Which is moving the goalposts to an entirely different stadium. What does that have to do with anything i said?
The Cage was a better pilot than WNMHGB
- Thread starter Kaelef
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They could’ve released it as-is.
I think at the very least they would've added a longer main title sequence before releasing it in theaters. At the time, it was still common for movies to put all their credits at the beginning. They could've added another minute or two to the running time that way.
Maybe they could've also filmed a few more shots of the Enterprise, for use during the travel sequence or as establishing shots of the ship in orbit. It's surprising how few shots of the ship there are in "The Cage." There are a few quick flybys in the titles, then the big swoop in to the bridge dome, and then we don't see the ship's exterior again until the closing shot and the end titles.
On paper, during the early development of the series, April, Pike, and Kirk were just renames of the same lead hero character. It was what Shatner brought to the role that defined Kirk as a different character from Pike.
And in the '60s, there were regular weekly TV series that ran in 90-minute slots, including The Virginian, Cimarron Strip, and one season of Wagon Train.
I did not know that.
TV schedules used to be a lot more flexible. In the early days, as I think someone alluded to upthread, there were even some 15-minute shows. In fact, I once saw reruns on some cable channel (probably the Comedy Channel back when it was mostly old stuff and clips) of a five-minute TV series from the '60s, a detective show with really quick mysteries that the audience was challenged to solve during the brief commercial break. I can't remember its name.
Reminds me of how my old MeTV affiliate years back used to run a local church program over the first 15 minutes of The Green Hornet on Sunday mornings....
From 1937-1968 “The Guiding Light” was only 15 minutes long per day (it started on radio in 1937 with 15 minute shows and stayed like that for TV from 1952-1968).
I’ve got the UPA cartoon “The Dick Tracy Show” From 1961-62 on DVD from Classic Media and all 130 episodes are 5 minutes in length. And I’ve also got a DVD that packages about 6 Liberace episodes as 1-half-hour program and the advertised it as “Aliberace Christmas”, but besides Christmas there’s also dancing skeletons (Halloween? the skeletons dance on Liberace’s piano and I’m not sure what song he’s playing), Thanksgiving, Easter bunnies, Harvest and a few other non-Christmas episodes.
Not so cut and dry; the original Peeples story already had a captain more in touch with his humanity and spirit than anything written for Pike. It also needed a stronger, appealing actor to breathe life into it, and that's what the production received with Shatner. Kirk in any form was not the introverted, morose figure that Hunter's Pike was, so there was not a hard template from "The Cage" / Pike that was used and/or considered once a new captain was created. Logically, no one would recycle an entire character who failed to sell. He was the center of the pilot--the character meant to lead the audience, and he did not work, so the character in Peeples' story--for the demands of a change to build and sell Star Trek--could not be Pike by another name.
While "The Menagerie" two-parter remains my favorite episode(s) of TOS, I think WNMHGB was a better pilot film than "The Cage." Definitely a better way to launch a series. More action, more memorable dialogue, better character development.
Some have said over the years that "The Cage" lost a lot of its impact when it was re-edited into "The Menagerie." For me, I think it got more effective.
In "The Menagerie," the contrast between the old & new footage grabs me every time. High drama when Kirk asks Spock, "Do you know what you're doing? Have you lost your mind?" I can watch the whole 100 minutes over & over, and never tire of it.
Some have said over the years that "The Cage" lost a lot of its impact when it was re-edited into "The Menagerie." For me, I think it got more effective.
In "The Menagerie," the contrast between the old & new footage grabs me every time. High drama when Kirk asks Spock, "Do you know what you're doing? Have you lost your mind?" I can watch the whole 100 minutes over & over, and never tire of it.
God, that is the perfect analogy for Majel Barrett on Star Trek.
Sorry, didn't see this until now. I thought I read that in the Inside Star Trek book. I said "apparently" because it was from memory.
Someone balked at any rate.
@Harvey has looked through the production paperwork and it doesn't actually appear that anyone "balked". GR worked on terms for Hunter to come back and shoot some extra scenes. It looks like what happened was they got the 2nd pilot order and just abandoned the idea of making "The Cage" into a feature and that's all.
The 1956 Around the World in 80 Days had no opening titles of any kind, so that may have been the first film to do it.
Thanks for clearing that up.
There was an Arron Spelling ABC series in 1969 called The New People about a diverse group of high school kids stranded on an island that was an old nuclear test site. "For them, it's year one." It ran for 45 minutes. It ran after another 45 minute series called The Music Scene. This experiment failed, which is sad since The New People sounded interesting but the oddball length kept it from syndication. So, yeah, the schedules were much more flexible then than now. Not many hour long shows start on the half hour anymore. If any (I'm sure someone will tell me if there are - network wise).
Yeah, and there are no more 90-minute shows, and made-for-TV movies don't exist anymore except on a few cable channels like Lifetime. There don't seem to be miniseries anymore either. Only "reality" and competition shows seem to get slots longer than an hour these days. It's weird how much more rigid it's gotten.
Oh, what was the second?
I hadn't heard of her before, as I've never really watched many Irwin Allen series. But after looking her up on Wikipedia, she definitely sounds like she qualifies.
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