Does "The Menagerie" still work now that we can watch "The Cage" by itself?

Use to when you watch the episodes, part of the appeal was getting to see the Enterprise with a different captain and younger Spock but now doesn't some of this stuff fill more like a clip show than it use to? I think the first part still holds up because you got Pike in the wheelchair with the beeping sound which is iconic Trek imagery and you got Spock stealing the ship and abducting Pike and Kirk and Mendez going after them in a shuttlecraft. I love the scene were Spock surrenders to McCoy.
The second part though seems to be just everyone watching "The Cage" on a viewscreen and not much more. I don't think it works except the ending were Pike gets to go be with Vina again.

Jason

 

...And there the problem is that we now recognize the scene for the mirror image of what it originally was, with Vina getting to be with "Pike" rather than Pike getting to be with "Vina".

It's rather amazing that the two-parter doesn't actually end up contradicting the story of the pilot episode. The writers certainly were under no obligation to preserve the original story, yet ended up not changing anything relevant anyway.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Watch The Cage less often, and that fixes the problem.

 

I prefer The Cage, but I think they did a commendable job with The Menagerie. The Menagerie has some good Spock/Kirk moments, but I have a few issues with it.

Three minor things first:

- I think that the threat of a court martial provides enough dramatic tension without adding the death penalty angle.
-The fake admiral twist seems gratuitous.
- The "all charges have been dropped" dialog seems a bit pat.

Two more serious issues:

- The Talosians are shown to be too powerful. You can't help but wonder why they didn't use their powers to find a less dramatic way of getting Pike to their planet.

- After watching The Cage as a standalone episode, I actually like Pike and don't like the idea of him being seriously maimed and left to live out his life in a fantasy world.

 

I enjoy both.

 

The Menagerie is absolutely not invalidated by The Cage. I think it's a nice revisit of a terrific pilot episode. Brilliant even... the ability to merge the depictions of two entirely different captains and their crew members. Great way to salvage all that work, as the Cage never aired.

 

The Menagerie is a Star Trek episode about Star Trek characters watching a Star Trek episode.

 

Sounds like "These Are the Voyages…" when you put it that way.

 

The Menagerie is the better watch for me. The original crew doesn't possess the same chemistry as Kirk et. al, and I find myself getting bored quickly when they're on the screen for too long.

 

BTW, cool avatar!

 

I watch the Cage first.... so when its time for the Menagerie, I just play the fanedit episode that is just the present day ship stuff. It works pretty well.

 

I prefer "The Menagerie" because it reveals another side to Spock--that even a Vulcan can sometimes value friendship above logic, placing the needs of the one over the needs of the many.

 

Logic is a means to safeguard what you consider valuable, not an end or a goal in itself. Spock was certainly trying to apply logic to helping a friend... though some aspects of the plan didn't make much sense. Logic and friendship aren't different things that conflict.

 

They do if you remove emotion & sentiment from the equation. In this instance, it was not a very Vulcan thing at all for Spock to do anything that he did, but he did them anyway all for Pike.

 

That's different. You brought up logic, rather than Vulcan-ness. Anyone can go about accomplishing an important task logically, meaning that the steps taken make sense to accomplish the goal, whatever that goal is.

 

Not really, since logic has often been cited as the primary motivation for everything Vulcans do. Now one could ask "What is Vulcan logic?"

Actually, I brought up both. Within Trek, Vulcans live by a particular kind of logic where they simply remove emotion & sentiment as a basis for their actions. Humans and Klingons have their own kinds of logic by that token.

Applied in a broad enough stroke, even someone completely illogical can be called logical, but I think most folks here get the idea of how it pertains to Vulcans.

 

Seeing the first pilot in its original form makes The Keeper's response "and more" to Pike's query whether they would give her back her illusion of beauty more understandable; the line didn't entirelt work in the two-parter ( until I saw the pilot, I assumed the line referred to Vina's / Susan Oliver's particularly exquisite beauty).

 

You win. I've been responding to way too many posts lately. Everybody quibble away.

 

I enjoy "The Cage" but to me the editing of the original episode is better in parts in "The Menagerie"; particularly the fight with the Kaylar

 

Of course, in The Menagerie, we see only segments of The Cage. And you do miss quite a bit. But... it's kind of like a revisiting of "highlights". Both work. Both are terrific, in their own ways.