The Cage (1985) VHS - What Closing Logo?

[ClassicTVMan81]

Does anyone know what the original separate closing logo was at the end of the grayscale print of "The Cage" on the 1985 Paramount Home Video VHS of Star Trek (TOS)?

My brain thinks it was once this logo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcbXoBtYvNc
(Paramount Television "Blue Mountain", used 1975 to 1987, music by Lalo Schifrin from 1975-76 and 1978-87; Jerry Goldsmith 1976-78)

For the colored version of this same episode, first seen in 1988 after the 2-hour Star Trek retrospective, The Star Trek Saga, this was the original separate closing logo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_lrUXRIZrc
(Paramount Television "CGI Mountain", used 1987 to 2002, music is an adaptation of the Paramount on Parade newsreel theme song composed by Elsie Janis and Jack King)

~Ben

[Christopher]

Wow, I never knew who wrote those Paramount stings. How did you find that out?

As I recall, the original home video release wasn't fully in black-and-white; it was intercut between color footage from "The Menagerie" and black-and-white footage from Roddenberry's surviving copy of "The Cage." If it came out in '85, it stands to reason it would've had the Schifrin sting and the blue logo.

[ClassicTVMan81]

Christopher wrote:

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Wow, I never knew who wrote those Paramount stings. How did you find that out?

As I recall, the original home video release wasn't fully in black-and-white; it was intercut between color footage from "The Menagerie" and black-and-white footage from Roddenberry's surviving copy of "The Cage." If it came out in '85, it stands to reason it would've had the Schifrin sting and the blue logo.

http://www.closinglogos.com/page/Paramount+Television
(CLG Wiki's Paramount Television logo description page)

Of course, we already know Schifrin was the genius behind the Mission: Impossible title theme music.

~Ben

[Christopher]

Anyway, I just checked my tape of the original video release (which was 1986, not '85), and it doesn't have any of those Paramount Television logos. Since it was an original video release that had never aired on television at that point, it bore the logo of Paramount Video instead. You can find the logo they used on the Paramount Home Entertainment page of the logo site:

http://www.closinglogos.com/page/Par...+Entertainment

It's under "3rd Logo (1982-88)," the "Growing Mountain" (it's the video clip on the left-hand side), with electronic music by Richard J. Krizman. It appears at the beginning of the video after the copyright warning; then we go to Roddenberry's 1986 introduction; then we get the episode (cut together from the B&W "Cage" and color "Menagerie"). The end credits of the episode conclude with a Desilu copyright notice but no separate logo card or music sting. Then we get Roddenberry's closing statements, and then the "Growing Mountain" logo again.

[ClassicTVMan81]

Christopher wrote:

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Anyway, I just checked my tape of the original video release (which was 1986, not '85), and it doesn't have any of those Paramount Television logos. Since it was an original video release that had never aired on television at that point, it bore the logo of Paramount Video instead. You can find the logo they used on the Paramount Home Entertainment page of the logo site:

http://www.closinglogos.com/page/Par...+Entertainment

It's under "3rd Logo (1982-88)," the "Growing Mountain" (it's the video clip on the left-hand side), with electronic music by Richard J. Krizman. It appears at the beginning of the video after the copyright warning; then we go to Roddenberry's 1986 introduction; then we get the episode (cut together from the B&W "Cage" and color "Menagerie"). The end credits of the episode conclude with a Desilu copyright notice but no separate logo card or music sting. Then we get Roddenberry's closing statements, and then the "Growing Mountain" logo again.

Thank you.

[Peter Q Taggart]

Is the full color version of "The Cage" that was released later just colorized from the B&W footage? A friend of mine insisted this was the case and not the "full color version found in a vault" as it was advertised.

[Trekker51]

I always thought so, because the parts that were originally B & W still have Malcahi Throne's voice as the Keeper alternating with the Keeper's female voice as it sounded on the Tv episode. The color was alos more muted in the footsge adapted from the B & W then switched to brighter when it returned to the TV footage.

[Christopher]

The color version is not colorized. It was reconstructed from color footage that was rediscovered sometime between the 1986 and 1988 releases. As TrekWeb explains it:

http://www.trekweb.com/articles/2008...The-Cage.shtml

Divided into four acts, the reconstructed pilot... followed in the same vein as the 1986 home video version, but with a few exceptions. For one, to account for missing clips, footage was either borrowed from other portions of the original color footage to bridge necessary gaps. More notably, in other places, footage was slowed down to bridge the gaps between the original footage used in "The Menagerie" and the recently restored footage. The sound track for this full-color version of "The Cage" was the same identical audio track used in the 1986 version, complete with sound scratches from the black-and-white portions and the variations in the Talosian keeper's voice (the male voice portions were taken from actor Malachi Throne's voiceover, while the higher-pitched voice portions were heard in "The Menagerie"). In addition, the color balance was slightly off between the restored color footage and the remaining footage. This imbalance led some people to conclude that the restored color footage had been colorized by computer; this is not the case. If you examine colorized films from the 1980's and 1990's, you will notice that colorization is frequently off in many places. The color balance in the restored clips of "The Cage" is too precise in many places to be colorized footage, which leads us to conclude that this is indeed the missing color footage that was edited and originally lost in 1966 and rediscovered after the 1986 video release.

[mb22]

Peter Q Taggart wrote:

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Is the full color version of "The Cage" that was released later just colorized from the B&W footage? A friend of mine insisted this was the case and not the "full color version found in a vault" as it was advertised.

According to http://startrekhistory.com/cagepage.html the unused portions from "The Menagerie" were found in 1987. The Star Trek History site is reliable and I see no reason to doubt it. The alternating Keeper voices were used since the found footage had no soundtarck.

[Peter Q Taggart]

Thank you Christopher and mb22! The Cage is still one of my favorite episodes.

[HGN2001]

mb22 wrote:

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The alternating Keeper voices were used since the found footage had no soundtrack.

THIS is the correct reason. The found footage was just visuals - without sound. So to reconstruct the soundtrack, they had to use what was available, namely Gene's old black & white workprint sections that had been cobbled together with the "Menagerie' footage in the earlier release.

Harry

[mb22]

I wish that the "Menagerie" voice could have been slowed down for the CAGE reconstuction so that viewers could experience this production as closely as possible to the original version. Or just using portions of the black and white soundtrack, even if it is less than perfect.
http://trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=90634

[Christopher]

^Not slowed down, just remodulated to its original pitch. The technology they used to alter the pitch of Throne's voice for "The Menagerie" did not alter the speed of the playback.

[Captain Robert April]

I get the impression that it's not possible, or at least not particularly easy, to undo that pitch change, unless you're working from the original soundtrack. If you're working from the altered version, you might get close, but I'd be surprised if you were able to match Throne's original performance.

The workprint, of course, still has the original voice, as well as parts of the "Next Week" promo (it's amazing the snippets one can find in those puppies),

[GSchnitzer]

Captain Robert April wrote:

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I get the impression that it's not possible, or at least not particularly easy, to undo that pitch change, unless you're working from the original soundtrack. If you're working from the altered version, you might get close, but I'd be surprised if you were able to match Throne's original performance.

The workprint, of course, still has the original voice, as well as parts of the "Next Week" promo (it's amazing the snippets one can find in those puppies),

Well, it's probably possible; it's probably just not worth the effort.

As I watch the remastered version of "The Cage," I can see where the film quality and sound quality take a sudden quality hit in those scenes that were replaced with Ron Furmanek's "recently" located negative footage. Although the accompanying sound was not found at that time and the sound from Roddenberry's work print had to be used, the voice of the Keeper is the high-pitched Keeper voice, not the original low-pitched Keeper voice. So evidently, they were able to do post-processing on the original sound and raise the pitch appropriately. I'd be surprised if they couldn't take it the other direction in this digital age and lower the pitch. But I can understand how it would be much simpler to raise the pitch of the few excised scenes than to lower the pitch of all the non-excised scenes.