While I can't say I'm a fan of TMP these minor tweaks would have went a long way into making me like it a bit more.
The colors are damn right! The neckpieces are...okay. But it's even more obvious how ridiculously too long the shirts were - it looks completely impractical. Like everyone wearing XXL-shirts, while only being M size.
I was about to say “is, too!” but then I remembered that the unaired pilot has a considerably different ending than the two-part episode.
Except for that caveat, “is, too canon!”
In your head canon? Ok.
It’s remarkable to me how many people are now ignorant to the ways in which Star Trek Fandom and indeed even those in charge of the franchise once “policed” such things to ensure a more cohesive franchise. I take for granted the facts that I grew up in this fandom (now part of my career) knowing are not readily understood by a much larger and often splinted fandom today. Allow me then to help.
“Star Trek” later referred to as “Star Trek: The Original Series” consists of 78 originally aired episodes starting with “The Man Trap” and ending with “The Turnabout Intruder”.
The footage from the 1st rejected pilot (remember this was in an era when it was unusual for a pilot episode to even be aired, much less included in a series original run or syndication package) was cut apart and repurposed via edited incorporation into the 1st season two part episode “The Menagerie”. At that point “The Cage” lost its own agency as an episode of Star Trek. If, indeed it ever really had any as again it’s not even the pilot episode of what we know as “Star Trek”. That pilot episode is called “Where No Man Has Gone Before” as the accepted pilot episode for the series (and it was incorporated into the first run of the series, where “The Cage” was not).
The footage incorporated into “The Managerie” is canon, and therefor IS relivent as “the past” or as background for those characters in an earlier era in the voyages of the U.S.S. ENTERPRISE. But, ONLY those scenes as presented in “The Managerie”. To dismiss this fact invites too many naritive problems especially the ending of “The Cage” made especially problematic by the end of the, actually aired, official, episode “The Managerie”.
Now, for years Gene Roddenberry would cart around a black and white print of “The Cage” to conventions and it was always presented as a curiosity; a road not taken by the network, and something that existed outside of the 78 episodes of the series proper. It’s relivence and agency within Star Trek IS its use in “The Managerie”, and that’s all.
Now, I like and enjoy “The Cage” for what it is, but that is not as some artificially, shoehorned-into-continuity, “Episode” of TOS. It’s more appropriately thought of in the same way Tolkien and his fans view some of the stories presented in both “Lost Stories” and in the appendixes of “The Lord of the Rings” - which is to say that they provide interesting information, but are not part of the naritive proper as presented in “Star Trek”.
John
You’re absolutely right; the ending does not fit what we see in “The Menagerie.” But that doesn’t make “The Cage” not canon. It just makes it a continuity error.
Okay, I'm apparently a bit out of the loop here. Honest question: Where does the ending of "the cage" doesn't line up with "the menagerie"? In my (vague) recollection, in "the cage" Pike left the planet and the woman, same as in "menagerie", only that he came back.
I never saw the two episodes side by side though, and it's years ago I watched either of them. So I really don't recollect any parts that don't match up between the two (apart from the obvious, Spock laughing and "laser canons"). Could anyone of you help me here? Where was the contradiction between the two?
I'm not talking about the 'lore.' The 'lore' means nothing. The '60's Batman series, the '90's Tim Burton Batman films and the noughts Christopher Nolan Batman films all share the same 'lore,' but take place in different continuities. No impartial observer is going to look at those three examples and think that they take place in the same universe. Ditto with "The Cage"/TOS, and DSC.
Here's some education on what CBS (the owner of the intellectual property that is Star Trek) considers canon:
1. Star Trek (The Original Series, including "The Cage" pilot)
2. Star Trek: The Animated Series
3. Star Trek: The Next Generation
4. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
5. Star Trek: Voyager
6. Star Trek: Enterprise
7. Star Trek: Discovery
8. Star Trek: The Motion Picture
9. Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan
10. Star Trek: The Search for Spock
11. Star Trek: The Voyage Home
12. Star Trek: The Final Frontier
13. Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country
14. Star Trek: Generations
15. Star Trek: First Contact
16. Star Trek: Insurrection
17. Star Trek: Nemesis
As for 'narrative problems,' there's nothing different about that in "The Cage" than there is with any other continuity problem between the different iterations of Star Trek. How did Kirk's Enterprise in ST:TFF get to the center of the galaxy in a half hour when it would take Picard's Enterprise thousands of years to get there? That's a continuity problem, not a canon problem.
Hope that clears things up for you.
Also: Did I miss something? Since when is "The animated series" part of the canon?
I thought the official line has never changed: It's non-canon. Except they used it to mine for story ideas and elements, like introducing the Sehlat. But that IMO never went beyond how, for example, Disney is mining the old Star Wars EU for story ideas (Han and Leia's son falling to the dark side, part of Han's backstory), or how MARVEL is integrating plotpoints from the comics to the movies: Yes, it's an obvious inspiration. But I don't see how it makes the source material canon in the process.
I have to respectfully disagree. DSC does what TMP did (visually speaking). TMP aimed for a new visual design language that paid homage but still did its own thing. New more detailed hulls, new lines, new nacelles, new jumpsuit uniforms, new everything for cinema, but retaining the lore. DSC does the same but in the past Pre-TOS. Aside from "The Cage" which isn't canon bar the events of "Menagerie" (which is merely a manipulated visual recount by the Telosians/Crippled Pike's brain) we see nothing visually of that timeframe. So DSC fills the space with new visuals that pay homage here and there but overall do their own thing while retaining lore (poorly I'll add since their storytelling is abysmal) but yes retaining lore. As we can see for S02 they're reintroducing the TOS uniform again albeit with a visual update ala what Halo did and giving us an updated Big-E but yes from a visual point of view it is very similar to TMP in that light.
Sorry for bringing that back up from pages ago - but I just checked in for the first time after a while. IMO the difference is: TOS was low-res television, from an era where most television screens were
tiny. Add the mediocre budget, and it was obvious why TMP changed up so many things: The cinema screen is
enourmous. It
had to look waay more detailed. That's why they changed up so much.
But! That change has been done now. Especially late ENT already
was HD! Sure, adding even more detail is great. But we already
have the HD-look for Star Trek. DIS designs don't
add anything. It was already there. The only thing it did was
change stuff. And even
that would be okay in my book - let the creators put their own stamp on their work. It's simply an issue that they went
waaaay too far. Their klingon design language has
nothing, and I repeat NOTHING in common with previous klingon design language - neither the already existing HD klingons, nor the bare bones of the old 60's tapes. Whereas the TMP klingons and starships were pretty much immediately recognizable as an evolution of the original design, the new DIS design simply throw every iconic element right out of the window. It doesn't
refine anything - it just
replaces it, with reject files from the "Lord of the RIngs"-trash bin.
That's a big difference. I wouldn't really mind the new more heavily layered klingon make-up masks if they retained some iconic klingon elements - like braided hair, mustaches, the shoulder straps, or the basic bridge-nacelle configuration of their starships. But again: those elements weren't
refined or updated: They were just carelessly thrown out, and replaced with a much lesser, more generic "evil" demon/orc design language.
As if that's the metric.
