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Pike Going *Back* to the Talosians

The simplest answer would be that the Talosians could not maintain illusions indefinitely, otherwise why let the specimens ever even realize they were in a zoo? Sadly, "The Menagerie" made their powers waaaaay too off the scale.
This is true, and as Serveaux noted, the plot logic does not bear close scrutiny. Little wonder, seeing that this was meant only to satisfy an evening’s entertainment.

If we are looking for explanations, the shots of the other specimens shown in “The Cage” suggest that they are experiencing their dream realities. This exchange might point to an intake procedure whereby the Talosians are finding the raw material for their new, “carefully guided lives.” The process appears to be laborious:
TALOSIAN: Thousands of us are already probing the creature's thoughts, Magistrate. We find excellent memory capacity.
MAGISTRATE: I read most strongly a recent death struggle in which it fought to protect its life. We will begin with this, giving the specimen something more interesting to protect.
These thousands of Talosians might also combine to extend their telepathy as far as six days distance (at maximum warp) for an indeterminate period.

A lot of “ifs” I grant you, but General Order 7 was meant to create jeopardy for the half-Vulcan Science Officer, as opposed to meaningfully protect the Federation from the dream merchants of Talos IV. Oh, and to tell a good story to while away an idle hour or so.
 
Even if the Talosians knew how to milk Pike for his contribution to the slave race, they would have no womb to bring that race to term. Vina might be too badly damaged (or perhaps Vina never survived the crash in the first place and was 100% illusory all along), but in any case she would be too old to be a mother in any conventional fashion. It's "adult crewman" plus 18 years plus 11 years by the time of "The Menagerie", after all.

If the slave race thing ever was a Talosian goal, and they felt Pike was crucial for that, they'd have to do it ex utero, in vitro, perhaps they way every other alien abductor in Trek and elsewhere does it (with blood samples containing that precious dee-en-ay).

The Talosians may have had completely different goals, of course. Or they may truly have adapted their plans after discovering that humans had slave rebellion built into their genes. But if they did want human children out of human parents, then "The Menagerie" would still give them what they wanted. Forget Pike, whom they'd dump in the nearest crevasse once he was out of view. They would simply command fifty of Kirk's finest, of both genders, to beam down and begin a life of servitude. Nobody would ever notice anything amiss...

Timo Saloniemi

To make a short story long, Vina was probably incapable of bearing children by the time Pike was returned to Talos IV in "Menagerie".

In "Menagerie" Spock says:

SPOCK: As I stated, gentlemen, this was thirteen years ago. We were on routine patrol when the ship's sensors detected something ahead. At first we were not certain what it was.

Since precise Spock says thirteen years ago, it must have been between 13.0 and 14.0 years before Spock takes Pike back to Talos IV in "Menagerie".

COMM OFFICER: It's a radio wave, sir. We're passing through an old-style distress signal.
PIKE: They were keyed to cause interference and attract attention this way.
COMM OFFICER: A ship in trouble making a forced landing, sir. That's it. No other message.
TYLER: I have a fix. It comes from the Talos star group.
NUMBER ONE: We've no ships or Earth colonies that far out.
SPOCK: Their call letters check with a survey expedition. S.S. Columbia disappeared in that region approximately eighteen years ago.
TYLER: It would take that long for a radio beam to travel from there to here.

If precise Spock said eighteen years it would have been between 18.0 and 19.0. But since Spock said approximately eighteen years it may have been between 17.0 and 20.0 years.

Thus Spock took Pike back to Talos IV about 30 to 34.0 years after the Columbia crashed on Talos IV.

In "The Cage" and "Menagerie", Vina may look about the same age as her actor Susan Oliver, who was born February 13, 1932 and thus was almost 33 when her scenes were filmed on 27 November to 18 December 1934. But she may look much younger:

HASKINS: This is Vina. Her parents are dead. She was born almost as we crashed.

This implies that Vina looked only about 18.

NUMBER ONE: Well, shall we do some time computation? There was a Vina listed on that expedition as an adult crewman. Now, adding eighteen years to your age then.

Number one's attitude certainly indicates that Vina was recorded to be much older at the time of the crash than Yeoman Tina "Lizard girl" Lawton or Yeoman Colt (played by 22-year-old Laurel Goodwin).

In medieval times Princess Agnes (1072/73-1143) of the Holy Roman Empire had at least 22 children born between 1088 and about 1118, about a 30 year period up to about age 45. Duke Leopold III of Austria (1351-1386) was born when his mother Joanna of Pfirt (c. 1300-1351) was reportedly 51.

The ability of a woman to bear children tends to decrease greatly years before menopause. Woman usually reach menopause and loose the ability to bear children between ages 49 and 52. The oldest known mother to conceive naturally was Dawn Brooke at the age of 59, while the oldest known woman to give birth was 66 years and 358 days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_over_age_50

It's also interesting to note that Keiko's mother was apparently around the age of 60 when she had Keiko (assuming Keiko was not much older than 40 in 2369).

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Keiko_O'Brien

It is not known if theTalosians had equivalent assisted reproductive medicine for Humans available.

If Vina was aged 30.0 to 60.0 at the time of the crash she would be aged about 47.0 to 79.0 in "The Cage" and about 60.0 to 94.0 in "Menagerie".

When the Talosians showed Pike Vina's "true form" she had white hair and looked like she was already too old to have much chance to reproduce, let alone 13 more years later in "Menagerie".

Of course that is assuming that Vina was still capable of reproducing after the crash in the first place.

The Talosians may have had completely different goals, of course. Or they may truly have adapted their plans after discovering that humans had slave rebellion built into their genes. But if they did want human children out of human parents, then "The Menagerie" would still give them what they wanted. Forget Pike, whom they'd dump in the nearest crevasse once he was out of view. They would simply command fifty of Kirk's finest, of both genders, to beam down and begin a life of servitude. Nobody would ever notice anything amiss...

Timo Saloniemi

There are an almost infinite possible speculative reasons for the return of Pike to Talos IV.
 
This is true, and as Serveaux noted, the plot logic does not bear close scrutiny. Little wonder, seeing that this was meant only to satisfy an evening’s entertainment.

If we are looking for explanations, the shots of the other specimens shown in “The Cage” suggest that they are experiencing their dream realities. This exchange might point to an intake procedure whereby the Talosians are finding the raw material for their new, “carefully guided lives.” The process appears to be laborious:

These thousands of Talosians might also combine to extend their telepathy as far as six days distance (at maximum warp) for an indeterminate period.

A lot of “ifs” I grant you, but General Order 7 was meant to create jeopardy for the half-Vulcan Science Officer, as opposed to meaningfully protect the Federation from the dream merchants of Talos IV. Oh, and to tell a good story to while away an idle hour or so.

Wasn't it originally General order four?
JB
 
Wasn't it originally General order four?
JB
Checkov misattributes the only capital offense on Starfleet’s books in “Turnabout Intruder.” This is unsurprising, as Kirk noted in “The Trouble with Tribbles,” “Is the rest of your history that faulty, Ensign?”
 
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Of course, since General Order 7 was created no sooner than a century into UFP Starfleet exploration of deep space, and only made sense for 13 years or so before becoming outdated, we should expect such things to be mayflies. No doubt some other skipper stumbled onto some other existence-threatening phenomenon that warranted the activation of the Death Penalty clause inherent in every General Order, this time applying to the subject matter of GO4. And this is unlikely to have been the first or last time that happened...

I can't wrap my mind around the "They should have gotten Vina right" thing. Surgeons today can't make their patients look like humans even though they know perfectly well what humans are supposed to look like. Surgeons of tomorrow are no better - just look at what they did to Pike. Talosians certainly need not be worse than McCoy there to end up with the Vina of Notre Dame, especially as they indeed have zero idea of what a human is supposed to look like (from the inside, which is what dictates how the outside will turn, uh, out).

And no, looking into Vina's head won't help any there. Vina was not the surgeon of the Columbia, or Number One would not have called her mere crewman. And neither Vina, Kirk nor any of us here participating in this discussion knows what a human is supposed to look like inside.

Timo Saloniemi
 
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Can you imagine the exploding heads (those of fans, not the Talosians) if it were realized the Talosians were, indeed, crab-like creatures and the fat headed humanoids of "The Cage" were yet another level of illusion?

Or that the Talosians we saw weren't real Talosians at all, but the slaves of the real Talosians, who were crab-like aliens! :brickwall:
JB
 
Or that the Talosians we saw weren't real Talosians at all, but the slaves of the real Talosians, who were crab-like aliens! :brickwall:
JB
Or that it was all some elaborate scheme of Q? Because Q is behind all things at all time doncha know.
 
O

I can't wrap my mind around the "They should have gotten Vina right" thing. Surgeons today can't make their patients look like humans even though they know perfectly well what humans are supposed to look like. Surgeons of tomorrow are no better - just look at what they did to Pike. Talosians certainly need not be worse than McCoy there to end up with the Vina of Notre Dame, especially as they indeed have zero idea of what a human is supposed to look like (from the inside, which is what dictates how the outside will turn, uh, out).

And no, looking into Vina's head won't help any there. Vina was not the surgeon of the Columbia, or Number One would not have called her mere crewman. And neither Vina, Kirk nor any of us here participating in this discussion knows what a human is supposed to look like inside.

Timo Saloniemi

Surgeons today at least understand and can get a patient to be symmetrical in structure. Face transplants, skin grafts, etc... might not be perfectly undetectable, but the underlying structure - bones, ligaments - is understood well enough to not make a horribly scarred crash victim look like a hunchback.
 
Understood enough for an alien from outer space who never seen a human being before, who doesn't know their body chemistry, blood types, nor their anatomy??? The process would take some time, probably dissecting the dead for some answers. Surgeons today, who understands the human anatomy, are barely able to help or accurately put together survivors from an airplane crash. What the Talosians did was practically a miracle.
 
How much human medicine was learned dissecting animals?

How much understanding would Talosians need to visually see that a human, like themselves, was externally symmetrical and stood upright and not hunched at some odd angle? Plus, such odd angles actually hurt internal organs. It again is nothing more than a basic level of math to understand that if the human body is bent a certain way it will crush or pinch or crowd various organs.

Between all the species in their menagerie, and all the human corpses from the wreckage, and their own knowledge of their own bodies, and the knowledge of Vina about her own bodies and how humans appear visually, there was enough information at their disposal to reconstruct Vina so that both arms were the same length, both legs were the same length, her joints were aligned and her spine was straight.

There was more going on than we saw at Talos. They had food somewhere. Food for their menagerie. Food capable of sustaining a human like Vina for decades. There was more life and activity than we saw.
 
Nonetheless, its like a retired James Bond living at a Spectre beach resort because they promise to be nice to him.

Not at all. The Talosians agreed to care for Pike because he taught them what compassion between beings meant in his ordering the Keeper back into his lair instead of being killed by the overloading Phaser. The Talosians never knew compassion (in the human sense) before and exposure to Pike apparently rattled the Talosians's way of being--which (if believe Vina's story about them) doomed them to a life of manipulators. Their reason for wanting Pike back as a resident instead of a lab animal has to center on that, as all other motives (like their original intent for luring another human) were abandoned by the time of Pike's rescue.

He's certainly better off living in his mind, where he's an active, vital man, than being condemned to live on a Starbase, or (as some have suggested) die. Pike was better off with Vina and his illusions, which he understood, hence his accepting the Talosians' offer.
 
They were living in the Talosian's illusions which is why Vina says and acts like she's fully functional and says everything works. This is all part of a different reality. One that's also indistinguishable from our own.
 
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