^^
We supposedly are getting a visit to Talos IV this season, so that maybe in fact be a Cage references.
Spoilers Discovery and the Novelverse - TV show discussion thread
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
- Start date
Trek fans born this century will love episodes that don't make sense unless you've seen ones from 50 years ago.
Which is two clicks away on Netflix. Maybe we should not ignore the times in which we live. I wouldn't be surprised if The Cage was currently one of the most well-known episodes of TOS among the new viewers of this series in the world. Everyone who watches this series for the first time on Netflix starts with this episode. Let's not forget that only American viewers from the 1960s didn't start TOS with this episode and now they are probably in a minority among the world's audiences.
Straw man. It is entirely possible to write a story that references an older story while still making sense to people who haven't seen it. All you have to do is provide exposition. Remember, the very first Trek story ever written, "The Cage," was about the crew dealing with the emotional impact of the Rigel VII battle that we never saw. One of the greatest love stories ever written, Casablanca, is about two ex-lovers confronting the baggage of their past relationship. One of the greatest tragedies ever written, Hamlet, is about the aftermath of a murder that happened before the play started. Countless stories depend on the impact of events the audience never saw, but they still "make sense," because they fill the audience in on what they missed.
The recent bestselling title X-Men Extermination, https://www.cbr.com/extermination-x-men-breakdown/ , has close ties to Uncanny X-Men #8 way back in 1964, predating even 'The Cage'! Like others posted here, that issue is a few clicks away on Comixology.
If you think Star Trek is bad, Dr. Who is even worse with storylines often referencing episodes that don't even exist anymore because of BBC wiping their episode archives back in the day... That didn't stop BBC from producing their heavily watched 12th Doctor sendoff "Twice Upon a Time" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_Upon_a_Time_(Doctor_Who) , which takes place during the lost serial 'The Tenth Planet' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tenth_Planet , which you can't even watch because it's lost.
Maybe we should not ignore the times which preceded us--there wasn't a commercially-available full-colour copy of "The Cage" until the early Nineties, and the episode wasn't always included even in later syndication packages.
I grew up with the 1984 syndication package on CBC that began with "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and ended with this retrospective special, so I didn't see "The Cage" in its entirety until I got the standalone VHS release. Although you're right that "The Cage" is easy enough to watch now, there are many people beyond "American viewers from the 1960's" who didn't have such an option.
Yeah, but most of it is in "The Menagerie," of course. What we're talking about is whether audiences would be familiar with the overall story and characters of "The Cage," not the minor details that were cut out for the 2-parter.
Exactly. I never got around to actually watching "The Cage" until a few years ago, but I knew all about Pike and the Talosians from watching "The Menagerie" five zillion times growing up, back when TOS (or "STAR TREK" as we called it then) was being rerun constantly in syndication.
One jarring effect of Pike being developed now is that it seems strange that only Spock is willing to risk the death penalty to send Pike to Talos IV after Pike's injuries. Discovery will probably detail in the coming episodes just why Spock is so loyal to Pike.
But where are all of Pike's other friends and colleagues? They had to have known what happened as Commodore Mendez said, "There's been subspace chatter about it for months." Burnham should be trying to help Pike too, he came back for her on that asteroid after all. Saru, Stamets, Tilly, Number One?
Tilly probably has her precious captainship she wanted all her life by TOS and can't be bothered to break Starfleet regulations. Guess she forgot the now wheelchair-bound man who helped her get there.
Saru supposedly doesn't feel fear anymore so he shouldn't be afraid to risk the death penalty to help Pike! Maybe that fear of death relapsed faster than a Kelpien marathon once General Order 7 was waved in front of Saru.
Burnham will be in whatever black hole she'll be sent to that explains why she's never mentioned elsewhere in Trek.
Stamets is probably holed up in some lab trying to restart the spore drive without any mycelial damage.
Number One heard about Pike and, in her cold logical manner, realized she can't do anything about it anyway and went to eat another hamburger.
In theory, space is very big -- presumably the others were just too far away to get involved. Though unfortunately, DSC season 1 threw that out the window and had even shuttlecraft making interstellar journeys in less than half an hour, in at least one episode.
Subspace corridors. I could have sworn that this was used somewhere as an explanation of Star Trek 5, but I can't find the work now. Star Trek always played fast and loose with time/distance.
How do you know any of these characters are alive?
Wow, that's dark, even for the franchise that brought us the 'Starfleet Orphanage' (see http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/biographies1.htm#other ).
Mirror Georgiou: Captain Pike, the time has come. Execute General Order 24.
Pike: It will be done my lady.
(orbital bombardment proceeds while Discovery crew are still on a planet during an away mission)
In the books, I postulated that she was off on a deep-space mission when Pike had his accident. By the time she made it back to Federation space, Pike had mysteriously gone MIA for reasons, thanks to Spock.
Pike didn't want them to. He didn't want Spock to, either, and beeped it accordingly. But Spock is a loose cannon, and kidnapped Pike anyway to the planet of zookeepers who wanted to make a human slave race.
But they didn't show those parts to Kirk and crew and Pike just gave up and went along with it to prevent anymore killing.
That's not true, though. I watched 'The Tenth Planet' about a year ago. The story has four episodes, three of which are completely intact. Only the final twenty plus minutes lack most of the moving imagery, but is reconstructed fairly well with the full audio and quite a few photographs of scenes.
And beyond the fact that the First Doctor is about to go through his first regeneration, there is nothing specific in 'The Tenth Planet' that plays any role whatsoever in 'Twice Upon a Time'.
There's also an animated reconstruction of Part 4 available on DVD.
Although a number of scenes from The Tenth Planet were filmed using David Bradley as the Doctor and new actors in the other roles. There's over thirty minutes of content done, which ultimately got deleted, though some of it can be viewed on the DVD/Blu-ray of Twice Upon a Time.
That's only been done three times, and even then there were specific reasons. The Macra were used in Gridlock because RTD wanted alien crabs anyway, and he figured why not use the ones that already exist in Doctor Who canon. The Great Intelligence was featured in The Snowman and subsequent second half of the seventh season because Moffat was aware that Web of Fear had mostly been retrieved and that BBC had plans to announce it in 2013. And in Twice Upon a Time, Peter Capaldi's contract had expired, so Moffat tailored a story specifically to lure Capaldi back to do one more episode.
Back to the issue of Discovery and Star Trek EU, is there any way to make the Star Trek Early Voyages comic book with Pike and company fit in with Discovery? Small things like Commander Robbins can be swept aside as maybe Number One's middle name or something, but it seems the big issue is that Pike's Early Voyages story had him regularly facing off against Klingons circa 2254, while Discovery says there's practically no contact between Starfleet and Klingons before 2256.
Could it still fit somehow? Classified isolated incidents?
Could it still fit somehow? Classified isolated incidents?
Has she been given another name on the show?
Well, the same episode that says that also establishes that there have been periodic Klingon raids, including the one that killed Burnham's parents. Specifically, the lines are "Almost no one has seen a Klingon in 100 years" and "a warrior race we've hardly spoken to for a hundred years." "Almost" and "hardly" mean that there would have been a few instances of contact, not zero. And episode 2 did acknowledge the Battle of Donatu V established in "The Trouble With Tribbles."
While we've all been expecting Number One to get a name on the show, she may not after all given none was mentioned in her first Discovery appearance.
Good point, especially regarding the Battle of Donatu V. And if you add into the fact that Pike's Klingon enemy Kaaj was likely going rogue on his own initiative to settle his grudge with Pike and his actions probably weren't even sanctioned by the Klingon government, it leaves wiggle room that Pike's Early Voyages Klingon fights were "unofficial".