Has The Cage ever been shown on TV?

[Hober Mallow]

I still own a secondhand video-store copy of the VHS "Cage" from twenty years ago. The audio during the color-to-B&W shift is horrendous. And the picture quality goes into the toilet as well. But for 1986/87 when this edit was pieced together for home video and without all the current methods of cleaning up and digitally remastering/fixing images and sound it was a pretty good job.

I also have the first all-color version, labeled, if I remember right, as "Episode 99," and the drop in quality is still apparent. The same audio problems are still there. It looks to me like they still used color footage and audio from "The Menagerie" with much crappier color footage and still-crappy audio rounding out the rest of it.

I think those videos must still be at my parents' house somewhere, unless they threw them out. (Unlikely -- my dad's a much bigger Trekker than I.)

 

[HGN2001]

You guys and gals DO realize that "The Cage", both versions, are on the Season Three DVD's, right? Including the Roddenberry intro to the "Original Version".

And you DO know the history behind all of that, right? The bit about Roddenberry's workprint (in black & white) being the only version they could find for that 1988 airing (and later VHS release)?

Then a year or so later, they turned up the color edits and restored them, but they had no sound on them, so they had to use the sound from the Roddenberry workprint.

Harry

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Didn't know about the sound thing. I was told in 1988 by someone in Roddenberry's office that the color print had turned up shortly after the BW/Color version had been released but that the studio was going to keep it secret and sit on it "for years and years" because they already had the mixed version in release and didn't want to potentially depress its sales.

Then the writers strike happened, pushing back production on season two of TNG for months. Stations that had syndication contracts for the show were really unhappy, and Paramount felt the need to deliver some kind of new Trek project in the interim - so they cut the full-color version into a two-hour "special" padded out with interview material about the Franchise, called it "Star Trek: From One Generation To The Next," and made it available in autumn of 1988 to the stations carrying TNG.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Then the writers strike happened, pushing back production on season two of TNG for months. Stations that had syndication contracts for the show were really unhappy, and Paramount felt the need to deliver some kind of new Trek project in the interim - so they cut the full-color version into a two-hour "special" padded out with interview material about the Franchise, called it "Star Trek: From One Generation To The Next," and made it available in autumn of 1988 to the stations carrying TNG.

I remember that. That was actually the first time I saw "The Cage."

How's the audio on the DVD version of the Cage? If it's better than the video versions, where did they get the audio source?

 

[Joanna McCoy-Kirk]

Then the writers strike happened, pushing back production on season two of TNG for months. Stations that had syndication contracts for the show were really unhappy, and Paramount felt the need to deliver some kind of new Trek project in the interim - so they cut the full-color version into a two-hour "special" padded out with interview material about the Franchise, called it "Star Trek: From One Generation To The Next," and made it available in autumn of 1988 to the stations carrying TNG.

I remember that. That was actually the first time I saw "The Cage."

How's the audio on the DVD version of the Cage? If it's better than the video versions, where did they get the audio source?

The "lost" sections seem to still have inferior audio, although it sounds slightly cleaned-up.

 

[Hober Mallow]

The "lost" sections seem to still have inferior audio, although it sounds slightly cleaned-up.

Okay, so it's the same audio then, just after a cleanup attempt. Thanks, I always wondered, but I never saw the DVD version.

 

[DWF]

I saw the Cage in syndication before TNG came out.

 

[cooleddie74]

"The Cage" is still in my top 10 favorite TOS episodes. Always has been. It was so smart and well-made even NBC said it wouldn't work with audiences of the day.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Didn't know about the sound thing. I was told in 1988 by someone in Roddenberry's office that the color print had turned up shortly after the BW/Color version had been released.

It wasn't a whole "color print" that turned up. The ST editor who'd clipped out the bits needed to create "The Menagerie" two-parter in the 60s had souvenired the unwanted bits and had had them filed in his attic for decades. When he saw Roddenberry's intro in the colour/bw restoration VHS, he realised that he still had them and contacted Paramount.

There's also a rather strong urban myth that claims that Paramount simply had the b/w clips colorized, and made up a story about the original editor handing over the missing color footage because it sounded better in media releases.

 

[Keith1701]

They showed it as a regular episode when they ran TOS on G4 a few years back.

I don't think it has aired in the U.S. yet

 

[alchemist]

http://monsterkidclassichorrorforum.yuku.com/reply/275869/t/The-Cage-1966-.html#reply-275869

Bob Furmanek's posts starting about half-way down.

 

[ExcaliburZeta]

I remember seeing it in full back on Sci-Fi 10 years ago or so. Funny enough I saw that before I ever saw The Menagerie!

 

[cooleddie74]

They showed it as a regular episode when they ran TOS on G4 a few years back.

I don't think it has aired in the U.S. yet

The G4 version of "The Cage" aired in a one-hour slot, though, didn't it? That means it was edited down.

 

[Guartho]

Google Images?
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51KG50QRB0L._SL500_AA280_.jpg

No, I'm asking for a picture of the 1986 VHS of The Cage. I want to confirm its existence. Does it have a UPC code?

That's the one I have. I don't think it's the one you're looking for.

 

[Joanna McCoy-Kirk]

Here is a picture of my copy of the 1986 tape:

http://homepage.mac.com/m5comp/trekbits/trekpics/cagebandw.jpg

 

[Captain Robert April]

I wouldn't mind seeing the full b&w version, to see it in all its unedited glory and original, unaltered soundtrack.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Google Images?
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51KG50QRB0L._SL500_AA280_.jpg

No, I'm asking for a picture of the 1986 VHS of The Cage. I want to confirm its existence. Does it have a UPC code?

That's the one I have. I don't think it's the one you're looking for.

Your Jedi Mind Tricks wont work on me.

 

[suneel44]

Chekhov's Gun is the literary technique whereby an element is introduced early in the story whose significance does not become clear until later on. For example, a character may find a mysterious object that eventually becomes crucial to the plot, but at the time of finding the object, it does not seem to be important.​

 

[Nerdius Maximus]

...also, I do remember the full color one being shown on TV, around the time the DS9 "Trials and Tribbleations" episode was shown, IIRC.

It was shown in syndication along with all the other episodes, at least on the fox affiliate I used to watch them on in the early '90s. I saw it well before ds9 was even on the air.

 

[cooleddie74]

"The Cage"(cut from 63 mins. down to about 44)was part of the basic syndication package in my area for years before Sci-Fi got the rights to the series in 1998.