There are some surprising moments cut from "The Menagerie." Like when Spock tries to take the ship and bug out on Pike. But okay, if you've seen one version, you've seen them all.
Hey, I never noticed that before....
- Thread starter Warped9
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There are some surprising moments cut from "The Menagerie." Like when Spock tries to take the ship and bug out on Pike. But okay, if you've seen one version, you've seen them all.
Correction: Like when Spock lays out the option to the command staff of leaving a planet that was full of aliens that could destroy them in a second. Don't frame it like Spock "tries to take the ship". Little dramatic there.
Do you know what the adverb "basically" means?
Internet is full of know-it-all dicks that look to create debate where none need exist. You don't have to be one. Post better, please. Thanks in advance.
I have watched through TOS but it's been (dare I say) a long time so even 'The Menagerie' is not fresh in memory.
That might make watching through TOS more interesting, nearly completely new first pilot.
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Moving on...
I disagree. Yes, the basic story of The Cage is still there. There are some scenes that were cut for The Menagerie.
The biggest difference to me is that showing The Cage framed by the current Enterprise scenes changes the basic flow. It's nice to see The Cage as its own entity.
How so?
I bought the pay-per-view premier on Oct 18, 1986. It was the hybrid color-b&w version, and having seen "The Menagerie" all my life, it was amazing. Just to see material I hadn't memorized like the Pledge of Allegiance was a big deal, but the restored scenes were a bigger deal than that. What a night.
The footage of Pike and Vina at the end of "The Menagerie" had been used to tell a completely different story in "The Cage." Therefore, it's a case of seen one, not entirely seen the other.
I was kind of waiting for someone to bring up this "difference". Hold on, hear me out.
The events in "The Cage" happen and at the end, Vina gets an illusory Pike, cool. All's well that ends well. Even the Talosians seem to let go the idea of breeding humans because of our psychology but in Vina's case, that should not be problematic at all.
Now at the end of "The Menagarie", Vina gets the real Pike after beaming down in his chair. A Pike now only too happy to be "an animal in a cage" given the extreme alternative of being a robot in a chair that the real world presents him.
(Even as a kid, I understood that "The Cage" ended with the same scene but with a totally fake Pike in both body and mind)
"The Menagerie" is absolutely brilliant. The conflict between reality and paradise. Pike's crisis between duty and freedom as a mirror to Kirk's crisis between duty and loyalty to Spock.
It really makes the Kirk era 2-parter so much stronger than the pilot imo. So much stronger that I can see no benefit that watching the pilot has against watching "The Menagerie".
What basic flow is interrupted? I can grant that the complexity of Vina's being given a fake Pike in body and mind is needed to augment Vina's being given a fake Pike in body but REAL in mind would make "The Cage" necessary in re-watches (and I do. I really do), but "The Menagerie" gives the fullest experience.
Heck, when I do re-watch "The Cage" I actually just feel "mentally itchy" for the Kirk 2-parter that fully deals with all these themes much more satisfactorily.
All of this jmo but yes, "The Cage" is basically summed up fully in the 2 parter and expanded upon much more superior. Essentially, if you have seen "The Menagerie" you have seen "The Cage" and you have been granted extra insights that the pilot did not/could not.
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It's interrupted by Kirk et al's scenes.
See my comment just before yours. Putting the story on pause does not interrupt the flow but adds to it. The pauses actually expands on the crisis of Pike by mirroring Kirk's crises in "present day"
Mostly for the commercial breaks. You must have a word from the sponsors ($$$), after all. (I believe the Cage was originally shot with no commercial breaks. Please correct me if I'm wrong.) Once back from the commercial, we get a quick summary/update and/or voice-over to explain what we the audience has seen so far or are seeing now. I feel that this enhanced the Menagerie storyline (even at the expense of the Cage). YMMV
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What I remember from renting the VHS from my local store mostly was the black and white straight-line font credits that felt so unique and rare and the cutting out of B& W to color and back and thinking "Wait why was THAT in B & W and not in color because THAT was in the Menagerie?"
I then did a compare and observed that the shots that were in Menagerie and bordered by Kirk's Enterprise viewscreen were still B & W even though shown in Menagerie.
Anyways, no one should take from my summary that I am anti- "Cage" or did not share the same experiences. Cheers!
Mostly for the commercial breaks. You must have a word from the sponsors ($$$), after all. (I believe the Cage was originally shot with no commercial breaks. Please correct me if I'm wrong.) Once back from the commercial, we get a quick summary/update and/or voice-over to explain what we the audience has seen so far or are seeing now. I feel that this enhanced the Menagerie storyline (even at the expense of the Cage). YMMV
All true. Even more than that, the pause leading to "end of Part One" has a dramatic scene with Kirk dealing with the same type of crisis of duty that Pike "is going through" during the Cage flashbacks.
KIRK: Do you know what you're doing? Have you lost your mind?
SPOCK: Captain, Jim, please don't stop me. Don't let him stop me. It's your career and Captain Pike's life.
(^^ That is deeper than just it's time for break here per TV rules imo)
and at the beginning of Part Two:
KIRK: Why? Why does Spock want to take to that forbidden world his former captain. Mutilated by a recent space disaster, now a shell of a man, unable to speak or move? The only answer Spock would give was on the hearing-room screen. How Spock could do this he refused to explain,....
[[ BUT in that subtext Kirk WANTS deperately to give Spock the benefit of the doubt while feeling disappointed - a bit betrayed - that Spock didn't include him fully from the beginning.]]
KIRK: Mister Spock, even if regulations are explicit, you could have come to me and explained.
SPOCK: Ask you to face the death penalty, too? One of us was enough, Captain.
[Long, thoughtful pause]
KIRK: Yes.
"Kirk's scenes et al" did an excellent job of framing the flow back and forth with Pike and Kirk going through a crisis. They did not nor COULD not interrupt the flow of the 2 parter
BUT some argue it interrupts the flow of the pilot itself. Maybe so, but I truly do not think so.
Not when all scenes are working in tandem for service of the themes at hand and expanding and filling those themes out so fully that the "interruptions" are not "out of place" but fulfill the very spirit of the pilot episode that is being told. Cheers!
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Here's something that will really cook your noodle.
Yes at the end of The Menagerie we see Vina and Pike entering they still destroyed Talosian entrance via the elevator.
^^^
Now was that mental projection to the screen a concurrent scene happening and being displayed to Kirk has it happens...OR...
Is it just a replay for Kirk of what happened 13 years prior? It's a fair question because remember the screen goes dark and that scene appears with the Telosian Keeper telepathically telling Kirk "Pike has illusion and you have reality..."; yet that all occurred A few seconds after Spock and Pike left the Conference Room for the Transporter Room - so realistically there's no chance that Pike could have been on the surface and with the Telosians at the time that the Keeper communicated that telepathic image to Kirk.
Thus yes, I believe he was showing Kirk a replay of what they did for vina 13 years ago after Pike left; and it's unknown whether or not they bothered to tell her that the real Pike had returned, and joined their fantasy bodies together in one shared illusion; or just gave Pike a fantasy illusion of Vina In the same way they gave Vina a fantasy illusion of Pike 13 years earlier.
In fact given her age and medical condition 13 years prior; How do we know the original Vina didn't pass away by the time Spock and Co. Delivered to Pike back into the Talosians hands.
(And why wouldn't the Talosians be honest about this to Spock or Pike? Because they would want Pike to be happy; and telling him that Vina had passed in the intervening years between the time he left and returned would serve no useful purpose to that end.)
So bottom line: No matter how you look at it; there really is no contradiction between the actual end of "The Cage" itself as originally presented, and of "The Menagerie II"; as in both cases, for whatever reason, the Keeper is "faking out" both Vina and Kirk respectively.
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