Dating "The Cage" - When does it ACTUALLY take place?

[Admiral Archer]

Okay, so I wasn't sure which forum to put this in, as it deals with the dating of both the TOS pilot "The Cage" and Star Trek: Discovery. Since we will be primarily discussing "The Cage", however, it seemed fair to put it in here.

Disclaimer: this is just a bit of fun speculation, not meant to be a complaint about Discovery, as I am actually super pumped for the new show. I'm just curious to see how all the puzzle pieces will fit in the end.

Memory Alpha declares in its introduction to the plot of "The Cage": "The year is 2254 - eleven years before Captain Kirk's five-year mission commanding the USS Enterprise." While this seemed reasonable at the time of production, does anyone know of a canonical statement that places the pilot in this time period? We know that Kirk is given the keys to the Enterprise from Captain Pike, which meant he was in command immediately prior to Kirk's taking over of the center seat, as I remember a quote from Kirk in "The Menagerie" stating as such.

We also know that Discovery takes place ten years before Kirk and Spock, per the trailer. Now, we never really get a concrete date on any of the original series episodes, as at the time it hadn't even been decided to set the show in the 23rd century (that would not happen until The Wrath of Khan, if you remember). But assuming that the Memory Alpha timeline is correct, then Kirk assumed command in 2265, which would place Star Trek Discovery in the 2255 time frame.

Enter Discovery into the fray. Given the fact that Kirk wears the same style of uniform when he assumes command as Pike did in "The Cage", there are two possibilities: the late 2250's/early 2260's uniform was utilized for over 11 years, and the events of Discovery take place earlier than expected, or "The Cage" must take place later in the timeline. I have heard plenty of arguments ad nauseum for the former, so what this all boils down to is, would it be so difficult to place "The Cage" sometime later in the timeline? Maybe even as late as 2264, as Pike was already expressing fatigue from command, and it would make more sense to hand the ship over to a fresh young face like Kirk shortly after such events. That way, Discovery really could take place ten years before Kirk's five year mission.

 

[Christopher]

Memory Alpha declares in its introduction to the plot of "The Cage": "The year is 2254 - eleven years before Captain Kirk's five-year mission commanding the USS Enterprise." While this seemed reasonable at the time of production, does anyone know of a canonical statement that places the pilot in this time period?

Yes, of course. "The Menagerie" states explicitly and repeatedly in dialogue (five times, to be exact) that the Talos IV incident occurred 13 years before the episode. "The Menagerie" is generally assumed to be in early 2267, which puts "The Cage" in 2254.

As for the uniforms, if the TNG and DS9 casts could wear different uniforms at the same time, I don't see why the Enterprise and Discovery/Shenzhou crews couldn't have. DC's second TOS annual posited that the TMP uniforms came into use sometime before the end of the 5-year mission and that the crew hadn't adopted them yet because they'd been out in deep space in the interim. So there are precedents for different uniforms being used simultaneously.

 

[Timo]

It's actually rather stunning that the DSC uniforms appear to stick to the color pattern established in "The Cage" and then abandoned for the TOS production run... We get a pretty direct hint of what the makers of DSC are thinking right there!

The one variable here is that there are no solid dates for most TOS episodes. Oh, we could try and use Sarek's humorously precisely stated age to date TOS "Journey of Babel" against the more solidly anchored TNG "Sarek", for example. But most of the TOS episodes still remain "floaters", only associated with each other in the loose terms of seasons (an out-of-the-universe phenomenon that need not mean much) or stardates (a definite in-universe feature but one we cannot decipher).

"The Menagerie" has the stardate 3012, FWIW. We could take that to mean it's about two years after the first TOS episodes which have stardates in the low 1000 range - and then decide that the last TOS episodes, in the 5000 range, denote the fifth year of the five-year mission, a year VOY "Q2" explicates as falling (at least partially) on AD 2270. This would move "The Menagerie" to 2268, perhaps, but that's about the extent of our leeway.

As for Pike being tired, that could be a sign of him being young and inexperienced - he suffers what in hindsight must be seen as a minor setback, yet almost collapses, possibly because he hasn't seen anything yet. The modest amount of braid on his sleeve might support the notion...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Admiral Archer]

Yes, of course. "The Menagerie" states explicitly and repeatedly in dialogue (five times, to be exact) that the Talos IV incident occurred 13 years before the episode. "The Menagerie" is generally assumed to be in early 2267, which puts "The Cage" in 2254. .

Well, I'm feeling rather foolish right now...
Thanks for the clarification, at any rate! In my defense, it's been a long time since I've seen "The Menagerie"; maybe I should have watched it again before posting.

 

[Kor]

I like the fact that Pike was thinking of retiring from Starfleet to become an Orion pirate. The galaxy really was like the rough-and-tumble wild west at that time. Later captains were too holier-than-thou to ever consider something like that.

Kor

 

[Christopher]

I like the fact that Pike was thinking of retiring from Starfleet to become an Orion pirate.

I don't think he really was. When he suggested going into business on the Orion colony, he was probably thinking of something more reputable, but Boyce was reminding him that he might not be able to avoid getting involved with the slave traders that were active there. In the fantasy later on, he seemed to be the owner of the tavern where Vina was performing, although that did imply he owned her as a slave. Still, not an actual pirate.

 

[FormerLurker]

Though TMP doesn't state a date, it does have a fairly explicit line of dialog placing it firmly in the latter half of the 23rd century. As per Decker, "This probe launched over three hundred years ago!"

 

[Christopher]

Now, we never really get a concrete date on any of the original series episodes, as at the time it hadn't even been decided to set the show in the 23rd century (that would not happen until The Wrath of Khan, if you remember).

It wasn't made explicit within an onscreen story until then, but the idea had been around much earlier. The 23rd-century setting was first proposed by James Blish in his "Space Seed" adaptation in 1968, and was mentioned in The Making of Star Trek later that same year. (Although The Star Trek Concordance a few years later went with the 22nd century.) The 1977 Star Fleet Medical Reference Manual also puts events from TOS sometime around the 2260s. And the Orson Welles-narrated commercials and trailers to ST:TMP explicitly mention the 23rd century as the setting, even though the movie itself only implies it.

Though TMP doesn't state a date, it does have a fairly explicit line of dialog placing it firmly in the latter half of the 23rd century. As per Decker, "This probe launched over three hundred years ago!"

Which doesn't really mesh with later assumptions, unfortunately. Voyager 1 & 2 were launched in 1977, and no more in the series had been launched at the time of the movie's 1979 release, so presumably any Voyager 6 would've been launched in the 1980s at the earliest. So if TMP were more than 300 years after that, it'd have to be the 2280s or later. But since VGR: "Q2" explicitly put the end of the 5-year mission in 2270, that means that TMP, two and a half years later, must be 2272-3. And we know from the Bozeman in TNG: "Cause and Effect" that the TWOK-style uniforms were in use by 2278. So we have to assume that Decker's date estimate was a little off.

 

[uniderth]

My dating puts "the Cage" in the second half of the year 2253.

I don't think he really was. When he suggested going into business on the Orion colony, he was probably thinking of something more reputable, but Boyce was reminding him that he might not be able to avoid getting involved with the slave traders that were active there. In the fantasy later on, he seemed to be the owner of the tavern where Vina was performing, although that did imply he owned her as a slave. Still, not an actual pirate.

While not necessarily a pirate, Boyce's comment makes it pretty clear that going into business on the Orion colony involves slave trading.

PIKE: I said that's one place I might go. I might go into business on Regulus or on the Orion colony.
BOYCE: You, an Orion trader, dealing in green animal women, slaves?

Pike's reply seems to imply that going from Starship Captain to slave trader might be a bit outlandish. But he never speak out against the evils of slave trading.

PIKE: The point is this isn't the only life available. There's a whole galaxy of things to choose from.

 

[FormerLurker]

It wasn't made explicit within an onscreen story until then, but the idea had been around much earlier. The 23rd-century setting was first proposed by James Blish in his "Space Seed" adaptation in 1968, and was mentioned in The Making of Star Trek later that same year. (Although The Star Trek Concordance a few years later went with the 22nd century.) The 1977 Star Fleet Medical Reference Manual also puts events from TOS sometime around the 2260s. And the Orson Welles-narrated commercials and trailers to ST:TMP explicitly mention the 23rd century as the setting, even though the movie itself only implies it.




Which doesn't really mesh with later assumptions, unfortunately. Voyager 1 & 2 were launched in 1977, and no more in the series had been launched at the time of the movie's 1979 release, so presumably any Voyager 6 would've been launched in the 1980s at the earliest. So if TMP were more than 300 years after that, it'd have to be the 2280s or later. But since VGR: "Q2" explicitly put the end of the 5-year mission in 2270, that means that TMP, two and a half years later, must be 2272-3. And we know from the Bozeman in TNG: "Cause and Effect" that the TWOK-style uniforms were in use by 2278. So we have to assume that Decker's date estimate was a little off.

I always have. Mainly because after Voyager 2, there hasn't been any more in the series at all. If we ever do launch a Voyager 6, I think it safe to assume that it will not only date to at least half way through the 21st century, but that the design will probably be quite different, and be a Voyager probe in name only.

 

[Christopher]

While not necessarily a pirate, Boyce's comment makes it pretty clear that going into business on the Orion colony involves slave trading.

Can involve slave trading. It's illogical that an entire planet would have only one business. Boyce chose that example of the most disreputable business with which the Orion colony was associated in order to ridicule Pike's suggestion, so one shouldn't take it too literally. And Pike responded by backtracking, saying that he wasn't specifically thinking about going to Orion, just using it as an example of one of the many places he could potentially go if he left the service. The fact that he'd never actually become a slave trader is implicit. It was just an idle mention that Boyce ridiculed for its obvious outrageousness and that Pike immediately backed away from.

I always have. Mainly because after Voyager 2, there hasn't been any more in the series at all. If we ever do launch a Voyager 6, I think it safe to assume that it will not only date to at least half way through the 21st century, but that the design will probably be quite different, and be a Voyager probe in name only.

Well, of course Trek's timeline would've diverged from ours well before the present. We didn't have the Eugenics Wars in the '90s, we didn't launch a Nomad probe, and we never started using the interplanetary sleeper ships that are supposed to become obsolete next year according to "Space Seed."

 

[Albertese]

.... But since VGR: "Q2" explicitly put the end of the 5-year mission in 2270, that means that TMP, two and a half years later, must be 2272-3.
....

I would be comfortable with Decker's dates being a little off. But I'm also in the camp that the "Two and half years" are not refering back to the five-year mission. Now, I concede that the screen-writer almost certainly was doing so, but, for my money, I like to think that more like eight or so years have passed since 2270 and the line in question is referring to Kirk (specifically) having not been in command of a starship for that long, having been promoted to Chief of Operations. Though I don't think there was another deep space mission during that time as Kirk tells Decker that his "five years out there dealing with the unknown" is one of the reasons he's bumping Willard from the center seat. And we know that Scotty has been working on the refit for eighteen months, meaning it began a year after Kirk's promotion.

What was everyone up to during that period? I'm not sure, but I can just never get behind how everyone has aged so much in just two and half years. Unless the Enterprise's final mission before returning home involved passing though some temporal anomaly which permanently aged at crew an extra decade or so, I think TMP happens later.

--Alex

 

[Timo]

Since Trek by and large appeared to operate on the assumption of the fictional date being airdate plus 300 years sharp, a 2279 date for TMP sounds fine and well...

...All the more because the two real Voyagers were Grand Tour spacecraft and there would have been little point in launching them any later, when the Grand Tour window was closed. Perhaps NASA just built six or twelve of them and launched all near-simultaneously, as insurance against failure, which in the Trek universe would be all the more likely (and indeed befell Voyager 6).

We only need to modify that to 2277-78 because of the uniform issue, and only if we assume that Earth, rather than some frontier starship named Bozeman, should be at the leading edge of fashion. But perhaps Starfleet preferred to test the new uniforms in the depths of space, just in case?

While not necessarily a pirate, Boyce's comment makes it pretty clear that going into business on the Orion colony involves slave trading.

But Boyce is making a joke. Why should we think it's based on hard facts when the average joke is based on stereotypes instead?

I mean, yeah, stereotype tends to be fact to a degree, often a statistically significant degree even. But this sounds to me like a very thinly disguised Earth joke: the Yankee skipper in a moment of self-doubt thinks of opening a business in Tuscaloosa (probably involving his beloved horses), and his equally Northern surgeon immediately goes "Ah, mint juleps and morning whippings!".

Pike is embarrassed by having his little dream not only exposed but ridiculed. The embarrassment can and does hide any and all facts of the matter, alas.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

I would be comfortable with Decker's dates being a little off. But I'm also in the camp that the "Two and half years" are not refering back to the five-year mission. Now, I concede that the screen-writer almost certainly was doing so, but, for my money, I like to think that more like eight or so years have passed since 2270 and the line in question is referring to Kirk (specifically) having not been in command of a starship for that long, having been promoted to Chief of Operations.

As I said, though, "Cause and Effect" establishes that the TWOK uniforms were in use by 2278. So that would only work if the uniforms were changed pretty much right after TMP.

What was everyone up to during that period? I'm not sure, but I can just never get behind how everyone has aged so much in just two and half years.

You can't dwell too much on real-world aging like that. I mean, regardless of what the Okudachron claims, less than a year of story time elapses between TWOK and TFF (maybe a couple of weeks tops from TWOK to TSFS, three months from there to TVH, an unspecified amount of time for the trial and exoneration, and then, according to Harve Bennett, a 6-month shakedown cruised between TVH and TFF), but the actors visibly age 7 years' worth during that time. And the TNG cast are visibly older in the flashback portions of "All Good Things..." than they were during "Encounter at Farpoint," even Data. And let's not even think about "These Are the Voyages..." vis-a-vis "The Pegasus."

 

[BillJ]

I would be comfortable with Decker's dates being a little off. But I'm also in the camp that the "Two and half years" are not refering back to the five-year mission. Now, I concede that the screen-writer almost certainly was doing so, but, for my money, I like to think that more like eight or so years have passed since 2270 and the line in question is referring to Kirk (specifically) having not been in command of a starship for that long, having been promoted to Chief of Operations. Though I don't think there was another deep space mission during that time as Kirk tells Decker that his "five years out there dealing with the unknown" is one of the reasons he's bumping Willard from the center seat. And we know that Scotty has been working on the refit for eighteen months, meaning it began a year after Kirk's promotion.

What was everyone up to during that period? I'm not sure, but I can just never get behind how everyone has aged so much in just two and half years. Unless the Enterprise's final mission before returning home involved passing though some temporal anomaly which permanently aged at crew an extra decade or so, I think TMP happens later.

--Alex

That means everyone except Kirk only went up one rank grade in 13 years.

 

[Albertese]

Regarding the uniforms, I'm quite comfortable placing TMP in 2277 or early '78 and the Boseman crew happened to one of the first crews sporting the monster maroons. This still could allow about a decade for use of the TMP uniforms, which, given how often Starfleet updates their fashion sense, is a good run.

Regarding actor aging, I'm generally on board with you there. However, for me, the TOS/TMP distinction is the most jarring. By a lot. The TWOK-TFF gap and the flashbacks in TNG are all easier to gloss over.

Your mileage may vary, of course.

--Alex

 

[Timo]

It's also possible to dismiss the ST:TMP style as not being a starship uniform at all, but rather something certain people back on Earth wore at the time of "The Cage" already, and continued to wear past TWoK. It's just that Kirk gets to keep the style for this one special space mission because nobody had time to bring any uniforms aboard the still-unfinished ship. So Kirk grabs his planetside bag, while "his"/Decker's refitting crew dons the working coveralls they expected to only wear on Earth orbit.

The transition from "The Cage" to TOS to TWoK would then be very modest: only the collar of the pullover changes a bit, and then there are different fashions of the field jacket they wear over that pullover (blue in "The Cage", none in TOS, burgundy from TWoK on). Basically the sort of variation one sees within ST Beyond already!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[uniderth]

I too support a TMP date of early 2278. I think it plays nice with the actor's ages. Also despite Kirk's, "five years out there" comment (which still would be factually true), it allows for a second five year mission Star Trek II series, and Planet of the Titans movie.

 

[Christopher]

For me, one of the best indications that TMP is closer to TOS than to TWOK (other than the "five years out there" line) is Chekov's rank. He's an ensign in TOS, a lieutenant in TMP, and a full commander and first officer in TWOK. Since they didn't use lieutenant j.g. rank in the TOS era (although there's some ambiguity with Joe Tormolen, which was probably a costuming inconsistency), that means Chekov only went up one rank grade between TOS and TMP and two grades between TMP and TWOK. So that suggests that the latter time interval was greater than the former.

Also, the supporting crew are still in the same posts in TMP, but TWOK implies that they've all long since moved on to separate roles in their careers and are only reuniting for Kirk's birthday cruise as a special occasion. Chekov is first officer of another ship, and there's a deleted scene establishing that Sulu was getting the captaincy of the Excelsior (not canonical, I know, but it illustrates the storytellers' intention). So TWOK implies a far greater amount of progress in their careers since the previous tale than TMP does. It just makes more sense to put TMP sooner.

There's also Spock's mentorship of Saavik. Granted, most of the familiar Saavik backstory is from tie-ins rather than onscreen information, but it's generally accepted that Spock had been Saavik's mentor since her early teens at least. If TMP happened as late as 2277-8, then Spock would've had to be Saavik's mentor already, years beforehand. Given that responsibility, would he have been willing to undertake Kolinahr and cut himself off completely from all personal ties? That doesn't make sense to me. It's more likely that his mentoring of Saavik came after he'd walked away from Kolinahr. The generally accepted version in the books is that he discovered her as an adolescent on Hellguard shortly after TMP.

 

[Timo]

I personally see no reason to believe the Junior Lieutenant rank would suddenly disappear and then reappear, especially when a specific rank braid for it in fact appears in TOS...

But the idea that the heroes would "still be in their old positions" is clearly a misunderstanding, no two ways about it. When TMP opens, they aren't in any positions at all, they're just helping refit an inactive ship. Or at least a select few of them are. But then along comes Kirk and makes them into his crew again. Obviously Kirk would strive to recreate his TOS days of glory in exact detail - he even tries to get a Vulcan Science Officer and all.

Timo Saloniemi