Poll The Cage or The Menagerie
- Thread starter Methuselah Flint
- Start date
So you’d place “The Cage” after TOS S3, as on the DVD/Blu-ray releases? That’s also an option which minimizes duplication, since the original intent was for “The Menagierie” to make it usable. I’m just looking for something interesting for the first pilot to do rather than remain that kind of an afterthought, an S3 special feature in effect.
The "feel" of the Cage was different even from WNMHGB and the rest of the TOS series. Perhaps it was the lighting or other filming methods, but it seemed "older" to me, more like an Outer Limits episode, maybe they shot the Cage more for the Black and White audience (filmed in early 1965). TOS was brighter with more color. Even the on-screen technology seemed to have improved: Phasers v. Lasers; Electronic Pads v. Clip Boards; Simplified Warp Speed non-effect v. Time Warp Factor nebula effect; Phaser rifle v. Laser Cannon (hmm, maybe not, the cannon was kind of cool); new communicators; etc. 
I also liked the Menagerie better because it presented a believable history for Star Trek. We get an investigation into a 13 year old event which in itself is investigating a 18 year old event. Bam, 31 years of history.
Lastly, William Shatner was great; Jeffery Hunter was just okay.
I also liked the Menagerie better because it presented a believable history for Star Trek. We get an investigation into a 13 year old event which in itself is investigating a 18 year old event. Bam, 31 years of history.
Lastly, William Shatner was great; Jeffery Hunter was just okay.
This is a great point. With that worldbuilding, the pilot serves the overall series much better in its context as part of "The Menagerie" than as a standalone episode featuring a mostly different cast.
I also liked the Menagerie better because it presented a believable history for Star Trek. We get an investigation into a 13 year old event which in itself is investigating a 18 year old event. Bam, 31 years of history.
Yes, "The Menagerie" was not only a wonderful character building device for the series leads (illustrating just how close Kirk was to Spock with his feeling of utter betrayal at the end of part one), but it took a pilot that could not sell and transformed it into a viable part of the series / history that was given an almost mythical feel (off-limits worlds, sealed files, death penalty threats, etc.).
One was an undeniably significant part of why TOS sold. The other did not have magnetism or give anyone the desire to follow him on a weekly basis.
Sci-Fi television and especially Star Trek could be pretty scary back then in the day with the Talosians who were very creepy and physically weird looking! The unsettling music also added to their atmosphere!
JB
JB
Plenty of times as a kid I used to run upstairs at night to bed because of something I'd seen on a Star Trek episode that had creeped me out a lot! 
JB
JB
Same! I couldn't watch TNG's Man of the People or Genesis for years!
"Schisms" had me terrified to go to sleep for fear I'd be kidnapped and experimented on by aliens.
The bit in "Identity Crisis" when Geordi notices an extra shadow on his hologram of an old mission and makes the computer render a guesstimate of what caused it was pure nightmare fuel.
I'm sure if I was a pre-teen in the TOS days several of those episodes would have freaked me out too.
The bit in "Identity Crisis" when Geordi notices an extra shadow on his hologram of an old mission and makes the computer render a guesstimate of what caused it was pure nightmare fuel.
I'm sure if I was a pre-teen in the TOS days several of those episodes would have freaked me out too.
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Again, that’s beside the point because “The Cage” isn’t part of any original vision. It’s a TOS afterthought, currently an S3 Blu-ray extra in effect, so the question becomes how to make it useful, one option being turning it into a prelude to DSC S2.
The matte painting of Starbase 11 at the beginning with Miss Piper walking to the beam-down point is one of my favorites of the series. The castle on Rigel VII is also one. "The Menagerie" gives me both, so.... 
P.S. The lithium cracking station on Delta Vega makes three, but that has to wait for the next pilot. Four (actually my favorite of them all) would be the night shot at Starbase 11 in "Court Martial," but that's also in a different episode.
P.S. The lithium cracking station on Delta Vega makes three, but that has to wait for the next pilot. Four (actually my favorite of them all) would be the night shot at Starbase 11 in "Court Martial," but that's also in a different episode.
It definitely gave the show a sense of history. That the universe was bigger than just the Enterprise crew.
Plenty of times as a kid I used to run upstairs at night to bed because of something I'd seen on a Star Trek episode that had creeped me out a lot!
JB
My first-ever glimpse of Star Trek occurred at age 6, when I saw part of "The Lights of Zetar" on NBC. I thought the Enterprise flyby was cool, but the woman on Memory Alpha whose face turns colors, and she dies? That was too scary for me. I don't think I saw the show again until the afternoon reruns started up and totally hooked me. And this was all on a b&w TV set.
Yes that scene terrified me; I couldn't watch Zetar again until I was 21! :O
As a pilot that didn't get greenlit, "The Cage" has its moments of intrigue - and feels proto-TNG in certain ways.
It was a real coup to re-use it in a season episode, to save on budget as well as telling a more complex story with a framework that also changes context, but not in a bad way by any measure - and the new context is also keeping truer to the spirit of TOS, whereas "The Cage" shows the Talosians are just bored and even arguably Machiavellian galactic zookeepers with big heads that learned the power of illusion and somehow destroyed itself with it even though they don't look terribly destroyed, unless the Enterprise's phaser did far more damage than what was shown.
Both add to worldbuilding but given "Cage" was never transmitted and "Menagerie" with its honed changes did, the latter is what creates the continuity. Even when I first saw it, "Cage" just seemed out of place. Especially for Spock, even considering that early season one Spock also had moments of weird emotion but not quite like the more ridiculous and outlandish "giggle over the cute leaves" scene.
Granted, a bigger question arises - just how powerful are the Talosians that they can manipulate minds from being a distance of just how many light years again?
It was a real coup to re-use it in a season episode, to save on budget as well as telling a more complex story with a framework that also changes context, but not in a bad way by any measure - and the new context is also keeping truer to the spirit of TOS, whereas "The Cage" shows the Talosians are just bored and even arguably Machiavellian galactic zookeepers with big heads that learned the power of illusion and somehow destroyed itself with it even though they don't look terribly destroyed, unless the Enterprise's phaser did far more damage than what was shown.
Both add to worldbuilding but given "Cage" was never transmitted and "Menagerie" with its honed changes did, the latter is what creates the continuity. Even when I first saw it, "Cage" just seemed out of place. Especially for Spock, even considering that early season one Spock also had moments of weird emotion but not quite like the more ridiculous and outlandish "giggle over the cute leaves" scene.
Granted, a bigger question arises - just how powerful are the Talosians that they can manipulate minds from being a distance of just how many light years again?
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The empty, desolate view of the planet (no surface structures, etc.) may also be an illusion. Possibly, once the veil of illusion was lifted, we would see the real destroyed planet with ruins of cities, etc.
I suspect there is no distance limit, hence their true power, and hence the death sentence restriction on the planet. This puts the Talosians in total control of who they want to visit the planet and who not.
And the music when the lights appeared in Romaine's eyes! A true symphony of horror.
Agreed Lights of Zetar was indeed one of those scary episodes along with Where No Man Has Gone Before (Mitchell's eyes) and Charlie X (the faceless woman) Miri could have been but it was banned by the BBC after one screening and I think I missed that one! I also found the real Balok more scary than the false one and the Talosians were pretty repugnant (I hadn't guessed they were women back then) The Knight in Shore Leave and the Gorn in Arena made me shudder as a nine year old! The Parasites from Annihilate were horrible but not terrifying! The Witches from Catspaw weren't that scary, but maybe my TV reception wasn't that good when I first saw that one? I did find Sub Commander Tal's features on the viewer screen a bit unsettling and Gorgon dissolving on the bridge eerie while the faces of the Gideonites on the screen off-putting but it was the Zetarians that really induced pure horror into the series!!!
JB
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