’re all things he’s already done. So the Talosians send them into a new illusion, where he’s an Orion trader, sitting with two incredibly skeevy-looking dudes and Vina is a green-skinned dancing girl.
The whole situation makes Pike extremely nervous, and he gets up and walks away quickly, going into a back room that turns out to be a cave—but then the doorway disappears, and he’s trapped in the cave. Then Vina appears, giving him a very lascivious smile.
Number One, Spock, Tyler, Colt, and the two random dudes are attempting to beam down into the Talosian underground settlement. There is a real risk that their readings of that settlement are an illusion, and they will beam into solid rock.
It turns out the readings are accurate, but only Number One and Colt actually dematerialize. They appear in Pike’s cage, alongside Pike and Vina. Vina is pissed, crying, “No, let me finish!” Both Colt’s and Number One’s weapons and communicators are dead. Number One also reveals that there was a woman named Vina on the Columbia’s manifest—but she was an adult on the ship.
The Keeper reveals that the other two were brought to give him alternate choices, since he has rejected Vina. Pike keeps trying to fill his mind with negative thoughts of anger and fury, while the Keeper reveals the two women’s innermost thoughts and fantasies, to their huge embarrassment.
Spock decides that discretion is the better part of valor, and orders the Enterprise to leave orbit. But that’s when all the ship’s systems go completely dead—except the library computer, which starts going crazy active, downloading information at a great rate.
While the prisoners sleep, the Keeper tries to sneak into the cage to grab the lasers, but Pike wakes up and starts to strangle the Talosian. Pike then fires one of the dead lasers at the transparency—and then aims it at the Keeper, gambling that it did blow a hole in the cage, but the Talosians are preventing them from seeing it. Rather than let Pike test the theory on the Keeper’s head, the illusion falls, and they all escape through the hole.
They go to the surface to discover that the laser cannon did, in fact, blast the crap out of the outcropping. However, the Keeper wanted Pike on the surface anyhow so he can do his Adam thing with the Eve of his choice. Pike gives a counteroffer: let Number One and Colt go, and he’ll stay with Vina.
But Number One takes door #3 and sets her laser to overload. Better to die than live as slaves. Pike lets Vina and the Keeper go back underground where it’s safe. But Vina decides to stay with them, figuring if they have one human, they might try again.
However, the Talosians’ download of the library computer reveals a hatred of captivity even when it’s pleasant and benevolent. Their violence makes them useless, even though they have a greater adaptability than any other they’ve captured. So they’ll let Pike and the others go, even though it condemns them.
The Enterprise becomes active again, and first Colt then Number One are beamed back. On the surface, Pike asks Vina to come along, but then the Talosians drop the illusion of her appearance. She isn’t a beautiful young blonde, she’s a disfigured old woman. She was badly wounded in the crash, but they had no point of reference for how to put her back together. And since this was filmed in 1964, a disfigured person can’t possibly function in society.
The Keeper then reveals that she will not only get back the illusion of youth and beauty, but also an illusory Pike to keep her company.
Pike beams back to the Enterprise, informs Number One and Colt that Vina won’t be coming with, and he respects her decision.
Boyce thinks Pike looks a hundred percent better. Colt hands Pike a report and asks who would have been Eve, at which point Number One orders her off the bridge. Both Tyler and Boyce waggle their eyebrows at Pike, earning them, respectively, a stern look and a complaint that ship’s doctors are all dirty old men, and then the Enterprise heads back out into space.
Can’t we just reverse the polarity?: When they go faster than light, Pike addresses intership letting everyone know where they’re going, and describes their “time warp” as “factor 7.” Also the theme music plays and stars are superimposed over the bridge. It’s all very fancy.
Oh, and the computer readouts are provided either via printer, which is hilariously low-tech, or via funky slideshow on the rear screens, which Spock advances via a hand-gesture, which is more appropriately high-tech. Ah, the sixties…
Fascinating: Spock is never referred to as an alien at any point, and he could just as easily be a human with funny eyebrows and weird ears—maybe the product of genetic engineering. He shows no signs of the suppressed emotions that will become the character’s hallmark, as that particular mode was taken over by Number One. Instead, he comes across as haughty, talking about being swatted like flies and materializing in rock in a very high handed manner, and being all pouty when Pike refuses to go respond to the distress signal initially. Plus he constantly refers to himself as “Mr. Spock.”
Oh, and we get the beginning of shouty Spock with his plaintive bellow of “THE WOMEN!” when only Number One and Colt beam down.
I’m a doctor not an escalator: We have in Boyce the first draft of Leonard McCoy. Basically, Boyce comes across as a curmudgeonly grandfather, whereas McCoy would be more of a curmudgeonly uncle. Still, we see Roddenberry’s notion of the ship’s doctor as being an important advisor get its first workout here, as Boyce is at the center of things alongside Number One and Spock.
Ahead warp one, aye: It’s unclear whether or not Number One or Tyler is the helmsman and who’s the navigator, or if Tyler does both, since all Number One does at her console is say that all decks are ready (she’s still obviously the first officer, since she does all the first officer things, but she doesn’t seem to do anything at her console).
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet: The Talosians reveal to Pike that both Number One and Colt think he’s dreamy. To Pike’s credit, he doesn’t respond to this (the women do, with obvious embarrassment and outrage), not even when Colt inappropriately asks him about it later.
Channel open: “Sometimes a man’ll tell his bartender things he’ll never tell his doctor.”
Boyce after handing Pike a martini out of his medical bag.
Welcome aboard: Arguably, everyone here was a star and everyone was a guest star. Jeffrey Hunter, whose other credits are entirely in feature films, was cast in the role of Pike, and he evinced no interest in returning for the second pilot, preferring movies to television. Majel Barrett and Leonard Nimoy were the first ones cast, as Number One and Spock, respectively, by Gene Roddenberry, who worked with both on The Lieutenant. John Hoyt plays Boyce, a role for which DeForest Kelley was considered (and would eventually get when cast as McCoy for “The Corbomite Maneuver”), and Susan Oliver plays Vina, a role for which Yvonne Craig was considered (Craig would be the only other person to play an Orion woman on TOS, in “Whom Gods Destroy”). Laurel Goodwin and Peter Duryea round out the credited cast as Colt and Tyler, respectively.
Both Roddenberry and director Robert Butler independently came up with the notion of casting women as the Talosians, but dubbing them with male voices. The Keeper was played by Meg Wyllie, with Malachi Throne providing the voice.
Trivial matters: This script was developed from one of three stories that Gene Roddenberry wrote for NBC to consider for the Star Trek concept. The other two eventually became “Return of the Archons” and “Mudd’s Women” in the first season. It was done as a 90-minute episode at the suggestion of co-producer Herb Solow, so that NBC could air it as a standalone television movie if it didn’t go to series and make back some money. Roddenberry also considered doing the story as a movie, adding an opening sequence with the Columbia’s crash.
Roddenberry’s original title was “The Cage,” and then it became “The Menagerie” in production, but the story has been identified as “The Cage” ever since the latter title was used for the first-season two-parter that used footage from this episode (which also scotched Roddenberry’s movie plans).
The captain’s original name was Robert April, but changed to Christopher Pike just prior to filming (and was James Winter in one draft). Later, the animated episode “The Counter-Clock Incident” and several novels (most notably Final Frontier and Best Destiny by Diane Carey) and comics (most notably The Early Voyages from Marvel and Countdown to Darkness from IDW) would identify April as Pike’s predecessor as captain of the Enterprise.
Harvey P. Lynn, a physicist with the RAND Corporation, served as Roddenberry’s unofficial scientific advisor for the script, correcting many scientific howlers in his first draft (like having Talos IV be “on the edge of the universe”) and making other suggestions (like saying that Talos IV’s gravity was lighter than that of Earth, based on how the Talosians were described).
This was Jeffrey Hunter’s only appearance as Pike, not counting the reused footage in “The Menagerie,” but Pike would be played again onscreen by Sean Kenney (as the badly injured Pike in “The Menagerie”) and by Bruce Greenwood in the 2009 Star Trek and in Star Trek Into Darkness.
Pike has been featured in many many many works of tie-in fiction (in some of them as captain of the Enterprise and featuring folks who appear in this episode), some of which are the novels Vulcan’s Glory by D.C. Fontana, Where Sea Meets Sky by Jerry Oltion, Burning Dreams by Margaret Wander Bonanno, The Children of Kings by Dave Stern, and the forthcoming Child of Two Worlds by Greg Cox, as well as parts of The Rift by Peter David and Legacy by Michael Jan Friedman; the short stories “A Private Anecdote” by Landon Cary Dalton (Strange New Worlds), “Sins of the Mother” by S.D. Perry (The Lives of Dax), and “Conflicting Natures” by Jerry Oltion (Enterprise Logs); and the comic books Star Trek #61 by Steven H. Wilson & Rod Whigham, Alien Spotlight: Orions by Scott & David Tipton & Elena Casagrande, and Captain’s Log: Pike by Stuart Moore & J.K. Woodward and the comic book series Early Voyages written by Dan Abnett & Ian Edginton.
The DS9 episode “Tears of the Prophets” will establish that Starfleet named a medal of honor after Pike, and that show’s “Family Business” will establish that a city on Cestus III is named after Pike.
Because Malachi Throne appeared as Commodore Mendez in the framing sequence of “The Menagerie,” the Keeper’s voice was redubbed in the footage from “The Cage.” The restored version of the episode keeps the voice used in “The Menagerie.”
This pilot was rejected by NBC for several reasons, the most famous being their note that it was “too cerebral.” In addition, NBC expressed issues with several of the actors, including Majel Barrett, whom they didn’t think had the gravitas to be the second lead, and also with the character of Spock. Roddenberry stuck to his guns and kept Spock (an obviously wise choice) and made it up to Barrett by casting her in the recurring role of Nurse Chapel later on.
The green-skinned Orion woman version of Vina proved quite popular, and Orion women with their heightened sexuality were seen again onscreen in “Whom Gods Destroy” and Enterprise’s “Bound.”
A military hat is seen in Pike’s quarters, on top of what looks like a very contemporary television set. Those hats would be seen again in the 2009 Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness, worn by Starfleet personnel at the Academy and Starfleet HQ.
With Leonard Nimoy’s death last week, the only member of the credited cast who’s still alive is Laurel Goodwin, who played Yeoman Colt.
To boldly go: “She has illusion and you have reality.” The DNA of Star Trek is very much present in this story. You’ve got aliens who appear to be totally evil, but who have a reason for their meanness and have a certain tragedy about them. You’ve got humanity doing everything it can to not give in to imprisonment. Both of these would become Trek staples.
I also particularly am pleased with the fact that this is not the maiden voyage of the Enterprise, that we’re getting them in medias res. In fact, their recent encounter at Rigel VII gets a great deal of play (Spock sometimes walks with a limp, and Tyler has a bandage on his hand). The Enterprise seems more impressive if it’s full of experienced folk and has been out there a while.
What’s especially fascinating is that Pike never once gives in to the illusion. He fights the Rigellian because the warrior attacks him, but he only defends himself, never once going on the offensive. His participation in the picnic is limited to feeding sugar cubes to the image of Tango, a beloved horse, and his response to the Orion scenario is to run away very fast.
And yet, Pike doesn’t really come across as all that heroic. It’s hard to imagine any other Trek captain refusing to answer a distress signal, even one as archaic as the Columbia’s. He’s distant and emotionless—even his complaints to Boyce about how tired he is don’t come across as particularly convincing. (Neither does his repetitive attempts at thinking angry thoughts at the Keeper, but that actually is a plot point, as the Keeper is totally unaffected and Vina keeps telling him it’s a lost cause.) He does, at least, come across as world-weary, but despite his words to Boyce at the end, he doesn’t seem any less so at the end.
Boyce also comes across as world-weary, but he makes it work for him. His advice to Pike is sound, and his advice and commentary throughout the episode is consistently canny. Note should also be made of the amazing performance Susan Oliver gives here, playing, in essence, more than half a dozen roles, and making them distinctive and compelling.
Ultimately, the episode raises lots of questions that have been left to tie-in fiction to examine. Why does Number One suppress her emotions? How does Pike feel about having his first officer and yeoman’s sexual feelings for him exposed? How do Number One and Colt feel about serving with him after that revelation?
It’s probably for the best that Jeffrey Hunter’s oh-so-stiff Pike didn’t stay on as the show’s lead. Majel Barrett’s Number One also had her awkward moments, but some excellent ones, too, notably her very calm, cool declaration that it’s wrong to take humans as slaves, as she sets her laser pistol to overload. It’s only a pity that that character wasn’t kept, as a woman as second-in-command of the Enterprise would’ve been amazing. (Of course, given how women were often treated on TOS, maybe it wouldn’t have been…) And just in general, the episode is terribly sodden and humorless. Boyce’s bartender line and his dirty-old-man bit at the end are the only things that even come close to a moment of levity, and I suspect NBC might not have complained about how cerebral it was if it wasn’t so damn heavy.
Warp factor rating: 6
Next week: “Where No Man Has Gone Before”
Keith R.A. DeCandido neither wishes to deal in Orion animal women, nor fight Rigellian warriors, but going to a picnic on horseback sounds cool…
I have never watched any Star Trek before and so my wife and I decided to tackle the Original Series, since its free on Prime. So far we have been really enjoying it. Were like 5 episodes in now, but I guess we need to go back and watch this one tonight, I think on Prime it listed this as Episode 30 for season 1. Anyway, I’ll be following along with your re-watch as I do my own first watch.
This is where I shamelessly point that my Christopher Pike novel, CHILD OF TWO WORLDS, is due out at the end of the year.
Ah, the penny finally drops for me (I am so very slow). That is why Troi, and to a lesser dergee even Crusher, never worked on TNG. For all that the Doctor as sounding board and confidante was formalized into ship’s counsellor, no one actually genuinely used Troi as one. Not really, Picard would go to Riker or Guinan before Troi and Crusher for emotional support and clarity. Riker tended to go to Worf or Picard (and Guinan). Worf only went to Guinan or Picard, and Data and Geordi had each other. We never really had a McCoy (or Boyce or Piper). Crusher only was the doctor, and Troi was….er…the cause of two Enterprises losing their no claims discount on impact insurance I guess.
I guess the moral of the story is that some structures work better when they are informal.
On this episode specifically, there is not much to say. So much changed between this and the rest of the series that it is almost a different show. I like they’ve added a cigar section and outboards to the ship after the Altair IV expedition.
Greg: I already shamelessly pointed it out in the Trivial Matters section (though I didn’t know the title, so I’ll insert that now….).
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Keith, I’m confused by the thing about the three prospective pilot scripts. My understanding was that Roddenberry developed three scripts for the second pilot: “Where No Man…,” “Mudd’s Women,” and “The Omega Glory.”
Also, Throne’s voice was not redubbed in “The Menagerie,” just electronically raised in pitch. There’s a common misconception that Vic Perrin overdubbed him, but it’s still Throne’s voice, just modified. The specifics are discussed on the terrific Star Trek History site.
According to Inside Star Trek: The Real Story by Herb Solow & Bob Justman, the “too cerebral” explanation was a cover for NBC’s real concern that the pilot was just too sexy. As for the cast, not only did they find them underwhelming, but they were upset that Roddenberry hadn’t delivered the multiethnic crew they’d asked for (since demographic studies at the time had shown the buying power of minority viewers, so networks were actively trying to court them — in contrast to Roddenberry’s later claims that he was championing diversity in opposition to a resistant network).
And NBC was perfectly happy with having a female second-in-command; they just didn’t like Roddenberry casting his, err, close friend Majel Barrett in the role rather than a more accomplished actress. But Roddenberry abandoned the character rather than just recasting.
The thing is, a lot of what he did in replacing the characters essentially was recasting, except he changed the names. McCoy was exactly the same character as Boyce, and Kirk in the early episodes was exactly as serious and driven a commander as Pike. They only changed over time as the actors’ interpretations shaped their characterizations. Sometimes I wonder why Roddenberry did change the names instead of just recasting the roles, as many producers would have, and as Roddenberry himself would later do with the characters Dylan Hunt, Harper-Smythe, and Kimbridge in his Genesis II and Planet Earth pilots.
I think the problem with “The Cage” as an introduction to Pike is that it’s not showing him as he normally is. It’s about his darkest moment, a time when he’s depressed and barely able to function as a captain. True, the story’s about how he comes back from that depression and regains his spirit, but we really don’t get to see what he would’ve normally been like (which probably would be exactly like Kirk in the early first season, at least in the writing). So it didn’t really showcase who the character of Pike would be.
Although, to counter my own premise, DS9’s pilot “Emissary” did very much the same thing with Benjamin Sisko, introducing him at a dark period in his life when he was on the verge of resigning and putting him through an ordeal with aliens that led him to recover his balance. So why did that work at establishing the character when “The Cage” didn’t? Maybe because we got to see more of Sisko’s optimistic side and his warm relationship with his son, whereas Pike was focusing on his darker impulses and thus came off as unsympathetic. Or maybe because it was more of an ensemble show so the lead wasn’t quite as essential by himself.
Still, I think “The Cage” is an excellent science fiction movie, perhaps the best solo script Roddenberry ever wrote. For all its shortcomings in establishing an effective series cast, it’s an effective standalone SF tale with a genuinely cinematic feel and some thoughtful writing.
I do have some quibbles, though. If the Talosians’ powers were all about illusion and mind control, how did they take control of the transporter and computer banks? Were they manipulating personnel to operate the controls in the desired ways without realizing it? Also, how did Vina disappear from Pike’s cell if it was all illusion? Was she never really there at all, or was Pike just made to think she’d disappeared when she really hadn’t? (Then again, there’s an effects error where you can see the shadow of the rising/departing Susan Oliver on the wall behind Pike after she’s supposedly faded out. Maybe that’s what actually happened in-story too?)
There’s also the annoying fact that Vega is nowhere remotely near Rigel. Earth is closer to Rigel than Vega is. So there’s no way Vega Colony could be the closest place to get medical help after leaving Rigel. Which is compounded later on when the series establishes habitations on Rigel II, Rigel IV, Rigel XII, etc. Rigel ended up being one of the most densely populated systems in Trek, so why did they have to go all the way to Vega for help? I wish they hadn’t reused that one star name so damn often and so damn inconsistently. (Although I did try to make sense of it all in my novel Rise of the Federation: Tower of Babel, which built on the Early Voyages comic’s version of Rigel VII.)
Hey — I started playing my “Cage” soundtrack album when I began reading this review, and it just now ended. That’s almost perfect timing. Although it’s sobering to realize just how much time I spend on these things…
Nobody is addressing the real issue: what’s with that couple in beach attire casually strolling through the ship? Were Gidget and Moondoggie hitching a ride to some groovy beaches on Risa?
@6 Uh… Maybe they were reporting for some vitamin D UV therapy? I guess you’d need that in deep space. To ward off rickets and SAD.
Sorta like: “Ensign Expendable and Yeoman Damseli-Ndestress please report to sickbay for your indoor tanning appointment. A slot just opened up which had nothing to do with the previous patients being toasted to a crisp by an alien virus. That is Ensign Expendable to sickbay, in your shorts mister!”.
This is a damn fine first draft of TOS. They could have gone with this. Who knows if it would have turned into what it did, but there’s enough of the seed material here that they could have kept going.
That said, there’s some things in here I wouldn’t have kept, had this version gone forward. The warp effect is silly – should have been a single fade to stars and fade back. Number One, as beautiful as this look is on Majel Barrett, might well have been hard to empathize with, lacking the split heritage that gave Spock much of his depth.
As an aside, I have always found the Keeper’s voice more feminine than masculine. Whether it’s a modulated Malachi Throne or not, it just doesn’t sound like a male as they intended. I have hearing difficulties, but I never felt the Keeper was anything but female, even knowing the voice behind it.
One wonders, though, why the Talosians didn’t just remake Vina in their own image. Seems closer to human than what they came up with.
Finally, I cannot be the only one who thinks Yeoman Colt is just the cutest thing. Number One has a classic beauty (which poor Christine Chapel never measured up to, with that blonde nonsense), but Colt is delightfully adorable.
@8: Just to be clear, Malachi Throne’s voice was unaltered in the original pilot and sounded quite deep. It wasn’t reprocessed until “The Menagerie,” and that was done because Throne was in that episode playing Commodore Mendez, so they didn’t want his voice to be recognizable as the Keeper.
This is one of my favorite episodes of the original series. There are missteps, of course (most obviously the questionable gender politics and the all-white nature of the cast), but I would love to visit the alternate universe where this was the version of the show that was bought to see what the show would end up having become.
I didn’t see the movie Forbidden Planet until well after I’d seen “The Cage,” but I feel that the two have very similar vibes. So, for anyone who likes the latter but hasn’t seen the former, I’d highly recommend it.
@krad It’s a good episode, but as an archeological find, as a “let’s examine the roots of TOS”; because as you say, it’s good that Pike didn’t stay on as the show’s lead, it’s good that they fixed a lot of things that weren’t working quite right with the pilot. But it has Trek’s DNA, and that’s awesome. Good rating.
@random22: While I agree that Troi was underutilized, I don’t agree with your take on Crusher. Crusher WAS Picard’s sounding bord, only in a different way than McCoy was to Kirk. Beverly was Picard’s only equal in the ship, the person with whom he had a friendship of years. Yes, they had their sexual/romantic tension, but they were also very good friends, and it shows a lot of times.
@Christopher: I’m really interested in that “failur to deliver a multiethnic crew”. I wouldn’t have thought that the networks were actively trying to court minorities back then. Of course, they have Jose Tyler, with a Hispanic first name, but I guess that wasn’t enough. I do appreciate them having a non-stereotypical Hispanic character (even if he’s got an Anglo last name, and might not actually be Hispanic… in my mind, his mom was Hispanic).
@MeredithP: Yes, I have to agree that Colt is cute as a button; and that Chapel would have looked a lot better with dark hair.
Also, Spock looks a lot like a stoner dude in that flower-holding-smiling screencap. :) And I just found out that they filmed some Orion dancing girl make-up tests with Majel Barrett as a stand-in for Vina… I’d love to see her green make-up!
Wouldn’t it be easy for Talosians to look into Vina’s mind to find out what humans look like, even how she looked before the crash, while trying to save her? Maybe the disfigured Vina was just an illusion to keep her from leaving Talos…
Or maybe they gave Pike an illusion that he is leaving, while he in fact stayed on Talos – who knows, right? Wasn’t his escape a bit too easy? The Keeper just giving up?
The illusions within illusions are always fun to play with…
Spock, grinning – just looks wrong.
@5: I have another problem with Rigel or Vega. If I remember correctly, those types of stars are not very likely to have planets supporting life, aren’t they? It should be the little yellowish sun-like mostly-nameless stars, not the big bright ones with ancient names that sound sci-fi…
@3
When did you last watch TNG? There were quite a few scenes where people talk to Troi about their problems.
@8
I think Colt has a bit of an Anne Francis thing going on (another Forbidden Planet link). Cute as a button.
@11: The thing about Jose Tyler is, the only remotely Hispanic thing about him was his first name, and his name (first or last) was never actually spoken at any point in the episode. So there’s not a shred of indication in the pilot that Peter Duryea’s character is anything other than just another generic white guy. (Duryea seems to be a Scottish name, according to Google.)
The one bit of diversity we did get was the unknown, bespectacled Asian extra who played the assistant transporter technician.
@14: Re: Spock grinning: I always react the same way to hearing Leonard Nimoy laugh. By now I’ve seen him in plenty of roles where he was free to laugh, but it still sounds strange to me.
As for Rigel and Vega, that’s right, they’re the wrong types of stars to support habitable planets. Roddenberry’s scientific advisor actually pointed this out to him (the memo is reprinted in The Making of Star Trek, a book I can’t recommend highly enough to anyone interested in TOS), but he decided that familiar star names were preferable to obscure catalog numbers.
Star Trek Star Charts posited a fictitious “Beta Rigel” much closer to Earth, in order to reconcile Enterprise: “Broken Bow”‘s use of Rigel as the first system Archer’s Enterprise visited (which was meant as a “Cage” homage, though it created all sorts of continuity questions). The novels have pretty much accepted “Beta Rigel” as the star called Rigel in Trek, and in my Rise of the Federation novels, I’ve identified it with the star Tau-3 Eridani, and justified the name by establishing its native name as Raij’hl.
Which does nothing to solve the problem, though, since Tau-3 Eridani is still closer to Earth than it is to Vega.
I didn’t remember that his name was not spoken on screen. In any case; there’s no actual “Hispanic” look… I’m a generic white guy with green eyes, and I’m quite Hispanic, as my name of Martín Pérez will attest. :)
Granted, if you’re looking to pander to a certain minority, or to your perception of them, a generic white guy is not people’s idea of Hispanics. I’m just glad that these days I’m seeing fair skinned and light-colored eyes Hispanic characters in US TV shows (and there were a few in TNG too, IIRC).
I just watched this again last week to prep for the rewatch. One thing that struck me is how GRAY everything is. The ship, the planet, and the people just seem so colorless and drab vis a vis the show that went to air.
By “Where No Man…” everything was in glorious, splashy color. Even the people had more color — Captain Kirk flashes a smile in the first few minutes, Mitchell is a cad, etc.
Ah, I know I had a glowing example of a “Hispanic character that looks like me” (allow me my excentricities) in TNG, Lt. Castillo from Yesterday’s Enterprise, for which I just read the rewatch post!
@KingZoorooa: Yes! That’s it! Colors!!!!
Oh, and one more thing: That scene of Spock changing the displays with a hand gesture, that Keith said was so high-tech? Behind-the-scenes photos show that Spock was actually signaling to a female crewperson to advance the slides manually, but the shots of her were cut out.
@5 re: Sisko’s darkest hour vs. pike’s darkest hour
I suspect the reason it worked better for Sisko in The Emissary was due entirely to context. As viewers, we had seen the aftermath of Wolf 359 and understood how it affected Picard and his crew. More importantly, the meeting between Sisko and Picard shows not so much a passing of the torch, but a continuity (which is a pattern repeated with Voyager, as Deep Space 9 was her last port of call in the Alpha Quadrant).
We didn’t need to see what Sisko was like before Wolf 359. We already had an intimate understanding of the events that had shaped Sisko to that point. Pike, on the other hand, would have been our introduction to the universe.
Small oopsie there, Keith. Hunter did quite a bit of TV work, and had just done one season starring in Temple Houston before picking up the Star Trek gig. Doesn’t change the point you were making, but still. :)
So was Number One Nurse Chapel’s twin sister, or was it ever addressed at all?
@23: No, the resemblance was never canonically addressed any more than in the dozens of other instances where Trek has reused an actor. There have been countless fan theories, but I’ve never seen the point myself. It’s just part of the way television works. Especially in the ’60s and ’70s, where it wasn’t uncommon for a given guest actor to show up once or sometimes twice a season and play a different character each time.
The Cage is always the one I just remember as Menagerie, and everytime I go back to watch it I’m surprised at some things that weren’t in Menagerie.
As far as Pilots go though, I have to agree with NBC, this isn’t really an episode to grab the common viewer.
Doesn’t Peter David reference Number One as actually being Morgan LEfler in New Frontier as well as how she sounds like the ship computer?
@LazerWulf: Peter David picks up the resemblance with his Morgan Primus character in his “New Frontier” books: http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Morgan_Primus
@Loungeshep: You beat me to it. He even references Lwaxana. :)
@25: PAD was going to reveal that Morgan was Number One, but I think he backed away from it and reworked his plans when too many readers guessed where he was going. But I do think he had her state decisively, when she met Scotty, that she was not Christine Chapel. Although I’m not sure if we were supposed to believe her.
@20. That is a cool thought. Accidental high tech.
@krad Which version of the show are you watching? Original or Remastered.
@@@@@5 Marc Cushman has noted in his book about the three choices and that there are 1964 story drafts and further versions for what became Mudd’s Women and The Return of the Archons noted in the script developments stages he documents.
I’m slightly disappointed with the intial review which doesn’t discuss quite a lot of points – and the rating is arguably a tad too low.
I completely fail to see why this film has to be funny as Keith or Marc Cushman want it or why @@@@@18 colorful and lively. Also quality-wise it’s totally irrelevant how this film relates to the series or if it is able to spawn a series. Also this is not @@@@@ 11 an archaelogical find. It’s a one hour film.
I agree with Chris that this is probably Roddenberry’s best solo script. It’s very ambitious and occasionally so eager to debate it’s issues that we have characters talking to each other in monologues ignoring the partner’s words like in a modern drama.
What is clearly very STAR TREK-like is not only a desire for liberty but more generally humanity’s interest in exploring. The series repeatedly refutes paradises may they be real or imagined because it insists that being human essentially means experiencing new things and striving for knowledge. When this development stops as it does with the Talosians and lots of other super-evolved races, stagnation sets in and finally decline. I think it’s very admirable to built a series on such a philosophic foundation. Pike’s frustrations are cleverly worked into the script to tie in with that, so that after seeing his wishes come true thanks to the Talosians and seeing it rather as unfulfilling he is essentially healed from his dreams of idylls and ready to challenge the unknown – not a bad idea for a series pilot. Unfortunately the character has once to monologue about this insight and make it obvious for the audience.
Obviously Roddenberry didn’t care for any multi-racial casts and as I’ve said the influence in this regard might very well be the Lem novel The Astronauts and its GDR film adaptation The Silent Star. What he totally didn’t give a shit about is women. It’s hard to see him as anything but a sexist swine, even for the 60s. He
1) did cast his girlfriend in a major role and wrote it in such a way that she doesn’t have to do much acting, but she still fails miserably
2) did cast another actress in an insignificant role just so he could land her in his bed (see Inside Star Trek)
3) paired off both women as stereotypically as possible, one being the brainy career woman which means she’s not womanly anymore while the other is young and healthy
4) let Vina stay because she isn’t beautiful anymore. Yay, women are useless then who wouldn’t agree? [SPOILER ALERT]: Pike has to suffer a lot more in the Menagerie for accepting the same fate. But then he’s a man.
5) discarded immediately the role of the female first officer instead of recasting it, it very apparently just was a springboard to cast Majel in a major role and he happily retreated to an all-male commando team
The only mitigating factor is that women in an at least partly military organisation were indeed unusual for the time. Though this hardly excuses the absurd moment when Spock exclaims „The Women!!!” which is really the screenwriter speaking but not the character.
I’m unimpressed with some of the characters and almost generally with the acting. Spock just looks strange and Nimoy’s line readings are thoroughly mediocre. Majel is terrible and Jeffrey Hunter acts overly tormented and as if under constant pressure. I know that’s how the part is written, but he really overdoes the brooding earnestness. The only actress who hits almost every note is Susan Oliver. To a certain degree she reminds me of Kim Novak in Vertigo who also plays out as a man’s fantasy and this hints at a more sensitive treatment of women on Roddenberry’s side though he also relishes the green Orion slave trashy element more than it was necessary. But while the script often is too talky for its own good and e.g. never let’s us experience the Talosian descent into a fantasy life, but instead just talks about it, we see in Vina how they can really break a person into a performing puppet which Oliver conveys very successfully.
The illusion game is per se problematic because it raises endless questions. Could the Rigelian fighter have hurt Pike? Vina says so, but then it’s not really an illusion anymore, is it? Also how do the illusions work in the limited space of the cage? This isn’t a holodeck where technology keeps you in one place while you’re moving. Anyway these essentially magical premises never can successfully set down a clear set of rules.
The most subtle dig is however directed at television itself because what the Talosians do is essentially watching a TV show. It’s pretty hilarious that a TV series developer hits out in his series pilot at people who sit passively in a place and relive the lives of other characters instead of doing something useful.
This episode also features the first “facepalm” in Star Trek!
Oh was it pointed out that they mention warp as being a recent thing (Like within the last 18 years, well they said time barrier so i assume thats warp) when they met the crash survivors?
@30: From what I’ve heard, Marc Cushman is a very unreliable source who employs very shoddy fact-checking and imposes personal opinions presented as facts. Also, apparently his publishing company is just a front for himself, so he’s got nobody editing or double-checking his work. I don’t trust any of his claims unless they’re corroborated elsewhere.
And yes, Roddenberry was sexist by today’s standards, but so was pretty much every other TV producer back then. He was a little ahead of the curve in some ways, such as including female officers on a military vessel in the first place — something the real US Navy wouldn’t begin doing until decades later. There are some contemporary shows that treat women better than TOS did, including The Avengers and Mission: Impossible, but there are also contemporary shows that are far more misogynistic, like The Man from UNCLE. And referring to the female characters as “The women!” is quite typical of the era. In fact, most shows would’ve called them “the girls,” so GR was actually a bit more respectful than the norm there.
I’ll grant, though, that the most shockingly sexist scripts in TOS, by modern standards, were the ones where Roddenberry is a credited screenwriter — “Mudd’s Women,” “Turnabout Intruder,” and “Bread and Circuses” where the Drusilla scenes are concerned. See also the very misogynistic opening narration to Roddenberry’s failed pilot 333 Montgomery Street (from 1960, with DeForest Kelley), which is available on YouTube. “The unknown quantity is woman. A curious creature full of contradicting moods and strange attractions, and with as little logic in her love as in her hate. Yet we find her strangely necessary. Some of us even believe she’s worth dyin’ for.” Again, not an atypical attitude to hear in 1960s TV, but it is hard to square with Roddenberry’s later reputation as a champion of feminism.
Then again, people can change. I mentioned how misogynistic TMFU was, and some of the worst examples were in episodes written by Peter Allan Fields — who went on to write Kira and Dax as marvelously strong and well-realized characters in Deep Space Nine. So maybe Roddenberry gained some enlightenment over time — though of course he never lost his intense fascination with female sexuality and his tendency to see women as a mysterious other.
I just wanted to say that I always thought that these uniforms are so much classier and dignified than the ones we ultimately see on TOS. I also like how they are just unisex (and not like the dopey notion of making women AND men weare miniskirted tunics like in the first few episodes of TNG).
Also, Majel Barrett really was gorgeous.
@34
Agreed! And a shame the Abrams movies went with the sexist TOS miniskirts again. The uniforms in “The Cage” are actually… uniform.
By the way, I’ve just now realized, for the first time in 40-odd years, that it was a bit creepy for the Talosians to make Vina enticing to Pike by passing her off as an 18-year-old. Okay, that is legal, but it’s kinda pushing it. Later on we get Lenore Karidian at 19, but the character really was that age, so it’s not a case of someone within the story deliberately choosing to advertise a woman as “barely legal” in order to boost her sex appeal.
@35: As for the miniskirts, at the time they were seen as empowering, not sexist. For generations, women had been taught to fear their own sexuality, leaving them powerless to control it and putting it in men’s hands to do with as they wanted. Miniskirts were a symbol of the Sexual Revolution, of women taking charge of their own sexuality and taking pride in their bodies rather than hiding behind heavy, restrictive layers that inhibited their freedom of movement and expression. It was Grace Lee Whitney (Yeoman Rand) who asked to be allowed to wear a miniskirt rather than trousers. It wasn’t something Roddenberry forced on his female cast against their will, although I’m certain he had no reluctance to go along with it. Certainly it was partly about sex appeal (but just think about how routinely Captain Kirk lost his shirt), but it also probably seemed futuristic at the time, since it was such a current, forward-looking fashion.
@34 I like the TOS uniforms much better because they are so colourful. Of course that’s mostly personal taste (I even like the miniskirts) but it’s also because it makes them look less like actual uniforms. It fits the improbable, but cool idea of a military organisation doing mostly unmilitary things like exploration.
@14 Regarding the problem of Vega’s ability to support life:
Star Trek has been guilty of this error plenty of times (for example: Pollux IV in “Who Mourns for Adonais”), but here it actually makes sense.
The episode refers to the planet as “Vega Colony”, so I presume it is a human colony. And colonies can be build anywhere. Moreover, since earth will later be established as a relatively late-comer to the galactic community, it stands to reason that most of the nicer planets were already taken (by the Vulcans or the Andorians or whatever).
So it actually makes more sense, for Vega Colony to be on a relatively inhospitable planet. And I suppose that having a colony near a very bright star which is used for navigation may also have some advantages as well.
@36
That might be true if we ever saw women wearing pants along with the miniskirts, suggesting it was an option. As such, it makes the military-ish Starfleet look very silly, then and now in Abrams’ movies.
If you’re going to base your fictional organization on the US Navy right down to rank structure and ship names, then it’s probably best to go with uniforms in a similar manner, as with “The Cage” and later incarnations of Star Trek, excluding of course Deanna Troi for most of TNG’s run. (Many thanks to Captain Dick Jones for finally correcting that.)
I never knew that Rigel was a real star until many years after “The Cage” aired (in the 80s)…and I remember thinking, once I had researched the system, that those planets would not be habitable. Why not make up the names?
I always hated the visual communication stations by most consoles, which IIRC also appeared in at least the Kirk pilot.
As for the grey look: looks like Roddenberry got his way with TMP ;)
And I agree that Spock laughing was strange here…though not in the spore/farming paradise episode later on. Though Nimoy’s first appearance as Spock opposite Shatner wasn’t stellar either, he eventually found his groove :)
Oh, and we get the beginning of shouty Spock with his plaintive bellow of “THE WOMEN!” when only Number One and Colt beam down.
I haven’t seen this episode in 15 years or so, and I still remember that line….
The Cage was actually the first TOS episode I ever saw, since it was the only one available on VHS around here, back in the early 90’s. For a while, I assumed it actually was the first Star Trek feature film (I hadn’t seen The Motion Picture at that point, only V and VI).
I always enjoyed the story, but always had a problem with Jeffrey Hunter’s take on Pike. I like the idea of a world-weary captain on paper, but neither him nor director Robert Butler managed to make that into a compelling performance.
I also assumed the other pilot script was The Omega Glory, as Christopher had. Maybe I’m wrong and that particular story was actually written to be the second pilot, before the studio went with Sam Peeples’ outline.
@40: I wasn’t talking about Sp0ck laughing, I was talking about Leonard Nimoy laughing. It always sounds strange to me, even when he isn’t playing Spock. Just the other day, to commemorate his passing, I watched him in Columbo: “A Stitch in Time” and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and in both films he laughed, and in both cases it sounded striking and strange to me, because it’s Spock’s voice but it’s laughing, and my mind just can’t help experiencing cognitive dissonance at that no matter how often I hear it.
@41: The story I’ve always heard, confirmed by Inside Star Trek, is that three scripts were developed for the second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” “Mudd’s Women,” and “The Omega Glory.” As for the first pilot, I’ve looked through IST, and there is an allusion on p. 60 to multiple proposals for the first pilot (recounting an NBC exec apologizing for picking the most complex and challenging of the options and thus stacking the deck against them), but it doesn’t say what they are.
However, Roddenberry’s original 1964 pitch document contained one-paragraph or one-sentence seed ideas for a variety of stories, including the forerunners of episodes like “The Cage,” “Mudd’s Women,” “Charlie X,” and “A Piece of the Action.” There is one called “100 A.B.” (or “A Century After the Bomb”) about a post-apocalyptic parallel world, which I suppose could be seen as the basis for “The Omega Glory.” But I don’t see anything that resembles “The Return of the Archons.” The closest is “Reason II,” the back half of a 2-part proposal for a story about a world of intelligent robots, in which the “last human survivors… attempt to reseize possession of their planet.” But that’s not really the same thing.
Well, I haven’t watched the episode again, but I did read your review. Don’t know if I’m going to keep following along though.
I’m glad you mentioned the opening shot where they zoom in on the ship and go in through the top of the bridge. I kind of like shots like that, and it just seems like kind of a ballsy thing to do for 1964 television.
I also like that you mentioned the “THE WOMEN!” line because I chuckle everytime I hear that.
@MeredithP and everyone discussing the voices: The last time I saw “The Cage” version of this episode, there seemed to be Talosian lines that didn’t make it into “The Menagerie.” So while most of the episode had the weird electronic pitch higher voice, there is suddenly a spot near the end where the voice really drops and it would be really confusing if you didn’t know the history of the episode.
@42: According to Memory Alpha, Archons was originally titled The Perfect World, and it was one of the outlines considered for the first pilot.
And Keith, just out of curiosity, when the time comes for The Menagerie rewatch, are you planning on writing a whole new take on an already recapped story, or will you copy/paste the above text?
He’ll probably just review the framing story.
Christopher @@@@@9 – I’m not sure if I have seen the version with Malachi Throne’s natural voice. Is that available? I feel like I can conjure it in my head, but it’s just as likely that it was never released and I’m imagining things.
Christopher @@@@@20 – Ah, but the canon is that Spock advanced the slides with a hand gesture, because that’s what we were shown. So whatever low-tech version was filmed, it ended up being a high-tech version in the show.
KingZoorooa @@@@@18 – Interesting, I watched the Netflix version (because I am too lazy to haul out the DVDs), and I remarked while watching on how bright it was. I’m not sure what they’re showing but I found the picture vibrant.
Lubitsch @@@@@30 –
I’m confused by your confusion. Who said it has to be funny, colorful, or lively? Folks have personal preferences, I don’t think anybody was saying that lacking those traits makes it out-and-out bad.
And I must not be understanding your next statements. As a TV pilot, does it not matter completely that the quality is good enough to launch a series? It wasn’t meant to be a one-hour standalone film, it was meant to be “hey, I would like to do something like this, can I have money?” It matters slightly less that it relates to the series – it was picked up after some changes, no argument necessary – but I don’t see how it is “totally irrelevant” that this it could be able to spawn a series when that was the point of making it in the first place. Perhaps I’m just not understanding and you can explain further?
Not only is Rigel not suitable for developing life, it’s one of the few stars that literally might not be there anymore in 330 years. It’s super late in its life cycle and running out of fuel fast. (And personally I’m hoping we get a nice view of its supernova in my lifetime — we’re 110 years overdue for one in the Milky Way based on how often astronomers think they happen on average.)
Susan Oliver really does do a stunning job with her role(s). Thank goodness Nimoy didn’t take long after this episode to figure out a compelling personality for his character, too.
It does make me sad not to have a multi-ethnic senior crew.
The comment about Laurel Goodwin being the last surviving credited cast member from “The Cage” really hit me. Wow. There’s an interesting interview with her at http://theomegasector.com/index.php?/topic/19408-an-interview-with-laurel-goodwin-yeoman-colt-in-the-cage/. It’s too bad she didn’t make it to the series. I’d like to think J.M. Colt went on to have a long and high-profile career in Starfleet. (JJ Trek people, get on that, ok?)
I freely admit I love “The Cage.” I love it even more as “The Menagerie” — “Menagerie” is my favorite TOS episode; yes, I know I’m the only Trek fan for whom that’s true; we can talk about it 16 weeks or so hence — but I love it here, too. Pike is a proto-Picard and I think would be just as beloved today as Jean-Luc had Hunter decided to stick with the show. (Although, Christopher, good call on how DS9 introduced Sisko at a low point and made it work, contra “The Cage.” It’s true, Pike doesn’t seem much changed by the tag scene.)
I do appreciate the discussion here of the episode’s misogny: it is there, and it does detract. The first time I saw that scene about “a woman on the bridge,” when the episode was first released on VHS, my jaw hit the floor. Cognitive dissonance! And, yes, the lack of racial diversity among the crew is disheartening.
I know the standard line is, as Keith tells us, Number One was the emotionless one; but I think the only real evidence for this is Vina’s crack about “mind like a computer circuit” and the Keeper telling us about her strong intellect, which doesn’t mean she’s emotionless – she has just kept her feelings for Pike hidden (wisely — fraternization among the ranks and all that). Pike clearly evokes an emotional response from her when he “grounds her” to the bridge; she flashes Colt a warm smile when they return to Enterprise at the end. I watch Number One and all I see is a capable, cool, professional woman, doing her job. I don’t see a proto-Vulcan.
Re: Marc Cushman – I can’t vouch for or disparage his research, but I will note that I have found several footnote numbers in Volume 1 of his book that either don’t correspond to the correct end note, or don’t have an end note at all. So, yes, someone needed to be editing his stuff more carefully.
I always thought that the Talosians had created an illusion of Pike being in Hell – the Keeper says, after terminating the illusion, “From a fable you once read in childhood.” Roddenberry having been an atheist, I can easily see him referring to Hell with the word “fable.”
As for the Rigel thing: “Rigil Kentaurus” is an alternate name for Alpha Centauri. I would still think that Earth would be closer to Alpha Centauri than Vega (with Alpha Centauri being in our southern sky, and Vega in our northern), but it’s more reasonable than thinking that they were referring to the supergiant in Orion (which could not have planets that could sustain life as we know it, and which is, moreover, 860 light years from Earth – whereas Alpha Centauri is four LY from Earth, and Vega is 25).
@48 I know you are historically right about Pike being a proto-Picard – the names are almost the same, and they both call their first officer “Number One”. But he behaves too much like the straight action hero for that comparison to work for me.
I remember watching “The Cage”, or maybe “The Menagerie”, together with my husband, who doesn’t watch much Star Trek, and at some point, when Pike argued with the Talosians, my husband said: “Captain Kirk would NEVER stand there like that.” Neither would Picard.
Quoth Bibliomike: “I know the standard line is, as Keith tells us, Number One was the emotionless one; but I think the only real evidence for this is Vina’s crack about “mind like a computer circuit” and the Keeper telling us about her strong intellect, which doesn’t mean she’s emotionless – she has just kept her feelings for Pike hidden (wisely — fraternization among the ranks and all that).”
Incorrect — the Keeper specifically says that she represses her emotions, “but that is largely a pretense,” and then the Keeper goes on to lay bare Number One’s feelings about Pike. That was obviously an important part of the character — also what Pike was referring to when he said that Number One is “different.”
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
But we do not know what exactly the Keeper means when he talks about repressing one’s emotions. Maybe he simply refers to Number One hiding her feelings for Pike, or he expects all humans to be as emotional as Vina, because he met her first. We don’t know what’s considered normal and what’s considered repressed among the Talosians.
I think Bibliomike’s interpretation of Number One’s character works quite well. I am aware that it is not the writers’ intended interpretation, but it still works.
What I don’t get is how willing Pike is to accept the idea that Vina hasn’t aged a day in 18 years. The “random dude” in the campsite said she was born as they crashed, but as soon as Number One says that Vina was listed as an adult crew member on the manifest, Pike should realize that the dude lied, and since the dude was an illusion in the first place that means the Talosians lied, so Pike should have realized that her youthful appearance may very well be an illusion in their attempt to support the lie.
Regarding the Asian transporter technician . . . was he actually “bespectacled”? I remembered him having glasses, too, but when I watched “The Cage” again this weekend, I didn’t spot any glasses.
Does he wear them in some scenes and not others?
@44/Eduardo Jencarelli: Looking over the pitch document, I see some cases where maybe two or more ideas were combined into an episode. “The Cage” seems like a combination of “The Next Cage” (“The desperation of our series lead, caged and on exhibition like an animal, then offered a mate.”) and “The Man Trap” (not to be confused with the episode of that name — a story about “wish-fulfillment traps” that blind the crew to reality) as well as “A Matter of Choice” (about a world whose natives have the ability to relive past experiences and offer the captain a chance to do the same). Although I suppose the “Man Trap” pitch could’ve also inspired “Shore Leave.”
@46/MeredithP: As crzydroid said, Throne’s unprocessed voice can be heard in the portions of “The Cage” that were not incorporated into “The Menagerie.” The thing is, the reconstructed versions of “The Cage” that are on home video are assembled from two or three different sources. The original master print of the episode was cut up to make “The Menagerie,” so the first home-video release was a combination of the “Menagerie” footage and a lower-quality black-and-white copy of “The Cage” that Roddenberry had been showing at conventions for decades. Since the B&W copy had a lower-quality audio track, the home video release went with the “Menagerie” soundtrack where possible and only used the “Cage” soundtrack for the missing parts, including a few of the Keeper’s unmodified lines, particularly toward the end. Later, the trimmed color footage from “The Menagerie” was rediscovered, so a full-color version of the pilot could finally be released; but those film trims were silent and the original soundtrack was not recovered, so they had to stick with the hybrid soundtrack from the previous video release. Thus, even though the original footage is fully restored, we’re still stuck with the modified version of the Keeper’s voice for most of the episode.
(That’s why there’s a bit of music from a later episode — “The Naked
Time,” I think — that crops up while Pike is leading the Keeper out of
the cell at gunpoint, which then abruptly jumps to the original “Cage”
music cue. The “Naked Time” cue was dubbed in over a transition back to the courtroom in “The Menagerie.”)
@47/McKay B: Well, since Rigel is 800 light-years away, it theoretically might not be there now. It could’ve blown up 750 years ago and we just haven’t seen it yet. However, astronomers think it’s still a few million years from going kaboom.
@48/Bibliomike: The novel Where Sea Meets Sky says that Colt went on to be the Bozeman‘s science officer (though she didn’t seem to be on the ship in “Cause and Effect”). The comic book Captain’s Table: Pike makes her captain of the Exeter in 2266, though it oddly identifies the Exeter as the Class-J ship where Pike suffered his injury rather than the Constitution-class ship it’s rendered as in the art.
@49/Lance Sibley: There are several stars with variants of “Rigel” in their name, since it’s Arabic for “foot.” If Pocket hadn’t already established “Beta Rigel” as being in a particular part of space, I would’ve gone with Mu Virginis, aka Rijl al Awwa, as the “Rigel” seen in Trek. It’s an F2 giant about 61 light-years from Earth — not an ideal candidate for habitation, but certainly better than Beta Orionis. But it’s 56 ly from Vega, so it still doesn’t solve that problem.
@52/JanaJansen: By 1964 standards, a woman being cool, controlled and professional at all would’ve been seen as repressing her emotions compared to the way women were expected to behave.
@54/Greg Cox 2: The tech is wearing glasses in the first shot of him in the beamdown scene, but they disappear for the rest of the scene.
Christopher: Thanks for clearing up the glasses thing.
It’s annoying, though. I initially described him as wearing glasses, then deleted that part when I rewatched the ep again. Now I guess I have to go put the glasses back in! :)
@@@@@ 33 and 42
Archons is supposed to be The Perfect World.
Whatever Cushman’s indeed problematic shortcomings are, he at least relayed quite a bit of the UCLA information to the fans.
As for the three scripts there’s indeed no documentary proof in Cushman’s book that these are stories for a network choice. However after the well known series draft from 11th March he lists dated story outlines for the three ideas plus revisions. With The Cage it’s late June and early July, for Archons and Mudd it’s all between 20th and 23rd July. After the decision from the Network in late July comes the first script in October. The only problem is a Charlie X outline from April but the revision only comes in August, probably Roddenberry didn’t want to submit a bottle show.
Judging from this information, the timing makes sense. Maybe there’s some kind of letter which confirms the submission or it’s even written on the storylines.
@@@@@49 If you look at Keith’s and KingZoorooa’s wordings you can clearly see that they think grayness and seriousness are a bad choice.
As for the standalone quality, I’m just pointing out that if you perceive this film essentially as “not yet the Star Trek we love” you’ll automatically see it as being something lesser. It’s not a fossil and not an archaelogical find and not a curiosity of some kind. It’s a film like any other.
@@@@@49 Could very well be. I also noticed the “fable” term and wondered to which story it referred. The imagery is very unspecific and would fit the general idea of hell. Also such veiled digs are recurrent throughout TOS, see e.g. The Apple or A Piece of the Action.
@34: I think you’re revealing your own sexism here. What makes women wearing pants “dignified,” but men wearing skirts “dopey?”
When Pike is being set up to pick Number One or Yeoman Colt, am I the only one who yells at the screen “take both!”?
Bibliomike @48 – Actually, Yeoman Colt did go on to an excellent career in tie-in works, becoming captain of the USS Exeter. It’s all cataloged over at Memory Beta. :)
Lubitsch @57 – Different preferences, different readings. It’s all good. :)
@MeredithP: Thank you for answering Lubitsch. I just couldn’t. :)
@50: I think Picard might – maybe not every time, but some times. In season 2’s “Where Silence Has Lease,” for example, after having exhausted other options at escape, Picard sits in his quarters, listening to music, calmly awaiting death at Nagilum’s hands. Frankly, given the circumstances and what I know of Kirk, I’m unsure how things would have gone differently had Kirk been in the Talosians’ cage. After all, Pike puts up an inital resistance (as Kirk surely would have). Pike resists the illusions as reality (as Kirk surely would have, at least until Generations <bleh>). Pike seizes the chance to act when it presents itself (as Kirk would have, and did on several occasions). The Talosians are presented as pretty formidable mental adversaries, and I don’t see anything Pike could or should have done differently.
@51: I stand corrected. I forgot this line because it isn’t in “The Menagerie,” but, yes, there it is.
@52: Thanks for the vote of confidence :) I think Keith is right, that the line is supposed to refer to her general demeanor; we’ll never know if Majel could have done more with the role, though I bet she could have, given the chance.
@55 and @60: Glad to hear Colt had a fulfilling Starfleet career in the Trek “EU”!
@62 Kirk might have given one of his speeches about how humans can’t live in captivity, thus making it unnecessary for the Talosians to get this information from the library computer :-) But actually I have to apologize; my comment above wasn’t about Pike’s actions at all but merely about posture and facial expression. In other words, I was being superficial. Sorry about that.
Regarding Number One: As the authors were making up Star Trek as they went along, they might have gone into interesting directions with her character. Especially when I think of D.C. Fontana, I can imagine she would have become more of the person you already saw in her and less of the “represses her emotions” type.
But then we probably would never have met Spock and the Vulcans as we know them.
@63/Jana: An interesting thing strikes me about the description of Spock in the original pitch document: “Probably half Martian, he has a slightly reddish complexion and semi-pointed ears.” Okay, they changed Martian to Vulcan(ian) and reddish to greenish (after makeup tests), but it’s the “probably half” part that gets me. That implies to me that the original intent was that his appearance was a cross between human and alien, and that a full-blooded member of his race would look substantially more alien, perhaps with more severely pointed ears, a more vivid complexion, and maybe other differences. Sort of like how Voyager‘s half-Klingon B’Elanna Torres has subtler forehead ridges than a full Klingon.
It’s interesting how quickly they forgot that intent, though. As soon as “Balance of Terror,” we saw the Romulans looking exactly like Spock, and characters reacted to that as a typical Vulcan appearance rather than the appearance of a Vulcan-human hybrid. Which, of course, was more fully confirmed in “Amok Time” when we saw a whole bunch of Vulcans sporting identical makeup to Spock. I wonder, if they had stuck with that (suspected) original intent, what would a full-blooded Vulcan have ended up looking like?
Another nod to the episode in DS9: the Pike City Pioneers are mentioned as a baseball team based on Cestus III (from Arena).
@64: That’s very interesting.
Christopher: Also of note is that Spock said in “Where No Man Has Gone Before” that “one of my ancestors was a human female,” indicating that he’s mostly Vulcan except for one human in the woodpile, as it were. That was later retconned to his Mom, of course….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@67: It was “one of my ancestors married a human female,” actually, but yeah, there was that. Interesting… they went from half-human to less than half, then back to half again. And all in the course of three consecutive episodes, because in “The Corbomite Maneuver” we get this exchange:
Spock: “I regret not having learned more about this Balok. In some manner he was reminiscent of my father.”
Scotty: “Then may heaven have helped your mother.”
Spock: “Quite the contrary. She considered herself a very fortunate Earthwoman.”
Come to think of it, they really found it necessary to drive home Spock’s hybrid nature in those early episodes. In the next episode, “Mudd’s Women,” Harry Mudd looks at Spock and says “You’re part-Vulcanian, aren’t you?” — further evidence for the idea that full Vulcans might have looked less human, if Harry could tell by sight that Spock was a half-breed. (The “Corbomite” line likening the scary Balok puppet to his father might fit that interpretation as well.) Next comes “The Enemy Within,” where Spock makes that speech about how his dual nature lets him understand Kirk’s situation. There was nothing about it in “The Man Trap,” but in “The Naked Time” he had that whole virus-induced freakout about being ashamed of his “Earth blood.” Nothing in the next two, but then “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” has the famous “I’m sick of your half-breed interference, d’you hear?” It subsides after that, but that’s six of the first ten episodes making a point of Spock being half-human and half-alien. I can understand a new show needing to make sure the audience gets the basics about the characters, but it feels kind of like a preoccupation.
Two small notes:
Jeffrey Hunter did not decline to continue in the role; he was killed in an accident while the show was being reworked. If he had survived, he would have continued on as captain of the Enterprise.
Also, I don’t know if it is made clear in the original, or if it was retconned in Menagerie, but the reason Vina stays behind is because she would die if she left Talos. She was barely alive when the Talosians found her, and they are keeping her alive through technology superior to what is current in the Federation. This is why Spock later risks his career to bring Pike back to Talos: the Talosians can restore his mentor and friend to health and vigor, if only illusory, and ease his pain better than Federation technology can. It is, in Spock’s view, a more dignified end for someone he respects.
Unbelievable. Three major people associated with Star Trek have passed away in less than a week. This time, it was Harve Bennett:
http://deadline.com/2015/03/harve-bennett-dies-star-trek-movie-producer-1201387026/
I saw Laurel Goodwin in an Elvis Hawaii movie recently; she did a good job but I haven’t seen her in much. Reading that she is the only survivor of that cast is making me feel older….
Sure, it was 1964, but any kind of female in any kind of authority position over men was unusual. The progressive credit is often deserved.
@69 – re: Hunter. Sorry, Hunter was not killed while the series was being reworked. That happened later, he died in May, 1969. Several sources state that his current wife in 1965 was against his continued involvement in Star Trek and prevented his return to the role for the 2nd pilot.
@69: No, there isn’t anything about Vina dying if she leaves. Here’s the exchange:
It’s got nothing to do with survival; it’s purely that she considers herself too hideous to be seen. And there’s nothing in “The Menagerie” that alters it; the scene is shown complete, with the only change being that the shot of her going back with an illusory Pike is delayed and repurposed to represent the real Pike being reunited with Vina a few minutes later.
@64: Christopher, wasn’t there also something, in the very early planning stages, about the red-skinned half-Martian Spock being “fed” by absorbing energy through a plate in his stomach? I don’t recall where I read that – Asherman’s Compendium, perhaps? One shudders to think. I doubt even an actor like Leonard Nimoy could have sold that, not in 1964.
I’m floored by the “close reading” of this episode and how it is demolishing things I’ve “always known” about it and the series. I always thought Vina’s health was on the line, too. She really just doesn’t want to go because she’s not pretty anymore? And Pike doesn’t try to talk her out of it, a la Kirk telling Alexander in “Plato’s Stepchildren” that everyone is accepted in the Federation (“little person” jokes to Scotty notwithstanding)? Sheesh.
When I lead Bible studies, I’m always telling participants to read what’s actually on the page, and not what they think it says. That’s what the first two weeks of this rewatch have felt like to me! But it’s a good thing (even if my inner teenage new Trekkie is screaming his fool head off).
Maybe, based on how Vina goes shuffling back up the embankment, we can infer she is in physical pain, even if no dialogue explicitly tells us? It would make me feel better!
@63: Jana, since there’s no tone of voice to hear in this discussion, I’ll assume and hope you didn’t take my comments personally or take offense at them! I intended none.
@67 krad
Although since it “must have beendifficult, having… badblood like that”, he was probably keeping it deliberately vague to avoid further teasing from his boss… ;)
Bibliomike: Please don’t worry, you’ve been perfectly nice and polite all along!
@68: Maybe they didn’t change Spock’s ancestry but meant Spock to be self-deprecating in the chess scene? It seems a bit strange since no viewer would get the joke, but with all the information about him being half-human, half-alien in the episodes to follow, it could still be.
I always loved these chess games between Spock and Kirk, and the fact that Kirk usually wins, though I think it wouldn’t work like that in real life. I would expect Spock to win most games.
@74/Bibliomike: Yep, that “fed through a plate” thing was considered and dropped as impractical.
And yeah, Vina was evidently physically disabled rather than just disfigured. I guess that’s the analogy with Pike’s later plight, that the Talosian illusions give them the perception of being able to move freely and without pain, to be freed from their broken bodies and liberate their minds. But that does presume that medical science in the future is pretty helpless to treat disability, so it doesn’t hold up very well today. (Kind of silly that Pike can only beep “yes” or “no” when Stephen Hawking is still able to give eloquent lectures and guest-star on TV shows.)
@@@@@ 69 EC Spurlock
Someone beat me to it, but yeah, by the time Jeffrey Hunter died TOS was basically over. The decision of who to cast in the 2nd pilot was made years before he died.
@@@@@76 JanaJansen
Your mention of Spock and Kirk playing chess made me curious to know how many times they actually played, so I did some searching on Memory Alpha. As far as I can tell there are only two episodes where they play. Spock plays against the Enterprise computer in “Court Martial” and against Rojan in “By Any Other Name”. But he only plays Kirk in “Where No Man Has Gone Before” and “Charlie X”. In “Charlie X” Kirk does indeed checkmate Spock, but in “Where No Man Has Gone Before” he just makes a move that seems to surprise Spock. We can assume it wasn’t a checkmating move because he doesn’t announce checkmate, but also the fact that Spock begins to reach for a piece to make his next move. At this point their game is interrupted and they don’t finish. So unless my research missed something, there is only one instance of Kirk beating Spock. This surprised me a bit, but I guess it’s a case of our memory filling in things for us. Of course, we have no instances (that we see) of Spock beating Kirk, so Kirk is undefeated onscreen. :D
@78 Robert: There is also the scene in “Court Martial” where Kirk, expecting to lose his case, tells Spock something like “It’s not all bad – you might beat your next captain at chess”. This is what gives Spock the idea to play against the computer.
So, we know he usually didn’t beat Kirk.
@77: Just so, Christopher! I’ve been making the analogy to Hawking for a long time. Oh, well. When all is said and done, Trek is a period of its time, as we all are, and can only be expected to have been so prophetic (and progressive!). We can take its insights and strides toward progress, even when (maybe especially when) they are limited, and build on them. Semper reformanda…
I presume someone in tie-in fiction has retconned away why 23rd century science couldn’t do more for Pike? Those delta rays must be really, really wicked stuff…!
@78: Only two chess games! That’s really surprising. I like your observation that Kirk, onscreen, is unbeaten. And, you’re right, Spock does reach for a piece as though he’s about to make another move; and yet, in the turbolift after the commercial break, the clear implication is that Kirk won (although it’s not explicitly stated – his throat-slashing motion could’ve indicated Spock’s defeat was all but certain… but I guess that’s a discussion for next week!)
BTW, my favorite extra-canonical chess game in Trek is (if memory serves) McCoy beating Spock at a 2-D chess game where pieces are programmed to beam in at random intervals, in one of Duane’s novels (or am I conflating that with the 2-D chess scene in Crispin’s Yesterday’s Son?)
@80: Actually there’s a line in my upcoming Uncertain Logic, due out later this month, that references delta-ray-induced “lock-in” syndrome as a special problem that Federation medical science has yet to crack.
And the Diane Duane chess game with pieces beaming in was actually 4D chess, the fourth dimension being time. It was introduced in My Enemy, My Ally. The board was an 8x8x8 cube of force fields, and you could not only move pieces to any space in the board, you could move them forward in time by varying intervals (not randomly at all). So you’d have to be able to anticipate where other pieces would be several moves hence in order to time the 4-dimensional moves strategically.
And yes, there was a Spock-McCoy 2D chess scene in the beginning of Yesterday’s Son, so I guess that is what you’re thinking of.
Stephen Hawking isn’t as fluent as television would have you believe, of course. I know, shocking that tv would lie to us, but even a short speech can take him a very long time. The tv stuff is all pre-recorded lines.
If you scroll to near the bottom of this interview about the Hawking biopic it talks about his communication lag times. It is pretty severe.
@82: Interesting, Random22. I wasn’t aware. All the same, as Christopher said above, if he can teach advanced quantum physics in the 21st century, surely Christopher Pike shoudl be able to do more than “beep beep” in the 23rd!
Some other random things:
+ Why not a photograph of the Talosians in Spock’s briefing, instead of what looks like a child’s drawing of them? Budget cuts in the ship’s photgraphy unit that week? (Maybe the ship’s photographer died on Rigel VII?)
+ I wish more of the picnic scene had been left in “The Menagerie.” I think it has some great character beats for Pike: his childhood is discussed, we see flashes of his wry humor (“These headaches will be hereditary, you know”)
+ When the Keeper notes Pike’s feelings of protectiveness toward Vina, he sounds for all the world like Montgomery Burns as he says, “Excellent….”
@81: Yes, 4D chess, that’s it! Thanks. They should bring that into JJ-Trek or some future project – I’d love to see it “for real.”
Hawking is able to communicate laregly because his eyesight is relatively unaffected. I imagine if he had eye damage it would make things much harder to assemble his speech. Do we know how badly Pike’s vision was affected?
Pike’s injury is a very recent thing by the time of The Menagerie. A few months at most, because as soon as Spock learns he comes running. You can add on some time for relatively slow communications times during the 23rdC, but it is referred to as a recent injury in the script. Maybe they haven’t had enough time to get something in place for him, or the nature of his injury prevents it at the time (how stable is the injury?).
I’d specualte that there was some psychological aspect too. To go from an active man to having such a huge amount of injury would take its toll even on the strongest personality, how motivated has Pike been to learn to communicate via a different method. How motivated is he to actually talk at all? So it is possible that Pike has managed “yes” and “no” but is suffering too heavily from the life changing nature of the injury to bother to learn more. Just because you can do something, does not mean that everyone will.
There is a line in The Menagerie which suggests he’s still in the grief/denial phase when Commodore Mendez reveals they left Pike’s duty status as technically still active because they didn’t have the heart to remove him from it. It isn’t much to hang a theory on, but still…
Delta rays aside, “yes/no” questioning is a common type of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) for locked-in syndrome today. Alphabet boards are one of the first things provided for locked-in patients, and partner-assisted scanning is common, using “yes/no” eyeblinks. The assistant uses a combination of spelling and asking questions to determine what the patient wants.
All of which is to say: “yes/no” is perfectly reasonable for locked-in syndrome. Yes, there are other methods, but it’s a common starting point, and can be very efficient with the right partner/team.
Wow! Random22 and Meredith, you’ve convinced me that Pike’s condition isn’t as illogical as I assumed it must be. It seems quite a bit to “hang a theory on,” as you say, Random. Thanks.
My long-held misconceptions just keep tumbling down…!
@86: Sure, “yes/no” communication is reasonable today, but we’ve already made enormous strides from where we were 50 years ago. So where could we expect to be 250 years from now? By then, it should be possible to install Pike’s brain in an android body, or repair his damaged nerves with cloned tissue, or any number of other things that we can imagine today but Roddenberry didn’t anticipate in 1964. McCoy’s assertion that medical science was barely beginning to understand the brain sounds backward today when we have all these fancy brain-scanning technologies, and when we already have prototypes of prosthetic limbs that can be controlled by thought alone.
Plausibility of yes/no communication aside, couldn’t they have made his chair with more clear “yes” and “no” lights, instead of 1 beep for yes and 2 for no?
I can’t help but think of the South Park episode where they put the old teacher in the Pike chair contraption, and at the end ask her a question to which she answers “no,” and they say, “Yes, yes.”
I’m pretty sure this aired before 1988…
@89: Are you sure you’re not thinking of Futurama‘s “Where No Fan Has Gone Before?”
Kif: “One beep for yes, two beeps for no.”
Fry: beeps once
Zapp: “Yes. So noted. Do you plead guilty?”
Fry: beeps twice
Zapp: “Double yes! Guilty!”
@90: No, it didn’t. The Cage was only shown at some conventions with old tapes and the like, and parts of it aired during TOS original run within “The Menagerie”, but the actual episode “The Cage” was aired for the first time in 1988.
ChristopherLBennett @91- No, the reference is to Miss Claridge in the “Pre-School” episode of South Park.
@92/lordmagnusen: In fact, the reconstructed “The Cage” (the b&w/color version) was initially released on home video in 1986 in honor of the 20th anniversary. I still have my VHS copy with the box touting, “Airdate: Never shown on TV!” That was actually a selling point for the video. The 1988 airdate given above was the first time it was actually broadcast on television, though. That was the debut of the full-color edition, as part of a 2-hour special that filled a gap in TNG’s syndication schedule resulting from the 1988 writers’ strike.
The ’86 home video version had an introduction by Gene Roddenberry, shot on the movie Enterprise sets. The ’88 broadcast debut was bracketed by a special called The Star Trek Saga: From One Generation to the Next, hosted by Patrick Stewart.
@93/sps49: Then South Park was repeating Futurama‘s gag, accidentally or otherwise, since “Where No Fan Has Gone Before” came out two and a half years before that SP episode.
Ah, I missed checking any VHS releases. Cool story.
By the way, why is there an option to change the color of the text if it just shows up black anyway? I tried to set the “Airdate: Never shown on TV!” blurb to red, like it was on the VHS package, but at least in Firefox, it shows up black.
@94: I still have that particular VHS version lying around somewhere, even though I no longer own a VHS player. It mixed the original black and white footage with colored sections from The Menagerie. Definitely one of the oddest home video releases from Paramount.
But the first time I actually saw The Cage was a through rental tape that actually advertised Roddenberry’s introduction, but he was nowhere to be seen! And the episode was fully colored, instead of mixed.
correction: through a rented tape
@97/Eduardo: “It mixed the original black and white footage with colored sections from The Menagerie.”
That’s a common misconception. After all, they didn’t have computer colorization in 1966, so how could it possibly be true? “The Cage” was filmed in color. The color footage in “The Menagerie,” as I said above, is literally, physically the original film from “The Cage.” They actually cut apart the master 35mm color negative of the pilot, destroying it in its original form, in order to intercut it with the newly filmed frame material for the 2-parter. The trimmed portions of the color negative were lost, and the only surviving copy of the uncut pilot was a lower-quality 16mm black-and-white print in Roddenberry’s possession. That 16mm print was used to plug the gaps in the original footage from “The Menagerie” and reconstruct the first, hybrid release of “The Cage” in 1986. A year later, the missing color trims were found, and were used to reconstruct the entire original pilot in full color, although the non-“Menagerie” portions of the original soundtrack were still missing, so the audio is still the same hodgepodge from “The Menagerie” and the 16mm print.
So in short, color “Cage” = original, black and white “Cage” = low-quality copy.
Christopher @88 – What can I say? There are more things in heaven and earth (today) than were dreamt of in (1964) philosophy. Sabin’s oral polio vaccine had only been released two years prior. They had only just figured out that smoking was bad for you. The first angioplasty was done that year. Is it any wonder that medical technologies we have today (including forms of AAC) were still so fantastical as to fit into the concept of science fiction? Sure, they could have taken it a step further, as in 1962’s The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, but what they showed was science fiction. It sounds to me like you’re faulting them for only looking 50 years into the future instead of 300 – and maybe I’m wrong – but I’d rather focus the fact that they were right about so many technologies (which, as we know, have often been directly inspired by their imaginings) within 50 years, rather than leaping further to 300 years.
Side note about transplanting Pike’s brain into another device, à la The Brain That Wouldn’t Die – Demikhov had already tried head (not brain) transplantation on canines in the 1950s, with little success. I don’t think Roddenberry would have known about those tests, but it was more the stuff of horror than science fiction. *shudders*
@100: Of course I’m not saying they could’ve predicted how far medical technology has come so fast. I’m just saying that the story is dated when viewed today, in its medical assumptions as much as its gender roles.
@100 I basically agree, but I have to take issue with you the only just worked out smoking was bad. James the 6th and 1st of Britain had worked that out by 1604 and issued a Royal Proclamation against it (which was obviously roundly ignored) and even pointed out the dangers of passive smoking as well as dangers to the smokers own health.
@101 Oh, rats to that. I think at some point you just have to roll with it and say it was the 1960s and they did the best they could. I mean in an upcoming episode McCoy will say he needs to wait until he gets x-ray plates developed in the ship’s lab. I can’t wait for the future to see what we get hilariously wrong in current speculative fiction. It is one of the joys of it (and heartbreaks too, where is my lunar hotel guys? Or my intercontinental hovercraft and talking dolphins!).
Aaaaand I just realized I am the worst sort of nerd. A history nerd. :)
@102: And it’s interesting that smoking should come up, because one of the most progressive things Roddenberry did in “The Cage” and the rest of ST was to depict a future without tobacco. At the time, that was a radical thing to do, since smoking was incredibly ubiquitous on other contemporary shows, including ST’s sister production Mission: Impossible. And a lot of shows were sponsored by cigarette companies too, so having nonsmoking heroes was potentially a costly choice.
So Roddenberry definitely knew that smoking was unhealthy and predicted that people would eventually stop doing it. (They still drank quite heavily in TOS, though, but by TNG he tried to ditch that as well, with nobody drinking anything but synthehol. And, well, tea and water and stuff. But that’s just drinking, not drinking. English is so weird sometimes…)
@96: It shows up as black on mine too…looking at the page source, there’s no indication in the HTML that the browser is an anyway trying to change the color of that text, just bolding it. But that wouldn’t be the first problem I’ve noticed with the coding on this site. I haven’t looked at the beta site for the new version at all, but I hope when that comes out they fix a lot of these mistakes.
Super excited to see this – thanks for starting this re-watch! I have never done an official watch of the whole TOS run, even though I do own all three box sets. Grew up watching these with my family(remember how you could rent VHS episodes from Hollywood Video?? Those were our family nights…watching TOS episodes with homemade chocolate chip cookies). Anyways, this re-watch has kicked me into gear and I am finally going to watch TOS properly.
Started off and watched this episode the other night…I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before! Honestly, even though it’s an old show, I’m surprised how well it’s held up – I was expecting to be cringing a lot more than I was. Heartily enjoyed the whole episode, smiling broadly at all the familiar Trek moments(transporting down to the surface for first time! Weird alien/animal costumes! Communicator use! That printer though…*shakes head*) Anyways, my roommate walked in at the very end, “Huh, Star Trek. Where’s Shatner?” As much as I love Shatner(Kirk is my Captain), I was impressed with Pike here.
Thanks for the good analysis…I also just read all the comments…this is really adding to my enjoyment of the show. You guys are awesome.
@103: People don’t drink alcohol in TNG? I never noticed. But doesn’t Picard’s family have a vineyard? Why would they make wine if nobody drinks it?
Gee, I wouldn’t like that. I own quite a lot of wine myself.
JanaJensen @106: Well, the people on the Enterprise don’t drink it normally. It’s a big character moment in the episode where Scotty appears, when he orders a drink at the bar and then spits it out when he realizes it’s not real alcohol. They have to go into private stock to find a bottle of real alcohol.
OK, that makes sense. Poor Scotty, though :-)
@106/Jana: As I said, it was Gene Roddenberry’s desire to eliminate alcohol from TNG as he’d done with tobacco from TOS, but Roddenberry ceased being the showrunner after season 1, as his health declined. Picard’s family vineyards weren’t established until the start of season 4. (And Ten Forward and Guinan weren’t established until season 2, although Guinan mostly only served synthehol.)
Thanks for the information! I had no idea that the vineyards were introduced so late. That was the episode about Picard and his brother, after Picard had been part of the Borg, right?
^That’s right, “Family.”
@Christopher: Spanish is equally weird when it comes to “drinking”. There’s no formal word for “drinking alcohol” separate from “drinking”. There are, however, slang words for it. :)
@112: It’s the same in German. I assume it’s the same in many Earth languages.
Random22 @102: Fair point; it had only recently been heavily documented but it was known prior to that. The Surgeon General’s first warning against smoking was in 1964.
And as a professional historian, I think being a history nerd is the best kind of nerd. :)
The biggest unanswered question for me is raised by the picnic scene, and that is: what in the name of all that is holy is ‘chicken-tuna’? Coz I can’t concieve of anything that would go by that name that doesn’t make me pull a disgust-face.
Odd clash of gender messages – on one hand, massive brownie points for making number one a competent woman whose decisions and authority are in no way questioned by the men under her command, but big demerits for other stuff aforementioned and also two other bits:
* laughed hard when Colt is described as having ‘unusually strong female drives’ or something like that – the Talosians basically telling Pike she’s a bit of a goer.
* Pike says he ‘agreed’ with Vina’s reasons for staying. If he’d said he ‘accepted’ or ‘understood’ them, that would be better, but as it’s written he’s as good as saying ‘yeah, she hit every branch of the ugly tree on the way down, dude, she was really gross, you’re lucky she’s staying out of sight’. Very unfortunate!
@115: Apparently, there are some recipes for chicken/tuna salad out there. No idea if those would go together, but then, I don’t care for fish.
As for Vina, keep in mind that she seemed to be physically disabled as well as disfigured, and may have been in pain without the illusions to obscure it from her mind. In the context of “The Menagerie,” Pike agreeing with her choice to stay with the Talosians can be seen as a setup for his own decision to do the same 13 years later — though it doesn’t have the same significance within the pilot by itself.
ScottKAndrews @115 –
So I thought “well, I will search for this, surely that will take me to Memory Alpha.” I typed ‘chicken tuna’ into Google. The results were…not what I expected. Those of you seeking to learn more about ‘chicken tuna,’ don’t do it at work…
Personally, feminist that I am, I’m glad that the “Number One” character didn’t make it into the series. And not just because the actor wasn’t chosen for her acting skills. While in theory it would have been nice to have a woman as second in command, I’m too bothered by her being “the woman who is Different from all other women (who would not be up for this job), because she hangs out with guys and acts kind of like a guy and isn’t all-over feelings.” (See Kate Elliott’s essay of March 4 on this site.) That doesn’t really do a lot for the advancement of women being treated as equals, as the infamous Pike line about “a woman on the bridge” makes painfully clear. It’s more likely to reinforce the assumption that almost all women wouldn’t be up for this, while simultaneously letting the males in charge claim egalitarian cred for including this Different one. Plus, I’m always irritated by the trope of the “strong” woman character being given a gender-neutral moniker. ‘Cause if she had a woman’s name, she’d be all girly and incompetent, you know.
I am really looking forward to following along with this rewatch. In high school I stayed up late and snuck downstairs to watch TOS on some random channel at something like 2am. I’m sure I have missed episodes here and there. Not much to say about this epsidoe that wasn’t already mentioned above but I’m sure I’ll contribute more often as we continue.
@118/Saavik: You raise a good point, but I think that, compared to where gender attitudes were back in 1964, it would still have been a step forward. And maybe the idea of Number One being “different” or unfeminine would’ve evolved into something more complex over the course of the series, as the writers and the actress developed her more fully. Just imagine what D.C. Fontana could’ve done with the character over time.
@118, @120: It is a good point, but surely she would have been given a name eventually. But maybe I’m just being naive about that. I will say, when I became a Trek fan as a middle schooler who was ignorant of most things military, I did not know “Number One” was a term for an executive officer until Picard started calling Riker the same thing in TNG. I assumed she was an alien or from some society where everyone just got numbers instead of names.
That said, in his “fotonovel” comic out just this week, John Byrne doesn’t give Number One a name, either. He could just be nodding at her canonical anonymity, though. (I don’t think he named her in “Crew,” either, did he?)
@121/Bibliomike: Byrne has been consistent about avoiding a name for Number One/the Commodore in all the various comics he’s written about her (also including an appearance in Leonard McCoy, Frontier Doctor).
Other tie-ins have given her names, though. The Early Voyages comic from Marvel called her Lieutenant Commander Robbins, and once stopped just short of revealing her first name when someone called her “Eure–” and broke off. Probably “Eureka,” which could explain her preference for anonymity. In Jerry Oltion’s Pike-era stories Where Sea Meets Sky and “Conflicting Natures,” she was called Lefler, as an allusion to New Frontier‘s implication that Robin Lefler’s mother Morgan Primus, an immortal, was actually Number One (“Primus” being Latin for “Number One,” essentially). Except that doesn’t make sense, because Lefler was Robin’s father’s surname, and Morgan only acquired it through marriage some 90 years after “The Cage.” An earlier Peter David novel, The Rift, said that her name was unpronounceable. And D.C. Fontana’s own novel Vulcan’s Glory ignored the idea of “Number One” being a traditional military address and claimed that it was her actual name, as assigned by the customs of her home planet Illyria. Brad Ferguson’s A Flag Full of Stars was going to establish her name as Timothea Rogers, but the published version removed any references to Rogers being Number One.
Christopher @122 – Thanks for the chronicle of Number One’s tie-in names. Memory Beta has an interesting habit of using “Robbins” for the first part of her article, then switching to “Number One.” I suppose someone could alter that, since it’s a wiki, but I won’t presume to guess at their methodology…
I’m pretty fond of “The Cage”, since it feels more like a pilot for TNG than TOS. Pike’s demeanor seems to pre-shadow Picard’s more than Kirk’s, and the military structure seems more strict here than on Kirk’s ship.
I’m curious if Keith will be watching the Remastered versions with the new special effects, or the original effects track? The work here in replacing the matte painting of Mojave City with a CGI version is explempary; it’s a pity that they didn’t sustain that quality of work for all the remaining episodes.
@124: John, you’re right, the remastered version is quite nice. I especially like the time (it feels downright luxurious) given to the Enterprise’s approach to Talos IV after the “transparent” warp effect is done. (As for “sustaining that quality of work,” though, I think “The Cage” was one of the last ones remastered, wasn’t it?)
@122: Christopher, seconding Meredith’s thanks for the rundown of Number One’s names. I’d forgotten about the use of the title as a proper name in Vulcan’s Glory, and I even re-read it for a Trek website not too long ago (http://trekfm.squarespace.com/captains-log/2013/7/4/these-were-the-voyages-book-review-of-vulcans-glory-by-dc-fo.html – shameless plug alert). Have never read The Rift (though, being a “Cage” fan, I’ve long meant to), but the idea that her given name is unpronounceable of course makes me think of Spock’s comment to Leila in “This Side of Paradise” about his first name, “You couldn’t pronounce it.” Do we ever get a really good look at the tips of Number One’s ears underneath that long ebony hair of hers? (Retcon waiting to happen!)
I note that “The Cage” has now sailed past “The Dogs of War” to become the most-commented-upon DeCandido rewatch…
John in Canada: I’m not using the remastered versions, because I saw no reason to spend money on episodes I already had on DVD where nothing significant was changed.
Christopher: Since D.C. Fontana wrote terrible female characters, I’d rather not think about what she’d have done with Number One.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@krad: You think she would have turned her into another housefrau? :)
Re: drinking vs. “drinking”: This also applies in Russian … but I guess if it would apply anywhere, it would be Russia, ha.
I’m just glad that when they finally did make a female the First Officer, she was awesome. Too bad the same didn’t quite happen when they made a woman the Captain.
@@@@@ CLB #96 – In the context of the Read of Ice and Fire on this website, spoilers in the comments of the primary article are taboo. The custom there has been to encode spoilers in white font, so as to require highlighting to read. It seems many people have the same problem with font colors that you expressed here, and from what I understand, the solution is that, in the preview pane, you need to change the font color again, as that coding goes away for some reason. Just in case youfind yourself in the market for color changes later on in the rewatch.
ETA – of course, I just tried this trick on this post, and it didn’t work, so there must be more to it than that.
@127: I don’t know that all Fontana’s female characters were terrible (I recently rewatched “Journey to Babel” and Amanda, while completely defined by her connection to the men in her life, is nonetheless intelligent and strong-willed), but it’s true her treatment of Number One in Vulcan’s Glory doesn’t add up to much.
Bibliomike: we also have the Romulan Commander, who acts absolutely nothing like a professional soldier when confronted with Spock’s dreaminess, and Admiral Jameson’s wife.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Folks, I’m running horribly behind on the rewatch for “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” Stuff has been happening the last few days, plus writing it up is taking longer than expected (the Trivial Matters section is pretty big, for one thing). It probably won’t go up until tomorrow….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Keith @132 –
So a proxy for the viewer, then. :)
@132: Fair point, Keith – fair point!
Concerning the Romulan commander: You’re absolutely right, of course, but she still used to be one of my favourite characters when I was 12 years old. Because she was a female spaceship commander. We don’t get to see any others.
I assume that a lot of people felt the same way about her because she appears in the early novels so often.
JanaJansen: I’ll go into more depth on this when we hit “The Enterprise Incident,” but I will never, to my dying breath, ever understand the affection people have for the Romulan Commander.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Oh, krad.
Because she was a female. starship. commander. Who had a fabulously mod off-duty wardrobe (like Space Barbie!). She didn’t have much competion. Her Starfleet analog went insane with some silly revenge plot because she was not allowed to be captain because she was a woman (the the 23rd Century!). All the Starfleet women we see are pretty much just support staff (although there was a Starfleet JAG prosecutor who was a woman, right?)
Sure she turned to putty when faced with the Spock, but she was still a female. starship. commander… who presumably had someone to get her coffee and hand her reports, not vice versa. As a little girl, this was huge… letting herself be hoodwinked because her love of the Spock, not withstanding.
(Then again, I also wonder why Mara, the Klingon first officer/science office from Day ofthe Dove hasn’t attracted more adherents….)
@138/LadyBelaine: You’re right. Sure, the Commander was bad at her job because she was blinded by love and impulsive emotions, but that was how just about all women were written in TV at the time, so it didn’t seem unusual. What stood out was the part that wasn’t business as usual, the fact that she was in a position of command at all. I think it was more the idea of her that people loved than the execution, and that a lot of the fanfic and novels about her were about improving on the character, fulfilling her potential as a commanding figure in her own right rather than just a love interest for Spock. (There’s plenty to criticize about Marshak and Culbreath’s overblown Phoenix novels and their kinky sexual politics, but they were effective at portraying the Commander as a full equal to Kirk and Spock, worthy to stand alongside them as the larger-than-life champions of the galaxy.)
As for why Mara didn’t have the same impact, it’s probably because she wasn’t the one in charge. Like Number One, she made it to second-in-command, but was still both a professional subordinate and a love interest to her male commander. Which doesn’t have the same impact as actually being the commander of an entire fleet.
Also, I think Joanne Linville gave a more compelling performance than Susan Howard. She’s kind of a proto-Janeway in a way, a similar physical and vocal type to Kate Mulgrew.
Which gives me an opportunity to drag this back on topic. According to Solow and Justman, NBC loved the idea of a female first officer but didn’t think Majel Barrett was the right choice. I sometimes wonder, who among 1960s actresses would’ve been a good Number One? Harvey over on the TrekBBS, who does a lot of terrific research work with the archives of TOS documents, found a memo of casting possibilities for the first pilot, and apparently Lee Meriwether was on the short list for Number One. I think she could’ve been very good in the role. The list also includes Jeanne Bal (Nancy Crater from “The Man Trap”) and Sarah Shane, a name I’m not really familiar with.
And it has some interesting suggestions for the other characters too. Robert April/Christopher Pike could’ve ended up being played by Rod Taylor, Leslie Nielsen, Robert Loggia, Jack Lord, James Coburn, or any of various actors who later appeared on ST, including Jason Evers, Liam Sullivan, Michael Forrest, Warren Stevens, Skip Homeier, and Rhodes Reason. Candidates for Spock included DeForest Kelley (!), Rex Holman (Morgan Earp from “Spectre of the Gun”), and, intriguingly, Michael Dunn (Alexander from “Plato’s Stepchildren”). Jose Tyler could’ve been Ross Martin, Richard Jaeckel, or Bruce Dern. Boyce could’ve been James Gregory. And Jill Ireland was considered for Colt.
So, in some alternate quantum universe, Majel Barrett is remembered fondly as Catwoman! Or, maybe less fondly, as Losira.
@138 LadyBelaine: Yes! My point exactly, and you explained it far better than I could have done.
@139 Christopher: As a kid, I used to love the Phoenix novels exactly for that reason. The kinky stuff didn’t bother me until I got older.
The Romulan commander also appears (in one short scene) in Sonni Cooper’s “Black Fire”. I don’t remember if she is in one of Diane Duane’s Rihannsu books as well.
Michael Dunn as a regular character would have been great! Not at the expense of Leonard Nimoy, though.
@141/Jana: The featured Romulan commander in Diane Duane’s books, Ael, is the aunt of Linville’s Commander, who is said to have been exiled as a consequence of her failure — although later, in Margaret Wander Bonanno’s Dwellers in the Crucible, a book that acknowledges Duane’s Romulan novels as part of its continuity, the Commander is back in a position of prominence. I don’t recall whether the book says that she won her way back to status after her disgrace, or if that’s just my rationalization to reconcile them. The later Rihannsu novels established that her exile was lifted.
There’s also the infamously slashy Killing Time by Della Van Hise, in which the Commander is named Thea (“Goddess”) and is somehow the Praetor of the Romulan Empire while pretending to be male. (That book claims the Romulans are male-dominated, contradicting The Making of Star Trek, which insisted they had total gender equality.)
In the modern novel continuity, specifically the novels of Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz, the Commander appears as Liviana Charvanek (an homage to Marshak & Culbreath’s name for her, Commander Charvon) and becomes the head of imperial security.
Thank you!
She seems to have as many names as Number One :-)
Whew, I’m pretty late, but I had to comment on the inaugural rewatch.
I always enjoyed “The Cage”. I particularly enjoyed Number One as first officer (love the pic above with Number One and the landing party, with her very clearly being the one in charge of all those men.) I just watched the complete version of this episode, and was taken aback when Pike said the “woman on the bridge” comment, which he doesn’t really dial back on, even after Number One shoots him a look. 1964, to be sure, but still jarring. Equally jarring was there were no people of color on the bridge, as has already been pointed out, which I always fob off as it being 1964, but still very noticeable. Surprised to learn that NBC actually wanted an multi-ethnic cast, given the grief they would later give Nichelle Nichols.
As for the Romulan Commander, I was always pretty indifferent to her. I certainly wouldn’t be writing fanfic about her, likely for the reasons Keith is no fan of the character. Yes, it was cool seeing a female commander of a spaceship, but it goes right out the airlock for me when she starts drooling over Spock. If the Romulan Commander had been portrayed more like, say, Captain Phillipa Louvois in “Measure of a Man”, she would have been way more compelling. I think that would have worked, even for 1968 television.
So cool that we are in the pilot phase here, which is so different from the rest of the series, almost like two alternate stories or seasons unto themselves.
Back a bit off topic, but I think the reason there may not be a special word for drinking alcohol in so many languages is that until relatively recently (during the 20 century?) our beverage choices were essentially either water or some form of alcohol. And people were far more likely to drink the latter than the former.
That’s a good point. Sometimes not even water, since it was not safe many times.
So today I watched the “Extended Edition” of “The Cage” on the season 3 blu-ray set and discovered it is the mixed b&w/color version hosted on VHS by Gene Roddenberry in 1987. I was agog (though I shouldn’t have been) that he took credit for casting a multiracial cast *in this episode.* And the editors of his framing segments obliged by dragging in one of the two shots of the Asian transporter technician (clearly subordinate to one of the many white males in the crew).
Why did this not bother me when I was younger? Egads.
Always wanted to watch ToS and here I get the chance. I’m curious as to why you started with “The Cage,” though. I am so unaware of things in the Star Trek universe that I never knew that Chris Pike was the original captain. If I want to watch the whole series, should I start with the first episode or go in a different order?
I knew it would be hokie, but not that bad. But again, along with the “no females on the captain’s deck” comment, it is 1964 we’re talking about. Interesting first episode to watch.
@148: As explained in Keith’s intro for this rewatch, he’s doing the series in production order, so naturally the first pilot comes first.
I find that production order is generally better. It rarely matters where story continuity is concerned, since the episodes were designed to be aired out of order, but particularly in the early first season, production order avoids some minor continuity glitches and gives a better sense of how the characters and the production evolved over time.
@Christopher –
Thank you. Yeah, I had to go back and read the intro and it does make sense. Just finished ‘The Cage’ today and I’m on ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before.’
Hey everybody, I just found this article and subsequent comments thread today. I realize the last comment was posted over 2 weeks ago, and I guess this is a plug of sorts, but I thought you might like to know that I recently had the great pleasure of conducting an all-new, all-Star-Trek interview with Laurel Goodwin, which appears in the still-current “Winter” issue of VideoScope magazine. It’s a lengthy, candid, and entertaining conversation with Laurel as she reminisces about her experiences both good and bad — mostly good — while making the very first Star Trek. Check it out if you get the chance.
@151/Mark: Thanks for plugging your article! It doesn’t happen to be available online does it?
Mike, no, sorry to say it’s not available online at this point. Videoscope has a website (http://www.videoscopemag.com) but it’s just a “storefront” type website, with very little of the actual magazine content available (you can see the cover of the issue there). If I ever get my personal webpage up and going, I plan to offer copies of the magazines in which my articles and interviews appear for very low prices (essentially the cost of postage), but that hasn’t happened yet. Hope you get a chance to read Laurel’s interview — I think you’d enjoy it!
@153/Mark: I’m sure I would. Let us know if and when we can order issues from you.
I’ve always suspected that Vina is much more complicit and less a victim then she chooses to appear.
No doubt she did resist and try to escape at first. Eventually the Talosians, who clearly have no sadistic tendencies, let her see there’s nowhere to escape to and her physical condition makes reality undesirable. Vina resigns herself to her fate and learns to enjoy living out her wildest fantasies. The Talosians are impressed by her imagination and adaptability and treat her more like a fellow intelligent being. She learns about their problem and by this time she so identifies with them that she sincerely doesn’t see a problem with founding a human support colony on the surface. It may even be her idea.
It’s possible she still doesn’t really see the problem but chooses to go along with the other humans since THEY think it matters so much.
Watched the episode for the very first time just now (it never aired in German TV I think?), shall be interesting to see how it goes with the next episode when I have to transition from the German voice acting I’m used to to the original voices … And, uh, I’ll just ignore all the things I’ve learned about physics and astronomy as I re-watch.
Bit of a shame they decided to change the uniforms imho.
Anyway, enjoyed the post very much, and actually the comments section just as much! It’s super civil and polite, and I’m learning a lot of little tidbits and details I didn’t know about!
Edit: Also, Number One has the most awesome nail polish. Just saying.
@156/daswoli – I agree with you about the uniforms. I liked that everyone wore pants, and I like the “turtleneck” look. If I had sewing skills, I’d make myself a sweatshirt that looked like a “Cage”-era uniform.
daswolli and MikePoteet: With you both on the uniforms. I always much much much preferred the turtlenecks used in this episode and “Where No Man Has Gone Before” to the ones they eventually went with.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
This is my cue to say that I love the TOS uniforms more than anything. Seeing a photo of the TOS bridge with its red doors and handrail and the crew’s colourful uniforms is enough to put me into a good mood. I also love how non-military they look.
That said, I would have liked Discovery to use the “Cage” uniforms. At least they look comfortable, and still pretty non-military. I can easily imagine a bunch of scientists in space wearing them by choice.
Actually, I see similarities between the away team jackets and the DSC uniforms.
@160/MaGnUs – I can see a slight echo of “The Cage” landing party jackets (those are some sharp jackets, too), but I see a closer similarity to the jacket Kirk is wearing here in Star Trek Beyond (which makes sense, since DSC, while not in the Kelvin timeline, seems to be going for the Kelvin timeline aesthetic vibe):
Or maybe that’s what you meant?
@158/krad and @159/Jana – You both may already know this, but Bryan Fuller, according to EW, originally wanted DSC to go with “more subdued” versions of the TOS uniforms. If that doesn’t describe the uniforms of the two TOS pilots, I don’t know what does! So sounds like he would agree with you.
Funny to say, while my favorite Trek uniforms are still the (admittedly pretty militaristic) TWOK-era uniforms, it took the JJ movies to get me to really appreciate the TOS style for the first time. I liked the way they were reinvented for the Kelvin timeline, and that made me enjoy the original all the more, too.
@161/Mike: Yes, that totally sounds like the uniforms of the TOS pilots. That would have been perfect! What a pity.
I agree that the DSC uniforms are somewhat similar to Kirk’s jacket in Beyond, especially the colours. But while I don’t like the DSC uniforms, I like the jacket. It looks more relaxed, more like Picard’s jacket in the later TNG seasons. Since many of the other characters still wear TOS-style uniforms, the overall impression remains colourful, and it mostly makes for more variety, which is nice. Fittingly, it also looks like a motorcycle jacket.
@161/JanaJensen – I hadn’t thought about it but, yes, of course you’re right: It does look like a motorcycle jacket!
I have been watching TNG with my daughter and we’re in the fifth season… I really like the look of Picard’s jacket, but I keep wondering why he’s wearing it indoors. Is he cold? Oh, well, one of those things.
I really don’t have strong feelings about the DSC uniforms. My initial take was they looked goofy (why is most of their color under the armpits, down the side? To hide sweat? <g>), but then I just kind of stopped thinking about it. I expect they’ll end up growing on me. I thought the 1701-D was the ugliest ship I’d ever seen in 1987, and now I own three small desktop models of it. ;)
@163/Mike: Hey, same here – I’m watching TNG with my daughter, and we just started the sixth season.
“I really like the look of Picard’s jacket, but I keep wondering why he’s wearing it indoors.” – All the uniforms have jackets. In “Ensign Ro”, Ro gives hers to a refugee child, and you can see what she’s wearing underneath. I see Picard’s jacket as TNG’s version of Kirk’s wraparound tunic – an alternative uniform only the captain is wearing. I like the variety.
“I thought the 1701-D was the ugliest ship I’d ever seen in 1987 […].” – I still find it ugly :). Also the computer displays with the rounded edges, and the makeup the women are wearing. Nevertheless, I like TNG. So I hope I’ll like DSC too.
@161 – Mike: I meant The Cage uniforms, but of course, the similary is greater with the Kelvin ENT-era jackets.
I’m also in the process of Trek watching with my son, we recently started DS9 season 7 and VOY season 5.
@165/MaGnUs: If you’re talking about the Beyond blue jackets with yellow shoulder patterns as worn by Kirk and Chekov, those aren’t ENT-era; they’re field jackets that came from the Enterprise‘s escape-pod survival kits. Kirk and Chekov donned them after landing in their escape pods, well before they discovered the Franklin. The others didn’t wear them because they didn’t use escape pods — Sulu and Uhura were captured, Spock and McCoy commandeered a Swarm ship, and Scotty rode down in a torpedo casing.
The ENT-era Franklin uniforms are represented by the gray jumpsuit Spock wears after being beamed to the Franklin and getting medical treatment. They’re basically a variation on the Earth Starfleet blue jumpsuits from ENT.
You’re right, my mistake. I originally knew that they were from the escape pod, but then someone mentioned them being from the Franklin (or so I thought), and I got mixed up. Thanks.
What’s especially fascinating is that Pike never once gives in to the illusion. He fights the Rigellian because the warrior attacks him, but he only defends himself, never once going on the offensive.
I wouldn’t rule that out at all.
That’s actually metallic embellishment that strikes me as perhaps over ornate for working uniforms.
Late to the thread, but what’s the story on this episode’s startling similarity to the Twilight Zone episode “People Are Alike All Over”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_Are_Alike_All_Over
In that episode, a human spacefarer winds up in an alien zoo, and the aliens send Susan Oliver (“Teenya”) to be his companion and gain his trust.
I’d call it a coincidence and a believably reused trope, were it not for using the same actress.
@171/tjareth: Probably no story behind it — like you say, it’s a trope that’s been used multiple times before and since. And casting decisions are a separate process from writing decisions, so Oliver’s presence in both could be a coincidence too, or a matter of an actress with a known skill set being cast more than once in similar roles. The timing certainly allows for Roddenberry to have been influenced by the TZ episode, consciously or unconsciously — or by “Brothers Beyond the Void,” the Paul W. Fairman short story it was adapted from — but I can’t find any sources claiming that he was.
Really, Oliver aside, they’re pretty different stories. In “Alike,” the zoo revelation is the surprise twist at the end, while in “The Cage” Pike’s capture is the first-act cliffhanger and the story is mainly about how he escapes. So at most it was only a partial influence.
Sci Fi Shows Are Alike All Over :)
Hi! Five years late to the party but want to contribute anyway. I am going to unload some head canon theories here. First is that Number One studied on Vulcan and she and Spock joined Starfleet together. Spock was experimenting with being more open to his human side. Hence the awkward facial expressions and “THE WOMEN!” I will come back to this in AMOK TIME.
Like the cast, the uniforms, so it is a”what might have been.”
@Ron, you might very much enjoy the Short Trek titled Q&A. It doesn’t match your headcanon exactly, but it does delve into an affinity between them.
I have to disagree with some of Krad’s opinions. I actually liked the title of this episode, I liked its simplicity even if it was unoriginal.
I also really liked Jeffrey Hunter’s performance. Even though he came across as a little stiff and crotchety, it made sense to me considering he was at the end of his rope and at odds with his career. Now the question of the tone of the episode possibly contributing to it being rejected as a pilot, that part I agree with even though I personally liked Hunter’s portrayal of Pike.
Every time I watch this ST Pilot, I can’t help but think we Moderns are becoming more and more like the Talosians in that many of us are spending far too much time living other peoples’ lives through electronic media (e.g., movies, tv shows, infomercials, reality shows & blogs).
@177/Paladin: After this last year, I have no sympathy for the old “electronic media are bad” argument. It was the Internet that saved us during the pandemic lockdowns, that let us keep doing our jobs and getting our groceries and staying connected to our loved ones when we were stuck in our homes. We were able to carry on with so much of our regular lives in a way that would’ve been impossible during the pandemics of centuries past. Electronic media don’t prevent us from living or making connections; they’re just an advancement in how we do it.
Besides, there were people who insisted that radio or the printing press would destroy society. It flatters people’s egos to believe that the imminent end of civilization as we know it is occurring in their generation, and it always has.
@178 ChristopherLBennett
“It flatters people’s egos to believe that the imminent end of civilization as we know it is occurring in their generation, and it always has.”
True; but, I suppose, eventually one of those pessimistic generations will actually be correct… :D
Funny, I thought last year proved both good and bad about electronic media. Good in how it helped people stay connected with work and loved ones. Bad in how rapidly it was used to spread misinformation concerning the pandemic, politics and so on, much to the fulfillment of people’s egos in that regard as well. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg in how the Internet can negatively affect our minds.
It’s still very much a mixed bag, and no antiquated ballyhooing of an “information superhighway” utopia can change that anymore. We’re all lined up at the trough and we’re going to have learn how to adjust our individual diets accordingly.
@180/HeckFire: Everything has its positive and negative aspects. That’s why I have such contempt for stories that say any new technology has only negative aspects and will destroy us if we don’t abandon it completely. Every innovation is met with the same predictable, foolish fears, and yet those fears eventually fade when reality shows that the positive potentials outweigh, or at least balance, the negative ones. The solution is not to demonize new technologies and give into superstitious fear of change; the solution is to embrace the change and take responsibility for bringing it about in the most positive way possible, for regulating and minimizing the negative aspects as much as possible. We didn’t abandon cars or planes after the first crash; we made them safer.
I’m not a Luddite. I think the computer and the internet are wonderful tools. Do using these tools have more serious health and fitness ramifications? I know so. Since the advent of the internet, most of the persons on whom I have performed fitness assessments*, who were born after 1970, tend to be far less fit than those who were born before 1970.**
*I’ve been a master trainer for over 20 yrs and a fitness professional for over 40 yrs.
**I’ve performed thousands of assessments on thousands of people from all walks of life using nationally and globally recognized fitness tests and norms).
@182: The question should read: Do overusing these tools . . . .
@183/Paladin: Conversely, I feel I’m getting more exercise since I started reading e-books on my phone, since I can walk around while I read without having to worry about staying near a light source. Like I said, the fact that something has negative aspects does not erase the fact that it also has positive aspects. Technology can be misused, but it can also be beneficial. I say it’s more constructive to emphasize and encourage the good, since just complaining about the bad doesn’t make it go away.
@184/CLB: Agreed.
@182 – Paladin Burke: The thousands of people… from how many different countries in the world? How many thousands in total? What percentage is that of global population? Is it a statistically significant sample? Was it only people who sought out your services for those assessments?
@182 Paladin Burke,
its a myth the luddites were against all technology, or against new technology. Their problem was not the technology, but rather its use. They burned the workshops of the super exploitative bosses, that was the technology which was burnt. Ned Ludd’s army and queen Mab’s mob, were the English working class self-organized in a guerrilla warfare with their bosses, nothing more and nothing less.
Now, on topic to Star Trek, How much of the Cage and the Menagerie is changed with Pike’s return to the place in Discovery? I think the ending is made more poignant, but was wondering if anyone had any thoughts to share here?
‘The Cage’ is a fascinating time capsule (the earliest incarnation of our beloved ‘Star Trek’), but as science fiction entertainment, it’s rather problematic. It’s slow, plodding and often makes no sense. My fundamental problem with this pilot (and the subsequent ‘Menagerie’) is – just what in hell did the Talosians really want?? They have superpowers and can create any illusion they want – so why would they need two humans (Pike and Vina) to procreate a new race of people on Talos? To do what exactly? When you’re as intellectually advanced as the Talosians, there would appear to be no need to even deal with mortals anymore. Still, I liked the creepy big-headed Talosians and Vina was incredibly lovely. My ex-wife said Pike was very handsome and masculine, but dull and unfunny – I guess Kirk was a big improvement.
@188/Palash: The idea was that the Talosians had become so addicted to their mental illusions that they’d become physically frail and decadent. They were basically a whole society of couch potatoes. What they wanted was to breed a slave labor force to rebuild their civilization.
In The Cage/Menagerie the Keeper is sometimes referred to as “Magistrate.” I realize the episodes didn’t have time to go deeply into Talosian society, but are we to infer that the Keeper is the ruler of that underground society and he (she?) is also some kind of “judge”?
@190/Palash: In Ancient Rome, a magistrate was basically an elected executive, or a ruler with executive, judicial, and some legislative power all in one. It’s from the root meaning “master,” so its intrinsic meaning isn’t specifically judicial; that’s just the way it’s come to be used in modern times. Presumably the Talosian usage was meant to be closer to it original sense — the Magistrate is the ruler, period, and “Keeper” is just Pike’s nickname for him based on the zoo analogy.
@178/ChristopherLBennett:
“It was the Internet that saved us during the pandemic lockdowns, that let us keep doing our jobs and getting our groceries and staying connected to our loved ones when we were stuck in our homes.”
It was essential workers, not just the Internet, who enabled people to get groceries while staying home.
@192/Anthony: Yes, of course that’s the case, but it just wasn’t the topic under discussion at that point. Acknowledging one thing does not mean one doesn’t value other things. It just means that different conversations are about different subjects.
Having watched this episode again recently, I realized what it lacks: a sense of humor! The best ‘Trek’ episodes – indeed, the best of any sci-fi – includes some laughs and moments of levity, even in the grimmest of storylines. ‘The Cage’ does not have even one moment of humor! Maybe Dr Boyce was supposed to serve as a kind of “comic relief” but the actor playing him just looked and acted too severe, with no warmth at all. Thus, this episode REALLY needed a dose of McCoy!
@194/Palash: In “The Cage”‘s defense, science fiction TV at the time was almost invariably children’s programming, with anthologies like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits being the only exceptions. ST was Roddenberry’s attempt to prove to network execs that science fiction could be taken seriously as drama. So it’s understandable that he minimized the humor in the pilot. Though maybe he did realize he overdid it, since there were more light moments in the second pilot and the series.
Palash: Yeah, that’s the big problem with “The Cage” is that it’s so dour. The lighter touch of “Where No Man Has Gone Before” was a lot more compelling viewing…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’ve been doing a slow rewatch of Star Trek Strange New Worlds in preparation for that show’s return this year. I was about to start “Among the Lotus Eaters,” the episode that follows up on the Rigel VII attack, when I decided that it would be fun to revisit “The Cage” beforehand (in the same way I did prior to the Discocery episode that had that ship and crew returning to Talos IV). It was interesting to try and build the bridge between this episode and the people we see in SNW.
One thing I definitely noted was the similarity between the self doubt that Pike experiences in this pilot episode and that which occurs in the self-titled SNW pilot – and it makes me wonder what might have happened in the six months or so between the end of discovery Season Two and the beginning of SNW to get Pike rattled again. Especially since Pike is raring to go at the end of DSC season 2. Seems to me there would be ample room for a novelist to get in there and bridge that gap and explain why Amin (the navigator in DSC season 2) and the previous chief engineer are gone.
With regard to Rigel VII, there seems to be a disconnect between this episode and “Lotus Eaters,” in that (other than the three dead), Spock is implied to be the most seriously injured of the crewmen who went to Rigel VII in “Lotus Eaters,” in that he was said by Pike in that episode to have been “bleeding out,” but in “The Cage,” he’s just walking around with an inconsistent limp. Also, “The Cage” states that there are other crewmen “in need of hospitalization,” which is why the ship is going to the Vega Colony. “Lotus Eaters” has Pike saying that they were going to the Vega Colony to save Spock. Unless Spock was slowly bleeding to death during “The Cage,” that’s quite an inconsistency. Three deaths isn’t nothing, but “The Cage” implies a lot more wounded remain, which makes me wonder just how big the initial landing party.
Obviously, there are going to be differences in characterization with 50 years’ distance between productions – but it was also a little surprising to me to see little nods here and there to things mentioned in “The Cage” in “Lotus Eaters” that maybe aren’t so obvious. One big thing I noted was in a conversation that Number One has with Pike, she notes his tendency to pull back from romantic relationships when they get serious. The way Rebecca Romijn delivers the line makes me wonder whether Number One and Pike maybe tried to get something started in the wake of the Keeper outing the fact that she fantasizes about him.
During today’s watch of “The Cage,” I also noticed something funny, in that Pike says in this episode that he “can’t get used to having a woman on the bridge” and that Number One is “different.” Sexism aside, there is another dark-haired woman on the bridge, manning one of the stations. Is she “different” too? Or can Pike “not get used to” her either?
One thing that always surprises me when rewatching “The Cage” is how much alike Jeffrey Hunter and Anson Mount look. That said, there’s an almost standoffish quality that Hunter has that they wisely changed for Pike in the new show. We do see Pike at the end of “The Cage” becoming reengaged with his crew – but in no way is be the laid back guy that Anson Mount’s version of the character is (or even the early Kirk from “Where No Man Has Gone Before”).
Lastly, in watching this episode, my 12-year-old daughter and I had a discussion about whether the episode has an ableist perspective or not. Vina tells Pike at the end that the Talosians rebuilt her after the crash and that “everything works” – but it certainly doesn’t appear to be working well. She winces with every step, which would appear to imply that while everything does work, she could be in constant pain without the intercession of the Talosians to dampen it. Yes, Pike does ask the Talosians to give her “beauty” back, but there is clearly more that the Talosians are giving her than that. That’s one thing that aggravated me a little in Vina’s appearance on Discovery, in that they minimized the damage inflicted from the crash in a view we got of her “real” self (if memory serves).
It’s worth noting that Pike’s “woman on the bridge” line was cut out of “The Menagerie” and thus is not canonical, since “The Cage” was a home-video restoration decades later rather than part of the series proper.
As for Pike’s standoffishness in “The Cage,” the pilot was meant to show him at his lowest point, struggling with depression, so it didn’t represent who he would normally be. And there are 2-3 years between “The Cage” and Discovery season 2, so there’s room for Pike to have evolved in the interim.
And yes, “The Cage” and especially “The Menagerie” are very ableist, saying that it’s better to live a lie than to live with a disability.
I always took “The Cage” as the unabridged version of the events the Talosians showed the crew in “The Menagerie.” There’s nothing in it that directly contradicts “The Menagerie.”
I guess I can see your point about living a lie rather than living with a disability – but I always viewed it as more of a pain management type situation for both Pike and Vina rather than simple zoning out.
The point is that since it isn’t strictly part of the series, we’re not obligated to accept the parts of it that weren’t in “The Menagerie.” Pike’s line about women on the bridge is impossible to reconcile with his modern portrayal in SNW, and since it isn’t part of the final, broadcast version of the episode, we don’t have to, because it’s essentially a deleted scene.
Of course, there are plenty of contradictions within canon itself, and we can always choose to disregard the earlier version in favor of the later version — e.g. disregarding “James R. Kirk” and Data being “Class of ’78” at the Academy. This is all just made up, not a documentary, so we can choose to play along when the creators change their minds. But in this case, the line was cut out of the final edit of the story, i.e. the “Menagerie” 2-parter, which tells us that the creators themselves decided they didn’t want to keep it in.
The other thing in the restored version of “The Cage” that does contradict TOS is the depiction of the ship turning translucent when it goes into “time warp” (represented by moving stars being superimposed over a shot of the bridge). That was also cut out of “The Menagerie,” because it was abandoned in the series proper.
“I guess I can see your point about living a lie rather than living with a disability – but I always viewed it as more of a pain management type situation for both Pike and Vina rather than simple zoning out.”
Many disabilities involve living with pain, but people can learn to manage their pain and still engage with the real world and lead productive lives. Pike and Vina were essentially returning to lifelong imprisonment by their Talosian captors, implying that it’s better to be a slave with the illusion of health than to be free with a disability — rather a large exception to the primary point of the story, which is that humans can’t bear to live in captivity. If humans don’t belong in captivity, yet disabled people are better off in captivity, what can that be taken to imply about the humanity of disabled people? Surely Roddenberry didn’t consciously intend that, but the whole problem with prejudices is that they’re often unrecognized.