The Cage, The Menagerie and Canon

I'm particularly interested in the perspective of a select group of individuals: Those who saw The Cage before they watched The Menagerie. That group actually numbers several dozen fans: those who watched The Cage in August 1966 at Worldcon. Was The Cage canon at that point and later invalidated by The Menagerie? Was it never canon?

And if this seems like counting angels dancing on a pin, this is actually going to be my situation as someone living in 1966 and going forward (on the Journey)

 

People didn't think in those terms back then. TV series (and radio series, movie serials, magazine serials, comic books, etc.) contradicted their own continuity all the time. It was taken for granted that their consistency was on a global scale, the broad strokes of premise and character, whereas their specific episodic adventures stood alone, rarely affected one another, and sometimes conflicted with each other.

After all, back then they didn't have DVD box sets and show wikis and the resources we have today that encourage us to see a TV series as a unified whole. In the absence of video recorders and reliably clear broadcast signals, there was no guarantee you'd get to see every episode of a show, so each episode had to be treated as a self-contained whole not dependent on other episodes. Also, this was an age when the classiest TV shows were the anthologies, while serialization was the stuff of daytime soap operas and Flash Gordon movie serials and thus was considered lowbrow. So even continuing series aspired to an anthology-like approach where every episode stood apart as its own independent entity. Different episodes shared the overall premise and characters, but that was the extent of the continuity that was expected. When past continuity was referenced, it was often changed in the retelling, since few viewers would remember the details exactly enough to notice.


Besides, what differences are there to worry about? Sure, "The Menagerie" omits parts of "The Cage," but the only actual contradictions are the Keeper's higher-pitched voice and the different use of the closing Pike/Vina footage, and those can easily be handwaved away as production conveniences rather than in-story "facts." There's no real difficulty in seeing the two as compatible accounts of the same event. Tweaks in the details of the telling of a story, like changing the sound mix or repurposing stock footage or recasting an actor, don't actually alter the in-universe facts of the story.

 

It will be interesting to get the perspective of those who lived through it.

I know that even as a kid, I was keenly aware of when things changed between iterations of shows. For instance, Robotech changed music for various scenes between when they first showed it and when they began the first and second rerun stretches. As Trek got increasingly cut up, I remember being certain of remembering scenes that weren't there anymore.

I was keenly aware that Beast suddenly became erudite early on in his tenure with the X-Men... and that Professor X seemed to drop his (rather creepy) interest in Marvel Girl at an early date as well. Did they never happen? Or did the characters evolve?

 

Of course, but that's my point. Such inconsistencies were routine, so I don't think many people would've found it necessary to throw out one alternative version or another. Believing in the consistency of any fictional series required shrugging off a significant number of contradictions.

And the contradictions between "The Cage" and "The Menagerie" are utterly trivial compared to some. Look at the episode that was meant to be the series finale of Land of the Giants, but was aired second-last. It was a time-travel episode that sent the cast back to just before the beginning of the series and established a time loop wherein they basically caused their own origin story in the course of trying to undo it. It actually meshed rather well, except for one glaring detail: they got the date wrong, September 25, 1983 instead of June 12 as clearly stated in the pilot. So which one is "canon?" They both are, of course. It's just that canons don't always have consistent details. The overall events of both are meant to be true, it's just being told a little differently.

 

Right -- that's the kind of thing that always niggles in the brain. Anyway, we'll see if I find folks who remember. Probably not. I might find something in an old fanzine, though. I have virtually all the extant ones from the 60s.

 

Hardcore fans always complained about things changing. That's nothing new. But it's infinitely easier to compare things in our internet era than it was when you only got to see the show when the web (old industry term for a TV network) deigned to air it.

 

That's actually why I don't think it's an issue here -- because I've long been very picky about what stories I counted in my personal continuity, sometimes even disregarding entire episodes when I couldn't reconcile their inconsistencies, yet I never thought the differences between "The Cage" and "The Menagerie" were sufficiently non-trivial to worry about which version was "correct." I mean, it's just the Keeper's voice and that one shot of Pike and Vina at the end. It's not on a par with, say, transwarp turning people into salamanders.

 

Yep kids today don't understand what it was like back in the days before even VCRs existed for the general public.

If you wanted to catch an episode you had never seen; and you are lucky enough to have a TV guide or some other newspaper like magazine to let you know when that episode was being aired; you had to make time and actually sit in front of the TV during the time the episode aired.

And sometimes that meant you decided to say no to going out with friends, or doing some other activity that you would find enjoyable just because you for once wanted to see the particular episode you'd never managed to catch; realizing (during the syndication days) that would be another three to four months before the stripped rotation would bring the episode back again. Plus there was always the chance the station might take the strip syndicated show off the air and replace it with something else (like Lost in Space or Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea or some other Irwin Allen garbage).
^^^
This is what watching Star Trek reruns was like for many of us before the late 1970s / early 1980s. Once VCRs hit the scene and became more affordable; suddenly you have the option to tape an episode and watch it at your leisure (and as VCR technology improved - you had better ability to freeze frame, and really start to analyze some of the smaller aspects of each episode.)

 

I remember how mad I was when I had to go to catechism after school on Wednesdays (I think) when Star Trek was on and came home one day to have my sister gleefully tell me she'd just seen an episode where Spock had to get married. It was months before I finally got to see that.

 

I had two chances to watch Star Trek where I grew up. I lived in the SF Bay Area which had two TV markets, depending on where you lived. So I got Trek from a San Francisco-Oakland station and from one that was part of the Salinas-Monterey region.

 

Yes, serious fans of a certain personality type were always interested in continuity. Before my first VCR, if I really cared about a show I would take notes while watching it, writing down continuity points and also names in the end credits. I made audio tapes (mostly to catch the music), and I even set up my mother's camera on a tripod to capture set details.

It was jarring to me when one episode of Bewitched stated the (by then well-known) Stephens' phone number, and got it entirely wrong. When we got a close-up of where Jaime Sommers had signed Steve Austin's high school yearbook, and the signature was spelled "Jamie," I was apoplectic. Didn't they know people were watching??

 

For sure.

When we do the Trek watch-through starting in September, we will be watching it at the exact time on the exact day... with commercials and all. If you miss is, YOU MISS IT.

 

Well, it is important to know or decide which details in "The Cage" which didn't make it into "the Menagerie" are canon.

In the picnic scene:

That establishes that the diversion to Talos iIV took less than 24 hours.

When Spock decides to leave Talos IV:

This shows that Spock is thired in command and acting captain.

Perhaps those lines were omitted from "The Menagerie" because they seem to contradict Vulcan loyalty to a commander. But perhaps Spock's guilt for trying to leave Talos IV was part of his motivation for taking Pike to Talos IV. And perhaps after returning to the Enterprise Pike criticized Number One and Spock for staying at Talos too long to try to rescue him.

 

I have noticed a number of inconsistencies in various shows over the decades. Right now I can't seem to remember any examples, which is annoying.

 

Why is it important? These are just stories for entertainment. You're not going to be tested on them. It's just a matter of curiosity, an abstract thing to contemplate, with zero stakes of any kind.

I see nothing in the passages you quoted that contradicts anything else, aside from the prototype terminology of "hyperdrive" and "time warp factor." So you can freely accept them if you want, or ignore them if you want.

 

[QUOT E="Henoch, post: 13658741, member: 77209"]I thought she looked in a daze, not aware of the real Pike standing there and discussing her with the Talosians. [/QUOTE]

I dunno, I guess it's difficult to say...

 

I dunno, I guess it's difficult to say...[/QUOTE]
She looking right at Pike!

 

This is what I thought!

BTW are you seeing the image direct on my post? First time I have uploaded an image, and it seems not to show up for me...

 

What I find interesting about that dialogue is that is more or less lines up with the warp speed velocity quoted in the original series pitch:


18LY @ 0.73LY/HR = 24.66 hours

 

It is also one of the most workable speeds for the ship for the purposes of star adventures. That is, assuming that it corresponds to "warp 7" rather than to "maximum velocity". Which is basically just a matter of Kirk taking more risks than Pike. Or Scotty more than, uh, Pitcairn or whoever.

You can't account for quoted feats like "Arena" or "That Which Survives" with .73 ly/h. But you can quite plausibly have interstellar adventures with that!

Timo Saloniemi