The Acrylic Menagerie

[FredH]

I always thought this was one of the weakest points in the script: "But they had never seen a human. They had no guide for putting me back together."

Let's be generous and assume that literally every other Columbia passenger was destroyed beyond recognition, so the Talosians legitimately don't know what a human looks like. Okay, but they for sure understand what symmetry looks like. They possess it themselves, and their menagerie would be filled with examples. Even with no pattern whatsoever, they could have made Vina look just like a Talosian, lined up her shoulders, made both legs the same length, made the missing parts of her skin look like the non-missing parts of her skin, etc.

In addition, if they had literally no clue, how did they make perfectly believable, age-advanced illusions of Vina's shipmates? Did they read Pike's mind and then magically know enough about human biology to appropriately age-progress them?

For that matter, if they didn't know what Vina should look like when they were fixing her, how did they know what her illusion versions should look like? Presumably they only learned this from her mind after she was conscious, but then why not just "fix" her some more if their medical science is so incredible?

It's just a big, fat lie to make the plot work the way GR wanted it to. Obviously their medical science was barely adequate to save her, and this should have been the explanation. "They saved my life, but they could not physically restore my broken body." Bugged me even as a kid.

Granted it’s of course all for the sake of the story they wanted to tell, but I could buy:

* They do in fact read from Pike’s (and Vina’s) minds what old guys are supposed to look like, and variations thereof so Pike doesn’t just immediately recognize them as elderly guys he’s known.

* They do in fact get what female forms would specifically appeal to Pike, from Pike’s mind.

* It’s one thing to get a perfect image of what a beautiful woman looks like (once Vina’s conscious enough for them to see it in her mind, post-operation), but quite another to then further physically rebuild her that way. Maybe if Vina had herself been a world-class cosmetic surgeon and they could see how to do it in every detail in her mind, but that wasn’t the case.

 

[Christopher]

Let's be generous and assume that literally every other Columbia passenger was destroyed beyond recognition, so the Talosians legitimately don't know what a human looks like. Okay, but they for sure understand what symmetry looks like. They possess it themselves, and their menagerie would be filled with examples. Even with no pattern whatsoever, they could have made Vina look just like a Talosian, lined up her shoulders, made both legs the same length, made the missing parts of her skin look like the non-missing parts of her skin, etc.

Maybe this was a leftover plot point from the original outline where the Talosians were crablike creatures (and pretty obviously knockoffs of the Krell from Forbidden Planet).

 

[Just a Bill]

Granted it’s of course all for the sake of the story they wanted to tell, but I could buy:

* They do in fact read from Pike’s (and Vina’s) minds what old guys are supposed to look like, and variations thereof so Pike doesn’t just immediately recognize them as elderly guys he’s known.

* They do in fact get what female forms would specifically appeal to Pike, from Pike’s mind.

* It’s one thing to get a perfect image of what a beautiful woman looks like (once Vina’s conscious enough for them to see it in her mind, post-operation), but quite another to then further physically rebuild her that way. Maybe if Vina had herself been a world-class cosmetic surgeon and they could see how to do it in every detail in her mind, but that wasn’t the case.

Yeah, I could buy all that too — and that's really my point, that's basically what has to happen — so Vina's explanation is therefore a dumb one on the part of the writer. Her statement is trying to convince us that they had the technology to make her look right, they just lacked the information about how she should look. When in fact we can see with our own eyes that it was obviously the other way around. They know what humans look like, but they aren't able to straighten bones and smooth out scars and such in the physical world.

The line of dialog is 180 degrees backwards; it contradicts what we know from watching the episode, and thereby weakens the storytelling.

 

[FredH]

Yeah, I could buy all that too — and that's really my point, that's basically what has to happen — so Vina's explanation is therefore a dumb one on the part of the writer. Her statement is trying to convince us that they had the technology to make her look right, they just lacked the information about how she should look. When in fact we can see with our own eyes that it was obviously the other way around. They know what humans look like, but they aren't able to straighten bones and smooth out scars and such in the physical world.

The line of dialog is 180 degrees backwards; it contradicts what we know from watching the episode, and thereby weakens the storytelling.

See, I would think it’s no so much that they don’t know how she should look and generally connect — once she woke up, they would —but not the huge level of internal detail that would get her that way. Could they get her to look great on the surface if she was going to lie immobile for the rest of her life, so only the outer appearance mattered? Sure, probably, because then it would just be cosmetic. But to get her looking that way while also being a fully mobile, functioning being? That’s what was too much for them to juggle without a model — of the insides and all the complex biological systems on the inside. They could do a good-looking outside if she didn’t have to move, ever; or they could do something that could move around and “live” independently, but not without basically tearing up whatever they could manage on the outside. So the latter is what they went for. Admittedly, that’s headcanon on my part. I think it’s supported, but I can understand a reading whereby it isn’t.

 

[Uxi]

On that note, when Spock beamed down injured Pike, you have to hope he included a manual for maintaining the chair, including how to flush and reset the septic system. And they'll need some kind of universal adapter to recharge its batteries from a Talosian wall outlet.

They could make any number of people pull up the schematics and read it from their minds and make them daydream about something else.

 

[Uxi]

Let's be generous and assume that literally every other Columbia passenger was destroyed beyond recognition, so the Talosians legitimately don't know what a human looks like. Okay, but they for sure understand what symmetry looks like. They possess it themselves, and their menagerie would be filled with examples. Even with no pattern whatsoever, they could have made Vina look just like a Talosian, lined up her shoulders, made both legs the same length, made the missing parts of her skin look like the non-missing parts of her skin, etc.

They could have put her together symmetrically. And then she had a muscle spasm or stroke or who knows what and THAT messed her up. They tried to fix that and something else happened. Maybe all or most of her damage was on the side of the hump (or vice versa). Possibly whatever they were using for sutures or blood plasma were rejected by her body and her immune system went after it.

The basics would be pretty easy. It's the law of unintended consequences that could have made her look like that.

 

[Christopher]

They could have put her together symmetrically. And then she had a muscle spasm or stroke or who knows what and THAT messed her up. They tried to fix that and something else happened. Maybe all or most of her damage was on the side of the hump (or vice versa). Possibly whatever they were using for sutures or blood plasma were rejected by her body and her immune system went after it.

The basics would be pretty easy. It's the law of unintended consequences that could have made her look like that.

I wanted to suggest something like that, but I couldn't quite figure out how to express it. Well done.

 

[Maurice]

It's also possible that there wasn't entirely enough of her to put her back together 100%, and didn't understand the anatomy to be able to properly connect all the muscles to the right spots, etc.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Vina's reveal was a horror moment to rival the scariest scenes in The Twilight Zone.

We didn't see body horror often, but there was Tom Leighton in "Conscience", the tricycle guy and Louise in "Miri", the faceless woman in "Charlie X", injured Captain Pike, and the dying librarian in "The Lights of Zetar." That's a pretty fair amount for a show that wasn't billed as scary.

 

[Just a Bill]

I might add the smoking human residue in "The Devil in the Dark." There's not much "body" left in that horror, I'll admit, but I found it creepier than Leighton's extra-jumbo eyepatch, at least.

 

[Shawnster]

They could have put her together symmetrically. And then she had a muscle spasm or stroke or who knows what and THAT messed her up. They tried to fix that and something else happened. Maybe all or most of her damage was on the side of the hump (or vice versa). Possibly whatever they were using for sutures or blood plasma were rejected by her body and her immune system went after it.

The basics would be pretty easy. It's the law of unintended consequences that could have made her look like that.

It's also possible that there wasn't entirely enough of her to put her back together 100%, and didn't understand the anatomy to be able to properly connect all the muscles to the right spots, etc.

Both of these are very fair points I hadn't considered. Especially the lack of enough material to put her back together properly.

 

[Ssosmcin]

I might add the smoking human residue in "The Devil in the Dark." There's not much "body" left in that horror, I'll admit, but I found it creepier than Leighton's extra-jumbo eyepatch, at least.

"Schmidda! Boind to a crisp!"

 

[publiusr]

I don't have a big narrative problem with Pike's inability to communicate. The mind is a delicate thing, after all. My mother suffered from dementia, and at a certain point, the wiring just fell apart and while she could understand English, when she spoke everything came out in Italian, like the pathways to the English-speaking part of her mind severed. I could imagine that a specific kind of damage might mean Pike could understand people but not be able direct his thoughts into a means of communicative action other than a crude binary.

That or some second disaster...a more capable system shorted out....leaving Pike almost at the level of those who suffer Locked-in syndrome...as with The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

 

[Christopher]

I don't have a big narrative problem with Pike's inability to communicate. The mind is a delicate thing, after all. My mother suffered from dementia, and at a certain point, the wiring just fell apart and while she could understand English, when she spoke everything came out in Italian, like the pathways to the English-speaking part of her mind severed. I could imagine that a specific kind of damage might mean Pike could understand people but not be able direct his thoughts into a means of communicative action other than a crude binary.

As I mentioned, I considered that as an explanation in my novel, but decided it wouldn't reconcile with the Talosians' implied ability to let him resume the illusion of a normal life. If his brain couldn't form verbal thoughts to begin with, then even Talosian telepathy couldn't enable him to communicate through illusion. So the damage had to be of a kind that still allowed him to formulate verbal thoughts but prevented them from being read by a Universal Translator or other technological scan, so that only direct telepathy could circumvent the damage and read what he wanted to say.

Although even as I wrote that sentence, I realized, if that were the case, why couldn't Spock just mind-meld with Pike and relay his words that way? But maybe it would require stronger telepathy than Vulcans possess.

 

[The Salt Umpire]

This makes me want a video of Metallica's One with images from The Menagerie and DeForrest's voice explaining why Pike's trapped inside a useless body...

 

[Set Harth]

Fed through the tube that sticks in me...

 

[The Salt Umpire]

Fed through the tube that sticks in me...

Just like a Federation novelty
Trap'd in a machine that helps me pee
Spock don't risk yourself for me.

Magistrate, help meee


OG lyrics from vid (His cerebrum has suffered massive and irreparable damage.'
'He'll never know what has happened to him.)'

McCoy: "Now, that man can think any thought that we can, and love, hope, dream as much as we can, but he can't reach out, and no one can reach in,"

 

[Maurice]

The Talosians are magic aliens. They can do whatever the plot requires.

 

[Christopher]

The Talosians are magic aliens. They can do whatever the plot requires.

The goal of the intellectual exercise is to attempt to make sense of why Pike could only communicate through beeps. If we're going to throw out sense altogether, there is no intellectual exercise.

 

[Maurice]

The goal of the intellectual exercise is to attempt to make sense of why Pike could only communicate through beeps. If we're going to throw out sense altogether, there is no intellectual exercise.

Technology is something we can possibly understand. Telepathy is magic. YMMV.