Rob Price
Captain Christopher Pike (Jeffrey Hunter) of the U.S.S. Enterprise, gets a distress call from the fourth planet in the Talos star group, believed to be sent by a scientific expedition that disappeared eighteen years before. Pike originally made the decision not to investigate as he has wounded crew members from a previous mission that he believes is more important to get them to safety, since it is unlikely that there are any survivors from the crashed expedition, but a second distress call confirming survivors changes his mind and orders the starship to change course for the Talos system. After they arrive, an away party consisting of the Captain, Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr. Boyce (John Hoyt) and several other crew members arrive on the surface, leaving his second in command known only as Number One (Majel Barrett) in control of the ship. Once on the planet, the away team does find a group of survivors including a beautiful woman named Vina (Susan Oliver), who was supposedly a child when their vessel crashed. As they prepare the survivors for rescue, Pike is led away by Vina to show him the secret to their survival and their remarkable good health, but in reality, it is a trap and is taken prisoner by the Talosians and put in a cage deep under the planet’s surface. The rest of the survivors vanish as it was all an illusion created by the Talosians. The alien’s plan is to tempt Pike into mating with Vina, the only real survivor from the expedition, and with their offspring populate their war-ravaged planet creating a race of slaves. Pike resists and learns that some primitive emotions, like anger, can block the Talosians mind reading abilities. In the meantime, the enterprise has been incapacitated by the Talosians by making the crew believe that they have lost all systems and power, and the aliens begin downloading the ships historical files absorbing the history of the human race. After Number One and Yeoman Colt (Laurel Goodwin) are also captured during a rescue attempt, Pike captures one of his jailors and escapes back to the surface, but they are unable to get back to the Enterprise. Number One sets her laser gun to self-destruct which would kill them all which would be preferable to becoming slaves. This action and the now absorbed knowledge of human disdain for captivity convinces the Keepers that Pike and human’s in general would not make them suitable for their purposes and release the Enterprise. Number One and Colt beam back up, but Captain Pike remains on the surface to try to convince Vina to join them, but it is revealed that Vina cannot leave, her body was badly damaged in the crash, and the Talosians healed her, but not knowing human anatomy, she was left horribly disfigured. On Talos 4, she can live happily in the illusion that the Keepers create for her. Pike then joins his crew back on the Enterprise and sets off for their next adventure.
The Cage was the title of the original pilot shot for the Star Trek original series. It was completed on January 22, 1965, making it exactly sixty years old. The episode was written by series creator, Gene Roddenberry and directed by Robert Butler. It was rejected by NBC, who thought it too “cerebral”, “intellectual”, and “too slow”, but they must have seen potential as they ordered another pilot. At this stage, Jeffrey Hunter opted out of continuing with the series and the only character that was retained was Mr. Spock played by Leonard Nimoy, although his character did go through a metamorphosis of types. In The Cage, he is not the reserved emotionless Vulcan we have grown to love but instead has a type of youthful eagerness and joviality, we even see him smile…it is kind of unsettling. The less emotional character was actually Number One, and it almost appears that when rewriting the pilot they took that part of Number One and added it to Mr. Spock. Majel Barret, who plays the second in command, does return in the new series, but as Nurse Chapel. Having a woman as the executive officer apparently was too much for audiences in 1965. Along those same lines, the bridge crew in The Cage is also not as “colorful” what we have come to expect from the original series, most of the actors on the bridge are very white men with Pike not interested in having women on the bridge, except for Number One. We do see some other races on the ship, but there are very few and they are all in the background.
Although the original pilot was not aired, much of its contents were reused in season one’s two-part episode The Menagerie. During the first season, delivering new episodes to meet airdates became difficult. Reusing the footage filmed for The Cage with a surrounding framework using the new crew helped produce two episodes without a heavy filming schedule. According to The Menagerie, the events of The Cage take place thirteen years before the first season of Star Trek. Of course, we now have a continuing series, Strange New Worlds, based on the characters having Anson Mount portraying Captain Pike, Ethan Peck as Spock and Rebecca Romijn as Number One. Henry Alonso Myers, co-showrunner on Strange New Worlds, jokingly comments that at 55 years between The Cage and the series [Strange New Worlds], this makes for the longest pilot to series pickup in television history.
It is interesting watching the pilot and how it must have been viewed in 1965, the production value on the episode was actually quite good. The locale felt alien and some of the special effects and visuals were stunning for the time-period. It is also interesting that by the time we get Captain Kirk and the crew we know and love, many attitudes and the overall “feel” of the show has changed. It is difficult to separate what I know about the Star Trek Universe that we eventually get to and the pilot, seeing it as something separate and different. In The Cage Captain Pike is tired, exhausted and ready to resign his commission although by the end he seems a bit rejuvenated. In contrast, James T. Kirk played by William Shatner, has a more youthful action-oriented exuberance who doesn’t shy away from a bit of humor or sex with alien women. The Cage to me just seems slightly skewed and out of place in the Roddenberry universe we now know.
