"The Cage"
First pilot
No stardate given
"There's a way out of any cage, and I'll find it."
--Christopher Pike
*While I am pretty much a walking Star Trek Encyclopedia on my own, I do not have absolute knowledge of Star Trek. So note that I use the real Star Trek Encyclopedia, written by Michael and Denise Okuda, and Memory Alpha for supplemental information regarding behind-the-scenes info and trivia.
Synopsis
While investigating the crash landing of a science vessel, the U.S.S. Enterprise enters orbit of Talos IV, home of the Talosian race. Captain Pike is soon captured by the illusion-creating Talosians and held in a giant cage. While his crew attempts to break in and rescue him, Pike is put through a number of illusions reminiscent of his recent missions, and even one in which he has a wife back on Earth. The one constant through all of these illusions is Vina, the sole survivor of the science vessel that crash landed on the planet. Pike soon learns that the Talosians want Pike to fall in love with Vina and remain on the planet, in any illusion he wants, in order to populate the planet with humans since their own race is dying off. When Pike refuses to play along, two other women, Number One and Yeoman Colt, are taken from the ship and are offered as a choice to be Eve to his Adam. Pike manages to outwit the Talosians and escape the cage to the surface, only to be informed that this is where the Talosians wanted him all along. Number One sets a phaser to overload as the Talosians are downloading information on humanity from the ship's computers. All of this causes the Talosians to realize that humans hate captivity enough to die to avoid it, making them too dangerous to be kept on Talos IV. They are released, but Vina reveals that she can't go with them because while the Talosians saved her life from the crash, she is severely disfigured because having never seen a human, they didn't know how to restore her appearance. Pike agrees to leave Vina on the planet, where the Talosians will restore her illusion of beauty and will allow her to live out her life in comfort.
Themes
The studio rejected this pilot because there wasn't enough action. As they say, hindsight is 20/20. Star Trek has established its show as one that, while it can be good with action, is more about the commentary it makes and its examination of the human condition. So the lack of action is not a mark against the show, even if the studio didn't think it would make them money. "The Cage," even though it was written and filmed over 50 years ago, still holds up today, I think. Rewatching it now it still seems as fresh as it did back then, and it didn't leave me bored at all.
The main theme running through this episode is how one lives life. Captain Pike is finding himself worn out by the rigors of commanding a starship. He considers retiring from Starfleet and going home, or finding some less hectic job. His doctor tells him that one can either live life or avoid it and wither away. Through the many illusions that the Talosians give Pike, he realizes, as he's standing on Earth and looking out toward Mojave, a wife setting up a picnic with his horse, Tango, nearby, that a life of quietness isn't for him. Retiring at home instead of exploring the galaxy would be, for him, to turn away from life and start dying.
Of course, another theme of the episode is captivity and the lengths one will go to to avoid it. Captain Pike could have taken the easy way out and decided to live a life of comfort with Vina, sparing the crew of the Enterprise. However, Pike knew that as idyllic as it was, it was still only an illusion. Preferring real life to fantasy, he never let his guard down and he continued to look for a weakness in the Talosians' telepathic powers.
Grade: A-
Reason for grade: A good episode, a valiant attempt at a first pilot for a show in a genre that was still pretty new (before Star Trek, Lost in Space was the only hour-long science fiction show with a recurring cast). The episode keeps you engaged, even though it's short on action, and the episode never really feels like a solution to a problem was cheap.
"The Cage"
Directed by: Robert Butler
Written by: Gene Roddenberry
Starring:
Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike
Leonard Nimoy as Mister Spock
M. Leigh Hudec (aka Majel Barrett) as Number One
John Hoyt as Dr. Phillip Boyce
Peter Duryea as Jose Tyler
Laurel Goodwin as Yeoman J.M. Colt
Also starring:
Susan Oliver as Vina
Clegg Hoyt as Transporter Chief Pitcairn
Meg Wyllie as The Keeper
Malachi Throne as The Keeper's voice
Georgia Schmidt as 1st Talosian
Robert C. Johnson as 1st Talosian's voice
(Robert C. Johnson would go on to gain fame as the tape-recorded assignment voice in Mission: Impossible)
Items of note (if of no interest to you, skip down to the next episode):
"The Cage" was the very first pilot for Star Trek. The powers-that-be at CBS rejected the pilot but were happy with the concept of Star Trek. So they gave Star Trek a rare second chance at a pilot, as long as they made some changes. They wanted to "get rid of the guy with the ears" (i.e. Spock), and they weren't happy about Majel Barrett, either. Gene Roddenberry insisted on keeping Spock with his Vulcan ears, since an integrated crew was important to his vision of the future, and he replaced Majel Barrett with Nichelle Nichols. He promised he would get Barrett a role on the show again, and he followed through with that promise. Majel Barrett has had a few different roles throughout Star Trek's history, including Nurse Christine Chapel in the original series, Lwaxana Troi in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the computer voice from The Next Generation on. Additionally, Jeffrey Hunter's wife convinced him that science fiction was beneath him, so he chose not to return and reprise his role as Captain Pike for the second Star Trek pilot. Instead of recasting Pike, the producers of Star Trek cast a new captain, James T. Kirk, for the new iteration of Star Trek.
Additionally, instead of wiping "The Cage" from the annals of Star Trek history, it is still considered to be canon with the show. Spock returned to the Enterprise under the new captain, and there was a sequel two-part episode called "The Menagerie," which was a sequel of sorts to "The Cage" and incorporated footage from it in the episode (but more on that when we get there).
"The Cage" also first established some Star Trek tropes:
1) We first hear the classification "Class-M Planet" (Class-M stands for Mutara Class, which means the planet is a small, rocky world which has an oxygen and nitrogen atmosphere similar to Earth's and is capable of supporting organic life).
2) We first see the rank of yeoman. Star Trek was heavily influenced by Earth's Navy. What a yeoman does is never explicitly explained in Star Trek, but in the Navy a yeoman is a petty officer in charge of supplies. It can be assumed a yeoman in Star Trek is similar. The rank of yeoman was discontinued by the time of the 24th century.
3) Another trope is the naming of teams who beam down to planets as the landing party. By the time of the 24th century, landing parties and boarding parties were collectively known as away teams.
4) Another thing we learn is that Captain Pike was born in Mojave in California (which is incidentally not too far from where I live).
5) Spock smiles in this episode when he and Pike find some musical flowers. It had not yet been established that Vulcans are trained to suppress their emotions, so this was a canonistic change that occurred during a later episode.
6) The transporter is first used in this episode. The technology was in its infancy, though, so the screen had to be freeze-framed in order to beam someone on or off. Eventually the technology would advance to the point where a person could be beamed into and out of a busy location.
We also get our first glimpse at a few planets:
1) The Orion homeworld -- It's not clear what world the Orions call home. Orion is a constellation near Taurus which contains the stars Rigel and Betelgeuse. But their homeworld isn't named. It is established, however, that Orions have green skin, they are traders, and they keep their women as slaves.
2) Rigel VII -- This planet is presumably near the Orion homeworld as Rigel is one of the stars in the Orion constellation. Not much is revealed about that planet, other than it seems to be equivalent to Earth's medieval period. This was the planet of a conflict in 2254 the Enterprise, under command of Pike, participated in which three crew members, including Pike's yeoman, were killed.
3) Vega -- Nothing is revealed about this planet, other than there is a Federation colony there. Vega is the brightest star in the constellation Lyra (the harp) as seen from Earth. That is its likely location.
4) Talos IV -- A barren world inhabited by a race called the Talosians. The Talosians were driven underground after their race was almost made extinct by nuclear war. The Talosians mainly developed their mental abilities to the detriment of other aspects of life, such as engineering, so their devices ceased being able to function and they didn't know how to repair them. The Talosians have been searching the galaxy for two people to repopulate Talos IV. When a science vessel, the S.S. Columbia, crashed there in 2236, leaving Vina as its only survivor and yet on the brink of death, the Talosians saved her life albeit inadvertently disfiguring her as they didn't know what a human was supposed to look like. The Talosians read her mind and discovered that Captain Pike fit her description of what an ideal man was like, so the Talosians lured the Enterprise to Talos IV and kidnapped Pike, in an attempt to get him to procreate with Vina. After this encounter, the Federation established General Order 7, making a visit to Talos IV punishable by death, the only death penalty that the Federation gives.
"The Man Trap"
Season One, Episode One
Stardate 1513.1
"But it's a mystery. And I don't like mysteries. They give me a bellyache. And I've got a beauty right now."
--James Kirk
Synopsis
The Enterprise pays a visit to planet M-113 to check up on Professor Robert Crater and his wife, Nancy, whom Dr. McCoy was once romantically involved with. They don't want a checkup but are in dire need of salt, their supply being critically low. When they encounter Nancy, she appears as three different women to the landing party -- Nancy having not aged a day to McCoy, Nancy as she would appear now to Kirk, and a woman that Crewman Darnell left behind on Wrigley's Pleasure Planet. Crewman Darnell dies unexpectedly, a piece of borgia plant, a mildly toxic plant, is found in his mouth but inexplicable red rings are found on his face. Dr. McCoy can't account for why Darnell is dead but later discovers it wasn't the plant at all -- all of the salt was evacuated from his body, killing him instantly. Remembering that the Craters were looking for salt and figuring there must be a connection, McCoy and Kirk return to M-113 with two other crewmen, Green and Sturgeon. Both crewmen end up dying the same way, but only Sturgeon is discovered. Nancy disguises herself as Crewman Green and allows herself to be transported up to the ship with Kirk and McCoy. While Nancy roams the starship looking for salt (killing one more crewman, Barnhart, as she does), it is discovered that Nancy Crater is not who she appears to be. The real Nancy Crater died over a year ago. This creature is one that can assume any form and is responsible for the deaths of the four crewman. The salt vampire ends up turning on Robert Crater, killing him, and almost kills Captain Kirk by draining him of his salt, but Doctor McCoy kills the salt vampire in time.
Themes
The theme in this episode deals with a creature that is the last of its kind. It is an intelligent, self-aware creature, so killing it unjustly would be an act of murder. Of course, killing the creature is justified by the fact that it is threatening the crew of the Enterprise, but the moral dilemma is complicated by the realization that this salt vampire requires salt in order to survive. It is not a premeditated attack on the ship, just a creature doing what it must to survive.
Grade: B-
It's a good story to open the series with. It's a good, compelling mystery, but when the creature disguises itself as Crewman Green and starts wandering around the starship looking for salt, the episode really starts to drag. Plus, Yeoman Rand and Lieutenant Sulu start to wonder about "Crewman Green" because he is acting funny and not talking to anyone, when it was able to convince Kirk and McCoy that it really is Nancy Crater. So this seemed like a pretty big plot hole to me, although it didn't really go anywhere (despite Green's bizarre behavior, neither Rand nor Sulu think to inform the captain or the doctor).
"The Man Trap"
Directed by: Marc Daniels
Written by: George Clayton Johnson
Starring:
William Shatner as James Kirk
Leonard Nimoy as Spock
DeForest Kelley as Leonard McCoy
George Takei as Hikaru Sulu
Nichelle Nichols as Uhura
Also starring:
Grace Lee Whitney as Janice Rand
Jeanne Bal as Nancy Crater
Alfred Ryder as Robert Crater
Bruce Watson as Crewman Green
Michael Zaslow as Crewman Darnell
Sharon Gimpel as M-113 creature
Items of note:
"The Man Trap" was not the second pilot for Star Trek, but it was the first aired episode. I'll be going through these episodes in the order they aired.
In this episode, we learn of "the one who got away" for Leonard McCoy. He and Nancy Crater were romantically involved.
This episode established the following Star Trek tropes:
1) This is the first episode which contained narration over the opening credits. "Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange, new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before." When Star Trek: The Next Generation started airing on television, it contained a similar narration, with two updates: "five-year mission" was changed to "continuing mission," to reflect the fact that the flagship of the Federation in the 24th century was not only commissioned for a five-year mission as the first Enterprise was, and "where no man has gone before" was updated to the more politically correct "where no one has gone before."
2) The usage of the captain's log. For Star Trek: The Next Generation, the captain's log really felt like a tool for Captain Picard to keep track of his adventures on the Enterprise. However, in the original series, it really feels more like a way to narrate the story and incorporate elements that the crew couldn't possibly know but the writer wants the audience to know, in case they couldn't pick it up by the hints and clues dropped in the episode, itself. That was especially prevalent in this episode. Also, when Captain Kirk wants to add an entry with the same stardate, he says "captain's log, additional entry." Captain Picard used a slightly different wording, "captain's log, supplemental."
3) Sulu uses a blessing, "may the great bird of the galaxy bless your planet." I don't believe this phrase is ever used again on any of the shows, but it was used, slightly differently, in Peter David's series of novels, Star Trek: New Frontier. In the novels, it wasn't a blessing; it was a curse, which was accentuated by the fact that the "great bird of the galaxy" was a real bird that would incubate inside a planet and then break the planet apart when it hatched (this was before a similar thing happened in Doctor Who). The phrase in New Frontier was "may the great bird of the galaxy roost on your planet." "The great bird of the galaxy" was also the nickname Robert Justman, associate producer on Star Trek, gave to Gene Roddenberry.
4) We learn that Uhura speaks Swahili. We also later learn that Uhura's name is the Swahili word for "freedom." Where Uhura was born is never mentioned, but considering these facts we can surmise that Uhura was born, or at least has ancestry in, East Africa.
5) Crewman Darnell has the dubious distinction of being the first person killed in Star Trek (the series and the franchise), although four people actually die in this episode -- Crewmen Darnell, Green, Sturgeon, and Barnhart, ironically none of these men wearing a red shirt.
The follow planets were shown or mentioned:
1) Wrigley's Pleasure Planet -- Nothing is revealed about this planet other than its existence and possible name (or nickname). Crewman Darnell saw the M-113 creature as a woman he left behind on this planet.
2) Vulcan -- The Vulcans are one of the most prominent races in Star Trek. As such,we will learn quite a lot about this planet (and even go there). We learn in this episode that Vulcan has no moon in orbit around it.
3) Corinth IV -- Nothing is revealed about this planet, other than there is a Starfleet facility located there.
4) M-113 -- a desertlike and nearly barren planet, the former home to a long-dead civilization. It is now inhabited by archaeologist Robert Crater and the M-113 salt vampire, though now after the events of "The Man Trap," it is left uninhabited. It is also home to the borgia plant, which is a mildly toxic plant described as Carbon Group III vegetation.
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