“The Cage”
Written by Gene Roddenberry
Directed by Robert Butler
Original Pilot
Production episode: 1
Original air date: October 4, 1988
Star date: Unknown
Mission summary
Without any helpful narration over the opening credits, or even some kind of “captain’s log,” it’s hard to tell just what’s going on here. This ship, which is called U.S.S. Enterprise, seems to be on a mission in space. The duration of its voyage and its purpose is unclear, but my instincts tell me the crew is seeking out new life and new civilizations, or vice versa, as the case might be. But they’re certainly going where no one has gone before.
Anyway, whoever these people are, they’re disconcerted because an invisible something is heading right for them. They’re on a collision course with… a radio wave? “An old-style distress signal” to be precise, which has been altered to be really menacing, just to get their attention. It’s a message from a downed ship, the S.S. Columbia, which crashed in an unexplored star system eighteen years ago. There’s a chance that some of the crew survived if they made it to Talos IV, a Class-M planet that can support human life. The pointy-eared science officer seems eager to check it out, but the captain Spock-blocks him: unless they have evidence that the Columbia crew is alive, they aren’t going to waste any time on them. It’s more important to get to the Vega Colony to get medical help for the injured Enterprise crew members. Oh well, perhaps another time.
The captain excuses himself and heads to his quarters. He calls for Dr. Boyce and makes himself comfy on his bed to wait for him. The doctor enters a moment later with a medical bag and starts mixing him a martini while they have a friendly chat about what a disaster their last mission was. The captain whines about how hard his job is; he lost his favorite yeoman and two crew members in an ambush on Rigel VII, and seven others were injured.
CAPTAIN: I’m tired of being responsible for two hundred and three lives. I’m tired of deciding which mission is too risky and which isn’t, and who’s going on the landing party and who doesn’t, and who lives… and who dies.
He considers resigning and going back home to ride some horses and have a picnic, or become an Orion trader. Boyce is skeptical. But there’s no time for dreaming of different lives when Mr. Spock calls to inform him they’ve received another message: there are survivors on Talos IV after all. Awesome! Time for a field trip.
They head to Talos at “time warp factor 7,” which sounds pretty fast, implied by an overlay of stars zipping by while they stare at the viewscreen and wait for their arrival. Once the ship reaches orbit, the captain leaves his female first office, Number One, in charge while the boys head down to the planet’s surface to investigate. She’s disappointed, but he claims she’ll be more helpful onboard because she’s the “most experienced officer.” Whatever.
The members of the landing party equip themselves for the excursion, then stand on a platform in a room. Two guys operate a console and the people on the platform freeze then dissolve in a sparkling light. They reappear on a rocky terrain, somehow transported via this light beam to the planet’s surface. Nifty. Seems like the only way to travel.
They split up and wander around, because that’s always a good idea, poking at the only natural life: some odd plants that tremble and make tones. Spock is somewhat delighted by them. Then they discover an encampment of old dudes in rags, and one lovely young blonde woman who’s tarted up in a tight blouse and a grass skirt-thing.
While three pale humanoids with big heads and shiny silver robes observe the proceedings on a monitor, Captain Christopher Pike introduces himself and learns these guys are scientists from the “American Continent Institute.” He’s only got eyes for the woman though. The group’s leader, Dr. Haskins, presents her:
This is Vina. Her parents are dead. She was born almost as we crashed.
TMI? Pike’s congenial nature just provokes personal outbursts like that; Vina follows up with her best pickup line, “You appear to be healthy and intelligent, Captain. A prime specimen.” She probably says that to all the young men who visit her planet, but it works. Pike follows her to the top of a rock outcropping to learn their “secret.” He doesn’t get what’s so interesting about it until she vanishes and a hidden door in the rock appears. The big-headed aliens ambush the captain. They knock him unconscious with a weird ray and drag him inside. His crew rushes to his aid but the doors close and their laser guns are unable to blast through the rock. Spock calls up to the ship to report: “It’s a trap!”
Pike wakes up on a cushy bed and soon discovers he’s in a glass-enclosed cell in what appears to be an underground menagerie of strange creatures. His captors arrive to gawk at him. He understands everything they’re saying as they talk about him telepathically, but they don’t address him directly. The one with the biggest head, the Magistrate, treats him like nothing more than an interesting specimen to experiment on.
Back on Enterprise, Number One debriefs the landing party. Boyce has pretty much nailed the sitch and shares it with those having trouble following along:
It was a perfect illusion. They had us seeing just what we wanted to see, human beings who’d survived with dignity and bravery, everything entirely logical, right down to the building of the camp, the tattered clothing, everything. Now let’s be sure we understand the danger of this. The inhabitants of this planet can read our minds. They can create illusions out of a person’s own thoughts, memories, and experiences, even out of a person’s own desires. Illusions just as real and solid as this tabletop and just as impossible to ignore.
Spock cautions against antagonizing the Talosians. He knows his match when he sees it, and worries they’re powerful enough to “swat” Enterprise like a fly. Number One decides to try using more force to break into the hidden elevator in the rock.
Meanwhile, the games begin on Talos IV: the Magistrate creates an illusion for Pike based on his “recent death struggle”: the captain finds himself back on Rigel VII, just outside the nearest Medieval Times. Vina is there too, doing a passable impression of a damsel in distress. Pike figures he’s probably just imagining all of this in his cage while she eggs him on. A big creature attacks them and as they fend it off, she urges him to kill it. He does so reluctantly–accidentally might be more accurate. And… they find themselves in his cell again. She’s slipped into something a little more comfortable and throws herself at him until she realizes those creepy eggheads are watching them. Always watching. Once they depart, Pike gets down to business.
PIKE: Why are you here?
VINA: To please you.
PIKE: Are you real?
VINA: As real as you wish.
PIKE: No, no. No, that’s not an answer. I’ve never met you before, never even imagined you.
VINA: Perhaps they made me out of dreams you’ve forgotten.
PIKE: What, and dress you in the same metal fabric they wear?
VINA: I have to wear something, don’t I? I can wear whatever you wish, be anything you wish.
She might be trying a little too hard, agitated and visibly anxious because Pike isn’t tearing her clothes off. Another captain might be all over that (cough Kirk cough) but not Pike–he’s only interested in pumping Vina (for information, you guys) about his keepers.
Up on the planet’s surface, Number One and her team set up a mighty laser cannon tied into the ship’s power. They fire on the door in the rock, but the fierce beam has no apparent effect. It should have blown the hell out of it, and Boyce suggests that they did but they can’t see it. Damn illusions!
Vina decides to ply Pike with exposition, and he plays along. If she answers some questions, maybe–just maybe–he’ll let her please him in other ways. No promises. He interrogates her about the Talosians’ abilities and she confirms they can’t directly control his mind, but they can influence his actions by punishing him. She also fills him in on how their heads got so big: they destroyed their planet centuries ago and retired underground to improve their minds to the point where they can build incredible illusions. But as they learned, it’s a trap!
VINA: Because when dreams become more important than reality, you give up travel, building, creating. You even forget how to repair the machines left behind by your ancestors. You just sit, living and reliving other lives left behind in the thought record.
PIKE: Or sit probing minds of zoo specimens like me.
VINA: You’re better than a theatre to them. They create the illusion for you, they watch you react, feel your emotions. They have a whole collection of specimens, descendants of life brought back long ago from all over this part of the galaxy.
PIKE: Which means they had to have more than one of each animal.
Pike now realizes his dark purpose: to breed with Vina and have lots of human babies to serve the Talosians. But he’s still convinced that Vina is an illusion, so he wonders where they’re going to find a woman for him. Vina tells him she’s real enough and then she says those magic three words: “Adam and Eve.” At that, her keepers decide she’s shared enough and she begins writhing on the bed and shrieking in pain as they punish her. She disappears, possibly to a cornfield, leaving only her shiny dress behind. That’s unusually cruel: wherever she is now, she’s bound to catch her death of cold.
But just when Pike thinks he’s getting a little peace and quiet, another Talosian shows up. This one wants Pike to consume “a nourishing protein complex,” or else. Just think about all those starving children in Miri’s neck of the woods! When this fails to persuade the captain to eat his vegetables, the Talosians send him to hell: literally. Writhing in pain surrounded by fire and brimstone, they force him to relieve a “fable” he once heard in childhood. (Trivia: This scene was later recycled for audience reaction shots to A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.) Pike is not subdued, however, and the punishment just pisses him off further. He launches himself at the cell wall and startles the egghead. That’s weird. Something about the primitive emotion of hatred and anger seems to block their telepathic ability. This gets filed away for later.
But back on the farm–wait, farm? Pike appears in a pastoral setting with his old horse, Tango, and Vina, roleplaying his wife. He always wanted to go home, right? But it doesn’t sit right with him. It’s what he wanted, and yet he wants more. Then things start to get freaky when Vina starts talking about their prospective children, and feigning “headaches” whenever he asks her about reality:
PIKE: These headaches, they’ll be hereditary you know. Would you wish them on a child or a whole group of children?
Oh right, the whole breeding a race of slaves thing. Pike won’t let this go, though, and tries to find out why that Talosian was startled by his outburst. Vina admits, reluctantly, that “primitive” emotions can block the Talosians’ powers. But she warns him that he can’t keep it up for long, and year after year, they beat you down until you have nothing left in you to fight them.
This isn’t really getting Pike “in the mood,” so Vina rethinks her tactics:
VINA: I’m beginning to see why none of this has worked for you. You’ve been home, and fighting as on Rigel. That’s not new to you, either. A person’s strongest dreams are about what he can’t do. Yes, a ship’s captain, always having to be so formal, so decent and honest and proper. You must wonder what it would be like to forget all that.
And suddenly, Pike is reclining and eating in a hedonistic paradise, as Vina, this time a green-skinned Orion slave girl, dances for him. Mildly interested, Pike watches her for several minutes before heading into a side chamber to look for an exit. No time for love, green goblin: he’s only got one thing on his mind, and it’s escape.
Meanwhile, Number One is leading an away team to beam into the Talosian compound. She, a female yeoman, and four men prepare to beam down. But once they engage the transporter only the women disappear! They have beamed directly into Pike’s little cell, and Vina is outraged. She was so close! The female crewmembers quickly find that neither their phasers nor their communicators work here beneath the surface. The Magistrate returns and explains that because Pike is taking it a little slow, he now has a choice of women. Number One is intelligent and has fantasized about him; the yeoman is young, with “strong female drives”; and then there’s Vina, who was an adult 18 years ago when the ship crashed, so now she must be…
Pike won’t play that game. He fills his mind with images of violence and hatred to try and break through them. But again, the eggheads inflict physical pain until he collapses to the floor.
Later that evening, when they appear to be sleeping, the Magistrate sneaks in through an air duct to try and collect their phasers. But Pike sleeps with one eye open and grabs the Magistrate by the neck. A-ha! The Magistrate projects himself as a poorly costumed monster, but Pike threatens to kill him if he keeps that little game up. Unfortunately, the Enterprise in orbit has completely lost power in its attempt to escape the star system, and is now at the mercy of the Talosians, just as they are. Will Pike put his ship at risk? The Talosians use his delay in mulling everything over as an opportunity to scan the ship’s computers and download a backup of the entire history of the human race.
Relenting a bit, Pike loosens his grip… But why would they want the phasers? Unless… Pike shoots through the wall. The gun doesn’t seem to have done any damage, but he demands the Magistrate show him what is really before him: a huge, busted hole in the wall. Victory! They escape, with the Magistrate as a kind of prisoner, and head up above where Number One did in fact blow an enormous size of wall off from the complex with her laser cannon. It had been open the whole time and they never knew!
On the surface, Number One makes contact with the ship. Pike offers to stay with Vina if the egghead will let the other two women go, but Number One is completely squicked by the idea of breeding an (inbred) race of slaves and sets her phaser to overload. In moments, it will explode, killing them all. They’d rather be dead than taken prisoner. Vina realizes that they’re serious and decides to join them–if the Talosians had even one human, they might try again.
The Magistrate is absolutely stunned. He assimilates the ship’s databanks and makes a startling discovery:
MAGISTRATE: We had not believed this possible. The customs and history of your race show a unique hatred of captivity. Even when it’s pleasant and benevolent, you prefer death. This makes you too violent and dangerous a species for our needs.
VINA: He means that they can’t use you. You’re free to go back to the ship.
PIKE: And that’s it? No apologies? You captured one of us, threatened all of us.
TALOSIAN: Your unsuitability has condemned the Talosian race to eventual death. Is this not sufficient?
MAGISTRATE: No other specimen has shown your adaptability. You were our last hope.
PIKE: But wouldn’t some form of trade, mutual co-operation?
MAGISTRATE: Your race would learn our power of illusion and destroy itself too.
Point. Well, at least they can all go home. All except Vina. The Talosians transform her into a misshapen, scarred, and wretched older woman. Her true face. She was horribly scarred in the crash and the Talosians, having never seen a human being before, did not know how to put her back together. Vina looks ashamed and heartbroken, and Pike can’t bear to see her suffer. He asks if they’ll give her back her illusion of beauty, and the Magistrate agrees. He creates from Pike a new Pike–a double, exactly like himself, in love with Vina. She and the illusory Pike run up the crag and disappear happily into the complex.
MAGISTRATE: She has an illusion and you have reality. May you find your way as pleasant.
Back on the ship, Pike seems rested and happy, as if he’s just had a long vacation and not been physically and psychologically tortured by twisted aliens. Number One has returned to her station but the yeoman has a lingering question.
COLT: Sir, I was wondering. Just curious. Who would have been Eve?
ONE: Yeoman! You’ve delivered your report.
COLT: Yes, ma’am. Yes, sir.
TYLER: Eve, sir? Yes, sir.
BOYCE: Eve as in Adam?
PIKE: As in all ship’s doctors are dirty old men. What are we running here, a cadet ship, Number One? Are we ready or not?
ONE: All decks show ready, sir.
PIKE: Engage.
Analysis
Watching “The Cage” is like watching Star Trek in some kind of mirror universe. This is the show that could have been, and almost was, if not for the executives at NBC who rejected it as “too cerebral” and greenlit a second pilot that was much closer to the show we’re all familiar with. Though Jeffrey Hunter is superb as Captain Christopher Pike, I imagine the show would have been much different in tone and execution had this version been developed into a series. Could you picture Pike in “The Trouble with Tribbles”? NBC may have done the franchise another favor in the long run, given that Hunter sadly died in 1969, just as the original series was limping off the air.
We covered portions of “The Cage” pretty thoroughly in our review of “The Menagerie,” so I’ll try not to repeat everything I said there. But I would have loved to see more adventures with this Enterprise crew. Dr. Boyce and his friendship with Pike is terrific, and it’s a shame we lost Number One. I used to read Star Trek novels when I was just getting into the show, and I remember one of them established that Number One had programmed the voice interface of the Enterprise computer–which explains why it sounds like her. I don’t think that’s in the canon, but it should be.
I think “The Cage” is probably one of the best episodes of Star Trek, and of televised science fiction in general, right down to its bittersweet, Twilight Zone-ish surprise ending. It’s smart, thrilling, still has some great special effects and direction (I love that push into the dome of the ship at the beginning), and it seems very cinematic. I was repeatedly impressed with how subtle the script is: Pike’s ruminations on alternate career paths is a perfect set up for the later Talosian temptations; the events on Rigel VII are largely implied through dialogue and the fact that crew members are wearing bandages throughout the entire episode; and this time around, I realized that when Captain Pike threw down the laser guns by the food hatch in his cage, while thinking angry thoughts, he was laying bait for the Talosians. That guy is brilliant. My favorite bit was Vina reminding Pike of her “headaches” and his comment that it’s hereditary. The writing is marvelous, and I loved conversations where characters speak at each other instead of with each other, and somehow the scenes work.
The show is also improved in some ways over what we later got in the series proper. The bridge and her officers seem more military and realistic somehow, mostly thanks to Spock’s habitual shouting, and the gray color scheme of the set. The brightly colored bridge of Kirk’s ship is iconic, but ridiculous, which is what happens when you make set design decisions based on what will sell more color televisions. Spock’s original station may have been more advanced than the later design–there’s no hood for him to hunch over, and he controls the display with hand gestures, which is still cutting edge even today. I’d never noticed that before. On the other hand, despite all their technology, they still use paper! I think I also glimpsed a television set in Pike’s quarters. And the red alert sounds even more annoying than the klaxon of the series.
Some other surprises I picked up on this time included people in normal clothes wandering the corridors, the special jackets for the landing party (and a weird backpack for one guy), and the absence of tricorders and red shirts.The overlay of passing stars while traveling in warp was rivaled in strangeness only by Tyler’s non-verbal confirmation of the warp speed by holding up seven fingers. What, you can’t talk while at warp? We already know the TNG creators were referencing “The Cage” when they made “Engage” and calling Riker “Number One” part of his routine, but I started to wonder if Pike’s longing for a peaceful life with his horses didn’t also influence Kirk’s Nexus fantasy in Star Trek Generations. Obviously many elements of Pike’s character manifested in Kirk’s. Shatner would have definitely played Pike differently, but I appreciate the fact that Roddenberry didn’t simply recast these roles with different actors; the history of the series is certainly richer for it.
Many themes were also recycled in the series, aside from more directly recycling the episode itself. Illusion, Adam and Eve, loneliness, freedom, creativity, the human struggle and capacity for destruction…these were all explored in many episodes of Star Trek, a bit too often in some cases.
“The Cage” is a fantastic pilot for introducing the show’s premise, mostly through context, as if the creators trusted their audience to catch on; for instance, they never stop to explain how transporters work. But it’s terrible at introducing characters. Most of the characters aren’t even named onscreen, so I suppose we only know them through the original script. But it did its job. Had it been given the chance, it would have intrigued enough people to get them to watch the second episode–or, at least, it left me wanting more.
One other thing–for all the sexism you could read into this episode, Number One effectively saves the day with the old “setting the laser to overload” trick. (Although I suppose it was new here, since this is the first time anyone thought to do that.) Bravo.
Eugene’s Rating: Time Warp 6 (on a scale of 1-6)
Torie Atkinson: So different and yet so much the same, “The Cage” communicates a clear vision of the show that we know and love. It’s bold and unafraid of tackling difficult philosophical subjects. It’s sincere, creating people who seem real in situations that feel authentic. And most of all it’s smart, refusing to take the easy shortcuts with happy endings and moral judgments. The Talosians are bastards, but they made the best of a fate they could not alter and come across in the end as more sad and lonely than the creatures they capture. Vina cannot be fixed with a wave of the wand; her damage is irreparable and to pretend that the illusion were reality would be madness. And Pike simply has to accept that risk is his business, and that means losing crewmen, but it also means a world of possibility at his fingertips and that’s the tradeoff of a new frontier.
I have a little secret about “The Cage,” though. I don’t like Christopher Pike. There, I said it.
It’s hard to go back from The Shat and I know I liked Pike a lot as a potential captain in “The Menagerie,” but Jeffrey Hunter seems staid, boring, and monotonous. I can’t imagine trying to watch him week after week. There’s no conviction, no burning passion until the aliens push him over the edge. As a captain, he’s toothless. I know he’s going through a moral crisis and questioning the path he’s chosen, and I actually really like that as the starting point to the series. But his Spock-like emotionlessness, problem-solving through violence, and uninspired delivery of (sincerely moving) dialogue are like a vortex that the rest of the characters seems to tiptoe around. This is kind of like first season Babylon 5–all of the supporting elements are good, the themes are thought-provoking and serious, the intellectual engagement is all there–but the main guy’s square jaw can’t make up for the personality vacuum.
Kirk does his share of man-fighting and can feel distant and lonely, too, but there’s a kind of curiosity brewing beneath the surface that acts as an internal engine. It doesn’t matter if there’s great risk involved or little apparent benefit–the benefit is in needing to know, in the pursuit, and discovering a solution. Pike has no curiosity. The only information he wants is that which will serve his immediate goal: in this case, escape. He doesn’t seem very curious about the aliens or why they would do this. He shows little sympathy at the end when they make it clear they are desperate people and this was the best idea they had. He feels much more like a pulp hero: kind of blank and everyman. It doesn’t work for me.
Thematically everything was recycled in “The Menagerie,” so I don’t want to repeat myself on that front, but there are two things I can’t help but mentioning: the costumes and the women. The turtlenecks were not a good look; it’s a little Mr. Rogers In Space. But nothing really approaches the gaudy awfulness of those sparkle sweaters. It’s like some kind of awful bolero jacket that your great-Aunt wore to your cousin’s wedding, if your great-Aunt were Wesley Crusher and the wedding were disco-themed. On the other hand, the women got to wear pants. Boo-yeah. Small victories.
As for the women, though the show has a Number One, she has no name. The yeoman doesn’t either. There’s Spock, Bryce, and… the women! Number One is capable and confident, but she’s got a little bit of personality vacuum going on, too. All of this is “explained” by the implication that we’re in some sort of transitional period vis-a-vis gender relations, and that was the only cheap shortcut I felt the show took. We get Pike’s remark that he’s not “used” to women on the bridge, but the way he snaps at the yeoman seems uncalled for. He comes across as a dick, really. What kind of future is this if women can be first officers, but only if they have no names and are barked at like children? It felt incoherent, to me. Lip service to the network? Genuine ambivalence about their role in the show? Anyone know? Not to mention the fact that the bridge is extremely white, and the show ends with a moral lesson about how someone physically deformed/disabled/ugly would never ever be welcome in this world or in this future. It just all feels off to me, un-Roddenberryesque (it’s a word, I said so), and disappointing. You can see the seeds germinating but it’s still the same old field.
For now.
Torie’s Rating: Time Warp 6
Best Line: VINA: It’s a trap, like a narcotic. Because when dreams become more important than reality, you give up travel, building, creating. You even forget how to repair the machines left behind by your ancestors. You just sit, living, and reliving, other lives left behind in the thought record.
Syndication Edits: Never syndicated, but in the remastered CGI syndication, Spock’s emotional scenes were edited out: his smile, and his panicked outburst, “The women!”
Trivia: Other names considered for the first captain of the Enterprise were Robert M. April and James Winter.
Malachi Throne, the voice of the Talosian Keeper, also appeared in “The Menagerie” as Commodore Mendez. His voice in footage from “The Cage” was altered to prevent confusion. Throne also guest starred with Leonard Nimoy in TNG’s “Unification, Part II,” thus sharing Nimoy’s first and last TV appearances as Spock.
All the Talosians were played by women, though male voices were dubbed in.
At some point, the episode’s title was supposedly changed to “The Menagerie,” but it was changed back to “The Cage” once the two-part episode went into production.
Roddenberry’s original concept for the Talosians were crab-like creatures, hinted at by a shadow in the last cage of the Talosian zoo. This was too expensive so they became humanoid, like most Star Trek aliens, but would have explained why the Talosians had no idea how to put Vina back together again.
In Mind Meld, Nimoy commented that he played Spock as more animated to balance Hunter’s reserved performance as Pike; this was reversed with Shatner, who showed plenty of energy. Plenty.
NBC wanted Roddenberry to ditch “the guy with the ears” and the woman character. He later joked that he kept the alien and married the woman, saying “I couldn’t have legally done it the other way around.”
Tyler implies that faster-than-light travel is fairly new, having been developed sometime in the eighteen years since the Columbia crashed.
The footage of Susan Oliver as the Orion slave girl version of Vina kept coming back without her green skin visible, no matter how many shades of green makeup were used. It turned out that the film processing lab was color correcting her because they didn’t know she was supposed to be green. Or maybe they just liked her better that way.
The matte painting of the fortress on Rigel VII reappears many times in the series, including in the third season “Requiem for Methuselah.” It’s also referenced as a song title in Star Trek V: “Moon Over Rigel VII.”
The process of editing footage from “The Cage” into “The Menagerie” lost some of the original film negative, making Roddenberry’s private 16mm black and white reel the only available version. It was edited with color footage from “The Menagerie” for Betamax and VHS releases, until a complete 35mm color print was discovered by a film archivist in a Hollywood vault and returned to Roddenberry’s company. This version was finally aired on television in 1988.
Reportedly, director Robert Butler wanted the sets to show some age and wear with dirt and rust, but Roddenberry vetoed the idea in favor of a bright and shiny future. Butler also thought Star Trek was a pretentious title.
Unfilmed scenes showed Pike criticizing the youth of some of his new crew members, seeing off some injured crew, and dismissing a crewman in disgrace for firing on friendly aliens.
CBS turned down Star Trek in favor of Lost in Space. Suckers. Though the oddities of television gave them control of the series after all…
Other notes: Bob Johnson’s voice was dubbed over Clegg Hoyt (Pitcairn, the transporter chief). Johnson also provided the voice of the recordings on Mission: Impossible.
Two of the creatures in the Talosian zoo were creations of Janos Prohaska, recycled from episodes of The Outer Limits: “Fun and Games” and “The Duplicate Man.” Spock’s pointed ears were created using the same process as another episode, “The Sixth Finger,” and an ion storm from “The Mutant“–a light shining through a container of gold glitter suspended in liquid–was adapted for the transporter effect.
Susan Oliver (Vina) appeared in many films and TV shows in the 1950s and 60s, including a role The Twilight Zone episode “People Are Alike All Over,” in which she seduces Roddy McDowell, who discovers the apartment the Martians have prepared for him is actually a cage and he’s an “Earth creature in his native habitat” in their zoo. (Sorry for the spoiler.) I love this episode. Too bad CBS.com and Hulu pulled it from their online libraries or I could share it with you.
Robert Butler has been directing television episodes since 1960. Some of the genre series he worked on include The Twilight Zone, Batman, and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.
Next week: the Series Wrap-Up.
I’d always liked Majel Barrett as Number One and was disappointed that she had to go blonde and get reduced to a nurse. But I’d never noticed (to my embarrassment) that none of the women actually had names. That puts a whole different feel to things. What a bummer! Even when women were being presented in stronger roles, they had to be diminished.
I liked Chrisopher Pike as a character but I’m also glad he wasn’t kept as captain of the Enterprise. Shatner’s energy just seems to work better.
Is it wrong of me to be envious of aliens that can relive other lives in the thought record? That sounds pretty damned cool to me.
I agree that Pike seemed too cold, too reserved, a character to lead this type of program. It’s hard to imagine what sort of stories you tell with Pike in charge and he’d be a difficult character for viewers to project themselves onto.
Still, this is a good episode and good SF. If you had seen this episode and no other it would seem fresh because you would not have had the space douche card played so many times before.
I don’t share the love with Dr Boyce that others seems to have. I like the rascally Bones much better, but this could be an effect that when I see John Hoyt I see Mr. Stanton, the cynical billionaire who funds the rocket in When Worlds Collide. One of my favorite films and I really really wish it woudl come out on blu-ray.
I’m actually kind of meh about this and wonder if some of your reaction comes from the immersion in season 3 for the last few months. Part of it comes from Jeffrey Hunter’s total woodenness. It’s not Keanu Reeves levels or anything, but no matter how much he goes on about his little mid-life crisis, I don’t believe it. He’s just not selling it at all.
Excitable Spock is a minor problem, but that really comes from character expectations from the later show. Still he really needed to tone it down a little, say to Sulu/Chekov levels. But then both Pike and Number One are so utterly emotionless, he’s really emoting for 3.
The rest of my complaints are more niggling than anything. The bilaterally symmetric species not understanding bilateral symmetry; the rather pulpy plot; the Rigellians who look like they should be marching up and down, chanting “Oh, we love the old one.”
Finally, Kirk’s horse ranch in Generations isn’t a shout out to this. It was actually something Shatner pushed for, because he’s a horsey dude and it’s what he’d have wanted in Kirk’s situation.
@ 1 Toryx
It’s amazingly cool. Can you imagine getting to experience other people’s lives, let alone aliens?
@ 2 bobsandiego
I didn’t care for Bryce either. Here, have a drink, that’ll solve your midlife crisis…
@ 3 DemetriosX
I had originally given this a 5, so maybe that was more appropriate. I still think it’s fantastic storytelling and great science fiction. But the plot holes, well, yeah. How can they read her mind and all her memories and yet don’t know what she looks like? How is she in her mid-50s and still able to breed a race of slaves? Why don’t they just create the illusion that Pike is back on his ship?
Oh, and Eugene: I’m not sure how you came to conclusion Pike was laying bait by throwing down the weapons. I didn’t get that impression at all. He doesn’t strike me as that clever.
@5 Torie
I’m with Eugene here. He very speicifically puts the phasers down right there where the food comes out and emphatically fills his mind with primative emotions to block his thoughts. It’s a trap for the butt-heads.
@4 Torie
OH it’s not Boyce the character. He’s okay, just Bones is better. The thin is that Hoyt played Stanton so well. Standon was a top notch asshole, but not a stupid one. If you haven’t seen When Worlds Collide put it on your queue.
@ DemetriosX
The bilateral symmetry thing aside, if she had been injured that badly, she was probably in so much pain that the Talosians couldn’t properly read her thoughts and memories. She might have even been so mangled and so close to the point of death that they had to try something without thinking it out. Remember, they had been living on memories so maybe they really didn’t think to look at themselves as a model for repairing her.
Now about Vina’s decision to stay at the end. Maybe she’s already caught in “the trap.” Maybe the Talosians are giving her not only the illusion of beauty but also the illusion of comfort. I saw nothing in the episode to suggest that medicine in Star Fleet was advanced enough to enable her to live free of the pain – unless you’d consider having her doped on pills and hypo-sprays the rest of her life.
The cynic in me has wondered, many times, if Pike’s condition in The Menagerie could have been a Talosian illusion designed to bring him back. Though, it is hard to imagine even the Talosians being able to influence that many people across those distances for that long a time.
To me, this pilot seems more of a risk than the cold-war flavoring of the Lost In Space pilot. Yet, as a series, Star Trek remained closer to its pilot than did Lost In Space. Just imagine. They could have brought a Talosian in as a member of the ship’s crew then had Dr. McCoy call him a Bubble-headed Booby but that’s a story I don’t want to see.
I played back this episode on “air” many times during its run on Pay-Per-View. I even had the luck of being in the ‘QC’ position the previous month when the copies (air master and back-up) were in the cue for pre-airing quality checking. It really felt odd running this along with the new movies running on PPV at the time. Later, the cable company took part in ‘on air’ testing of series pilots so I’ve had plenty of times to compare a pilot to what finally ran as a series. In my own grading, there were two that I was really wrong about and one that I was really right about – I didn’t think Doogie Howser, MD or Twin Peaks would make it and I thought Cop Rock was a disaster.
I’ve been thinking about it, and I think I know why the plot bothers me so much. Space douche plots are more then likely to run off the rails somewhere unless they are very carefully written; it’s practically their default state. For them to end successfully, either humanity has to prove that they are evolved enough to earn the space douches’ respect (Arena for example) or prove that they are in fact morally superior to the space douches. We get neither here.
Ultimately, there are two possible outcomes. The Talosians find a more suitable species to become their slaves (Tell us more about these Klingons…) and Pike has really just dumped the problem off on someone else. Or they give up on their stupid plan and die off, like Wink of an Eye, and we all agreed that was a poor ending. Given that the Talosians are only marginally more effective than Brain Guy, the latter seems more likely.
@9 DemetriosX
+1 for MS3K reference
Torie @ 4: Exactly. It’d be tres cool. How weird would it be to relive the life of a Medusan or any of a number of different races from the series?
The more I think of it, the more I see connections between The Cage and future evolutions of Star Trek. Number One and Engage! have already been mentioned. But Picard was also a lot more withdrawn and Pike-ish, particularly in the beginning. Dr. Pulaski from Season 2 also had a Dr. Boyce vibe to her (or so it seems to me).
I really wish Roddenberry had lived longer so we could have more interviews with him on the DVDs.
Oh my, that was selfish, wasn’t it? :)
on the bonus features forthe re-mastered versions they talk about that push through the dome shot. It was the hardest effect to remaster and took them the longest to complet. That said if you get a chance to see the remastered version of that shot, take a gnader. It is lovely. It’s like the camera flies over the ship, through the dome, and seamlessly onto the bridge. I found the shot much like some of the shots used by Welles in Citizen Kane.
The laser cannon. I loved the laser cannon. The special effects made it seem terribly powerful.
I liked the darkness of the pilot, the sense of being very, very alone. Isolated and beyond rescue. TOS had for a while, early on, until the admirals started taking phone-in orders for pizza, realtime.
Oh, and count me among those who think when Pike threw down those lasers it was a very deliberate act.
Pike is very cerebral and nearly one step ahead throughout. It doesn’t take him very long to see through the illusions and the implications of the illusions. Never confused or at a loss, there’s hardly a moment where he is not measuring the trap and how to escape the trap.
@5 Torie
After seeing this episode at least four times, this was the first time I noticed Pike’s move with the phasers–one of the reasons I was so much more impressed with him than I was in the past.
@8 Ludon
Assuming that the Talosians weren’t tricking everyone into thinking Pike was injured–which would also be a horrible thing to do to Pike, incidentally–their welcome of him in “The Menagerie” is a truly benevelolent and selfless act. It’s unlikely he and Vina would be able to produce children for them in their true forms.
@11 Toryx
You know, I think you’re absolutely right about Pike influencing Picard. I mean, even their names are similar!
@12 bonsandiego
Did they use that shot in the remastered version of “The Menagerie” too? I think I may have seen it. I’ll check it out again when they post the episodes to Netflix.
@13 Lemnoc
My favorite thing about the laser cannon is the way it overheats and then takes time to cool. That whole effect sequence is probably one of the best in the series, especially compared to a similar scene in “The Apple” when Enterprise fires on the cave directly.
@ 9 DemetriosX
I think it’s pretty clear by the Magistrate’s little guilt trip at the end that the Talosians are now doomed to die off. (Frankly, they’re so space douchey I can’t really argue with that.) I wonder if it’s not an additional moral lesson, though. Humans would have found another way to survive, and that’s another reason why we’re so special. The Talosians could see no other way, and will accept the no-win scenario, like suckers.
@ 10 bobsandiego
Over the weekend I saw Cinematic Titanic. Joel and J. Elvis sang the MST3k theme song for us.
@ 11 Toryx
I wouldn’t call Picard Pike-ish. He’s a diplomat and a scholar, not a beat-em-up pulpy everyman. That was intended to be Riker. Mysteriously.
@ 12 bobsandiego
I actually HATED that push-through to the dome shot. It looks cheesier than anything else in the whole episode, man in ape suit included.
@ 13 Lemnoc
I love the laser cannon! Damn that thing’s useful.
It does feel like a very lonely trip to space, doesn’t it.
@ 15 Eugene
I guess I’ll have to watch it again!
@16 Torie
The original shot is cheesy. Very Cheesy. They were trying for a shot that they did not have the techonolgy to pull off. The remastered shot I think is one of beauty. The remastered shot I think sells the reality of the ship very well.
@16 Torie
I saw the fate of the Talosians and their wrecked eco-system as a cautionary tale, “there but for a few thousand years of evolution go we.” I think the episode was trying for that Twilight Zone-y thing of turning the monsters into creatures of sympathy at the end.
Based on Number One’s back-of-the-envelope calculation about Vina’s age, it does seem unlikely she’d be brood matériel. Assuming those quacks put those parts of her back together more competently than her shoulder realignment, Talosian chiropractics not their strong suit.
I don’t know why this occurred to me, but it seems as though much of the Talosians’ problems are lifted from the fate of the Krell in Forbidden Planet. The whole godlike powers leading to physical and moral decay and ultimately extinction is largely the same. We’re just seeing them at a different point in time.
Jeffrey Hunter was an established actor respected for his acting abilities. Some are comparing Hunter in “The Cage,” one episode, against the entire series with William Shatner as the captain. The theme of “The Cage” established Pike’s demeanor in that episode, not Hunter, or his personality. Remember they were returning from a conflict on Rigel VII where members of the crew lost their lives. The series would have been different if he had remained captain. I would lay odds that it would have been just as good.
Very good point, DavidJ. And what’s to say that changes in his character would not have taken place in the transition from the pilot to the production episodes.
Came in ‘way too late to add much useful to this one. I think I first saw ‘The Menagerie’ in its original form 10 years ago or so, with bits of black-and-white film spliced in where the original footage had been lost (as mentioned above).
I bet they thought those gooseneck-mounted displays were totally awesome.
I remember quite clearly realising at some point during my youth that the technology for the control consoles was more sophisticated in ways than that of the subsequent series episodes, in that the operators could use gestures to manipulate the controls, and didn’t actually need to press buttons. This was very much like the technology described in Robert Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky, in which the ship’s controls were light-activated, designed to last essentially forever, and had no moving parts.
The jarring discontinuity between this awesome concept and the primitive communicator shown in close-up in the scene in Pike’s quarters is something I never quite figured out. Good thing the props designers were given another crack at that and the phasers.
I agree with the general consensus that the phaser cannon is by far one of the most awesome weapons ever put on television — or even on film. Though if they had blasted the top of that outcropping off, wouldn’t the beam have simply gone straight out through the atmosphere and into space, and been detectable by Enterprise‘s sensors? (But I guess the Talosians would have prevented that detection from occurring. Or the beam would have been blocked by the plasma generated from the heated atmosphere — although this doesn’t seem to have posed a problem in later episodes, so maybe they clear a path with charged particles or something.)
Jeffrey Hunter was an okay actor, but his career wasn’t stellar. In King of Kings, believe it or not, he plays Jesus Christ. I seem to recall that his wife was apparently the big push behind his career, and urged him not to continue with the Star Trek role and to keep trying for film parts, but he never really made it big after that; he should have stuck with Star Trek.
In any case, I think Shatner is by far the better actor of the two, and I don’t think the show would have been at all as memorable with Pike instead of Kirk. But who can say?
One thing I remember vividly from when I first saw “The Menagerie” back in the early 70s was the scene where Pike leaves the room where Glistening Green Vina is dancing. He makes his way along a hallway that turns into rough rock, the music is still distantly playing. Then the music cuts off! Pike turns around, and the way back to the room is suddenly blocked off! That really creeped me the hell out.
I gotta check in here more often!
Eugene, I really liked the way you wrote your review. Clever!
I recall from reading “The Making of Star Trek” long, long ago that NOT explaining technology was deliberate. The quote was from Roddenberry noting that in a police show, the officer does not draw his .38 and explain how the hammer sets off the primer, exploding the charge, sending the bullet blah blah; he just shoots the pistol. Another bit that was a biger deal in the 60s.
The Talosians would like to survive, sure, but they aren’t vindictive. If they could get the transporter operator to beam only two people to Pike’s cage, they could get the ship piloted into the dirt. So I can buy that they were giving Pike and VIna a good deal, constrained by the story thus far, at the end of The Menagerie. (But, wow, what a range on their telepathy!)
Pike definitely baited the trap. Didn’t he feign sleep to draw a Keeper in?
I have not seen the remastered edition. I don’t mind cleaning up episoeds, I’m ambivalent about changing the appearance of some of the effects, but I don’t think editing spoken lines should have been done.
I didn’t notice that Yeoman Colt was never named. On a larger scale, I bet that nobody noticed how white the cast was. Which makes the eventual deliberate effort more laudable (and yet overdue).
@ 24
The editing of the scenes and lines in the remastered version was only in the broadcast versions. On the blu-rays there are no edits. The cut down the episodes to fit in more advertising.
@25
Oh. Well, okay then.
@22 NomadUK
What was so primitive about the communicator? I seem to recall it being kind of bulky, but otherwise, was it so different from the later props?
@23 Johnny Pez
I really admired that moment with the wall this time. Such a simple trick, but it was so effective.
@24 sps49
Thank you! Here’s a secret: Torie and I both wrote the recap this time! Can you tell who wrote what? :)
I read The Making of Star Trek a long time ago, and I had forgotten that bit about not explaining the technology. I wish I’d remembered it earlier in my writing career. It worked really well, even if it likely confused the network execs.
Didn’t Enterprise beam up Number One and the Yeoman separately at the end? I can’t figure out why they couldn’t beam them all up at once, or why they wouldn’t grab the captain first if they had to do them one at a time, except to draw out the tension.
And yeah, Pike feigned sleep too. Very tricksy.
eugene@27: Other than the huge form factor, the flimsy grille, the big TV volume control knob in the middle, and the clearly visible resistors and other 20th-century components inside, not much!
Bob Justman says in his book Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, the network’s problem was not so much that the pilot was “too cerebral”. The real complaint, which was carefully concealed from viewers for years, was that it was too erotic. What you’re seeing looks tame by 2011 standards, but this was being shown to a bunch of suits in 1964. There’s some incredibly suggestive stuff here. Probably tapped right into the fantasies of some of the execs.
Besides, the Great Bird of the Galaxy had a rep like Capt. Kirk’s for making time with all the babes. This carried over into studio politics, besides the fact that the studios despised science fiction (in spite of the success of The Twilight Zone).
This may have been another reason CBS didn’t want Star Trek. CBS at that time was run by James Aubrey, a brutal dictator who believed in appealing to the lowest common denominator. A lot of those mindless sitcoms from this era, the ones Harlan Ellison complains about in his “Glass Teat” books, are Aubrey’s doing*. He was the original “jiggle show” guy. He believed in spoon-feeding the viewers a lot of mindless stuff to keep them watching so they’d buy the sponsors’ products. He once said he would like to show more thoughtful programs but believed there was a limit to the amount of that kind of stuff the public would tolerate. When Roddenberry complained in his speeches in the 70s about network execs who thought all viewers were morons, he was talking about Aubrey.
It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in sex — if anything he was more of a randy rooster than Roddenberry, and like him used to create shows or roles specifically for his then-playmates to star in. However, Aubrey had already gotten in trouble two years earlier, for Route 66 (you talk about a thoughtful, well-written show, with lots of future Star Trek guest stars on it, not to mention Shat and Kelley!). A Senate subcommittee on juvenile deliquency found memos showing where Aubrey had complained that the show didn’t have enough sex in it and that neither protagonist had expressed the “desires of a normal man” to have romance with girls. It almost sounds like he was concerned viewers would think Buz and Tod were… Naw, couldn’t be.
*Aubrey is also the “network head” described in The Other Glass Teat who beat up his paramours and once had to put on three shows to buy favors from Mafia-connected actor Keefe Brasselle to keep from getting killed by a Mafia don whose daughter had been one of his victims.
Crap, I hit post before my concluding paragraph was finished:
My guess is that Aubrey in ’64 was being a bit more careful about how much explicit sexual references, themes and content, and felt the show was too cerebral, so turned it down for CBS. You can see what he had in mind instead from the fact that he accepted Lost in Space.
Bob Justman says in his book Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, the network’s problem was not so much that the pilot was “too cerebral”. The real complaint, which was carefully concealed from viewers for years, was that it was too erotic. What you’re seeing looks tame by 2011 standards, but this was being shown to a bunch of suits in 1964. There’s some incredibly suggestive stuff here. Probably tapped right into the fantasies of some of the execs.
Besides, the Great Bird of the Galaxy had a rep like Capt. Kirk’s for making time with all the babes. This carried over into studio politics, besides the fact that the studios despised science fiction (in spite of the success of The Twilight Zone).
This may have been another reason CBS didn’t want Star Trek. CBS at that time was run by James Aubrey, a brutal dictator who believed in appealing to the lowest common denominator. A lot of those mindless sitcoms from this era, the ones Harlan Ellison complains about in his “Glass Teat” books, are Aubrey’s doing*. He was the original “jiggle show” guy. He believed in spoon-feeding the viewers a lot of mindless stuff to keep them watching so they’d buy the sponsors’ products. He once said he would like to show more thoughtful programs but believed there was a limit to the amount of that kind of stuff the public would tolerate. When Roddenberry complained in his speeches in the 70s about network execs who thought all viewers were morons, he was talking about Aubrey.
It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in sex — if anything he was more of a randy rooster than Roddenberry, and like him used to create shows or roles specifically for his then-playmates to star in. However, Aubrey had already gotten in trouble two years earlier, for Route 66 (you talk about a thoughtful, well-written show, with lots of future Star Trek guest stars on it, not to mention Shat and Kelley!). A Senate subcommittee on juvenile deliquency found memos showing where Aubrey had complained that the show didn’t have enough sex in it and that neither protagonist had expressed the “desires of a normal man” to have romance with girls. It almost sounds like he was concerned viewers would think Buz and Tod were… Naw, couldn’t be.
My guess is that Aubrey in ’64 was being a bit more careful about how much explicitly sexual references, themes and content, and felt the show was too cerebral, so turned it down for CBS. You can see what he had in mind instead from the fact that he accepted Lost in Space.
*Aubrey is also the “network head” described in The Other Glass Teat who beat up his paramours and once had to put on three shows to buy favors from Mafia-connected actor Keefe Brasselle to keep from getting killed by a Mafia don whose daughter had been one of his victims.