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

I'm glad that the majority of 'The Cage' was able to be seen during the original run of Star Trek and that, as a result, initial fans saw Captain Pike, Number One, Jose Tyler, and the younger, more emotive Spock. Jeffrey Hunter wonderfully portrayed Pike and although I doubt that Star Trek would have become the phenomenon that it did if Hunter/Pike had remained as the show's lead for the entire series instead of Shatner/Kirk, his character was nonetheless very interesting and a marked, more stoic and militaristic contrast to Kirk or the latter Captains in subsequent ST shows.

I prefer to watch the Pike flashback content in 'The Cage' as its uninterrupted and (largely) unedited. However, I love the framing device content of the first half-hour in 'The Menagerie (Part I)' and thoroughly enjoy the episodes as they are.

Now, if both the endings to 'The Cage' and 'The Menagerie (Part II)' are canonical, what did Vina think about the 'real' Pike returning to Talos IV after the Talosians had already provided an illusion of Pike for her? Did the Talosians inform her that the Pike she had known for well over a decade was an imposter now to be replaced by the real thing, or did she always know? Conversely, maybe the Talosians never even told her the illusion had been switched with the real Pike!

 

I fully agree about the 'and more' line's non-sensical presence in 'The Menagerie (Part II)'. As I see it, this was the only problem introduced through merging the 'The Cage' content with the new 'The Menagerie' plot developments. It almost defeats the central 'point' of reuniting a forlorn Vina with Pike in the conclusion of the 'The Menagerie'. Why wasn't the line simply edited out?

 

I thought it was pretty clear in The Cage that Vina knew she had been given an illusory Pike. However, it's certainly interesting whether the Talosians told her the real Pike was returning. Burning Dreams suggests so, but it's an interesting point, nonetheless!

 

So, does Vina start a sort of Pike harem, with the total illusion and the real one? Does real Pike go to the bottom of the pecking order?

 

In theory Pike could actually end up with a illusion of Vina. Maybe they could all go on a double date together.

Jason

 

VINA: You see why I can't go with you.
KEEPER: This is the female's true appearance.
VINA: They found me in the wreckage, dying, a lump of flesh. They rebuilt me. Everything works, but they had never seen a human. They had no guide for putting me back together.
KEEPER: It was necessary to convince you her desire to stay is an honest one.
PIKE: You'll give her back her illusion of beauty?
KEEPER: And more.

Was thinking about this exchange after reading this topic. It really doesn't make sense when you think about it. Everything works, so Vina's body was fully functional. Her comment is that she was disfigured because the Talosians did not know what a human looked like. That just no longer makes sense because:

1. Comparative anatomy - The Talosians were bipedal humanoids. There was enough similarity to guide someone into knowing a human should be basically symmetrical with arms and legs of proportional length, etc...

2. Telepathy - The Talosians can read everyone's minds. They pulled memories out of Pike that were not in the Enterprise databanks. Vina would have had similar memories. She would have remembered what a normal human looked like. Vina probably had a rough idea of anatomy at least knowing where some organs were located like her lungs, heart, stomach, digestive tract, etc... She would know enough that a skilled surgeon could have assembled her properly. Talosian surgery must have been skilled enough to put her together and have everything work.

 

Vina was already an adult when her ship crashed on Talos IV, then add the trauma of major injuries, inept Talosian surgery and medical care, living underground, eating strange Talosian food that is surely lacking in essentials that a human would require, stress and depression, and she is 18 years older on top of all that.

 

So what? If they pressed Vina into the "correct shape" mold, she would die. Getting her spine working and bending it straight would be mutually exclusive things - or at least they are that today.

This was never an issue. But Vina would have no idea what a normal human looked like from inside. Meaning the Talosians would have to stumble their way through making a spine work, rendering it incapable of ever being straight again.

I very much doubt that. Really, I think we can safely bet 0% of TrekBBS participants would have enough knowledge that, if telepathically zapped, would allow a nonhuman surgeon to build a functioning let alone nice-looking human.

We might speculate that Vina was in fact the chief surgeon of the Columbia. But this is highly unlikely. Why wouldn't this criterion have been brought up? Why was she listed as adult "crewman"?

At an obvious price. Heck, I doubt human surgery would have done much better.

Although this all hinges on the idea that we can take the Talosians on their word. Perhaps Vina was disfigured, perhaps not. Perhaps she survived the crash, perhaps not. Perhaps the Talosians wanted Pike for inseminating Vina's children, perhaps not. Perhaps a Vina did once exist even though she died in the crash, perhaps even the crew roster was an illusion. After all, we already got clear confirmation that Vina's looks and words are false more often than not, and that even existence is unconvincing in the Talosian case.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Agreed. The story would work better if the Talosians had been truly alien in form as Roddenberry had initially envisioned.

 

Do we even know if Vina was really still alive at the time of Pike's return to Talos IV?
JB

 

The Talosian internal anatomy could still differ wildly from humans. The Original Series was no stranger to this with seemingly otherwise visually identical humanoids (e.g., Apollo's race had an extra organ which could harness energy, the Capellans apparently had discrepant internal anatomies from humans, according to McCoy, Vulcans have inner eyelids, different circulatory systems, hearts where livers are situated in humans, et al.).

 

I've always assumed that Spock was learning the ways of logic and got it right by the second season! His smiling in the Cage and Where No Man and even Mudd's Women could be deceiving if a new viewer had learned about the icy cold Vulcan logic and then they see him smirk and smile I'd guess!
JB

 

My head canon excuse for Spock's smiling is that maybe at this point in his life he felt the need to show a little emotion to other humans so they would feel more comfortable around him.

Jason

 

Yes that sounds good, Jason! But I doubt at that point maybe that he cared. Remember his comments to Bailey on the bridge! Maybe he was purging the last remaining emotions like he was about to in The Motion Picture?
JB

 

Spock had emotion all the way through, he just channelled it. Just look at his anger in Plato's Stepchildren trashing the chalice. Or his passion for McCoy in The Empath, or indeed in his speech to Janice/Lester in the courtroom in Turnabout Intruder.

 

The odd thing about the Vulcan heart is that they said, more than once, that it's located where the human liver is. But when McCoy pointed to it, he indicated the other side of the body, nowhere near the liver.

 

My head canon excuse for Spock smiling when he touched the plant was that it was an affect of whatever was making the plant twitch or move. It was an involuntary muscle contraction from nerve impulses stimulated by the plant. Much like the involuntary kick reflex when you hit your knee a certain way.

 

They were playing the "no emotions" card as early as WNMHGB

and Mudd's Women

And of course in the Naked Time we see Spock in "melt down mode".

 

But their outward erect bipedal appearance suggested at least enough similarity in skeletal structure that Vina should not have appeared physically deformed. A modern F-35 is radically different from a Sopwith Camel but a bi-plane builder still understands the basic concepts of lift, aerodynamics and a tail with a rudder. Talosian physicians should have had enough knowledge to understand how the gross skeletal structure should have appeared.

They were able to generate an illusion of how Vina should appear, so the knew how she should appear.

 

But it doesn't follow they should have been able to heal Vina. Nobody could. It's just that the Talosians had the extra handicap of being completely new to this human-healing business ("had not seen a human before").

It's a turn of phrase that leads people on the wrong track, is all. "Seeing" doesn't refer to being able to paint an anatomically correct nude oil. It refers to being familiar with in general. And since Talosians weren't even that, it's no wonder they had zero odds of getting the surgery right.

Timo Saloniemi