"The Menagerie" - in 1966!

[Christopher]

I suspect that few remember that Mork and Mindy was a spin-off of Happy Days ...

And even fewer are aware that Mork was just supposed to be a dream of Fonzie's. When Robin Williams's performance became an instant hit and Garry Marshall decided to do a Mork spinoff, they re-shot the ending of the Happy Days Mork-dream episode to retcon it into something that actually happened but that Fonzie was made to believe was a dream, and reran that episode with the new ending just before Mork & Mindy premiered. Since the revised version of the episode is the one that went into syndication, it's largely forgotten that Mork originally wasn't supposed to be "real" at all.

I suspect the WGA decision had a big basis on who's idea it was in the first place, which favors Roddenberry, along with just how much was left of Black's version after GR was through with the rewrite. This requires a direct comparison with whatever materials both men provide to support their case, i.e, Black submits his version, Roddenberry submits his, and the arbitration board compares the two.

Who gets screen credit determines who gets paid, so these sorts of things are not something the Guild takes lightly.

Right. If the WGA gave Roddenberry sole credit, that means that, in their judgment, he was responsible for the majority of the script's content.

 

[evilnate]

These are some interesting perspectives on the episode. It's also struck me how "The Menagerie" wouldn't work today, since a pilot episode would have been summarized, reviewed, leaked, torrented, and posted on YouTube months before they could even come up with the envelope portions of the episode.

 

[Christopher]

These are some interesting perspectives on the episode. It's also struck me how "The Menagerie" wouldn't work today, since a pilot episode would have been summarized, reviewed, leaked, torrented, and posted on YouTube months before they could even come up with the envelope portions of the episode.

I don't see why that means it wouldn't work. If anything, I think audiences would be glad to see that the producers had found a way to integrate that fabled pilot into the regular series' continuity. And it's not like it's unprecedented. We heard about Dollhouse's rejected pilot in advance, and we can see it and various other unused reshoots on the DVD set, but that didn't stop them from incorporating scenes from it into the first few episodes of the series and making them work better than they had in the aborted pilot.

 

[WRStone]

Gotta side with Christopher on this one. The advances in the mediums have changed how TV operates, but given similar circumstances today, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't still work.

Look over at Doctor Who, for example. Tooting my own horn, I'd figured out who River Song was in the last moment of Series 5. The moment there was a married couple in the TARDIS, I knew immediately that there would be a child and it would have to be River Song.

I keep up on some of the Doctor Who spoilers. I watch deleted scenes, clips, etc. I doubt they're going to do anything that will surprise me regarding the big details. The writing is so good that it doesn't matter. Yes, I have a very good idea of where the current arc is going -- but I'll still watch every week because how they get there is still interesting.

I don't see how "The Menagerie" would be any different. I'd know more about it in advance of it airing than I would have in '66, but the fun is in seeing how the story plays, not knowing the details of the story per se.

The only shows I've seen where their pilots simply didn't work is when the pilots just weren't very good. Catch the unaired pilot of The Big Bang Theory, for example. I love the show as it has aired because I completely identify with all the male cast.

Penny is a creature of pure fantasy (sorry, hot non-nerds do not hang out with nerds), but she's a replacement for the female lead in the original pilot -- who simply didn't work. The original female lead, "Katie," was too realistic. She behaved exactly like real hot non-nerds who take advantage of nerds, and it killed a lot of the premise's humor.

There are scenes and echoes of that pilot that made it into the series. You could not have made a series based on that pilot because the audience would have (correctly) seen Katie as a conniving bitch; and Leonard and Sheldon as a couple of hard-up nerds who should know far better than to be around her.

"The Cage" doesn't have that problem. As a story, it still works. You could rename the characters, move the lines around a bit, and still have a story that would play in TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, or ENT. It would still play as the next summer blockbuster -- albeit expanded and with tons of CGI and lens flares ...

Dakota Smith

 

[T'Bonz]

...aw, hell ...

HEEEEIIIIIMMMMMMMMMM !!

HEEEIIIIMMmmmmmm !!

heiiimmmm .... !

You rang?

Oh wait, I no longer use that name. I'm married now.

(Heim was my maiden name. )

 

[WRStone]

HEEEEIIIIIMMMMMMMMMM !!

You rang?

Unless you also had a sex change, you're safe from my all-consuming wrath.

Dakota Smith

 

[mb22]

By the way, it might be worth pointing out something that's little-remembered these days: the original pilot was only called "The Cage" during the initial outlines, and was changed to "The Menagerie" before filming (although no onscreen title was shown). That's why the 2-parter is called that -- because it wasn't considered a separate work, but an expansion of the same work, and thus used the same title. But when The Star Trek Compendium by Allan Asherman came out in 1981, it referred to the pilot version of "The Menagerie" by its working title "The Cage" in order to avoid confusion with the 2-parter (since it discussed both incarnations separately, unlike the earlier Star Trek Concordance which only covered the 2-parter). When the pilot finally came out on home video in 1986, Paramount followed Asherman's lead and released it as "The Cage," and it's been officially referred to by that name ever since. By now, probably a whole generation has grown up not realizing that "The Cage" wasn't the pilot's real title. (I think that back then I just thought of it as "the first pilot" to distinguish it from the 2-parter; I'm not sure if I got that from a written source or if it was just my own habit.)

I believe that David Gerrold's 1973 The World of Star Trek called the pilot "The Cage" before Asherman.

 

[Christopher]

I believe that David Gerrold's 1973 The World of Star Trek called the pilot "The Cage" before Asherman.

Okay, you just sent me searching through my copy of The World of Star Trek (the '73 version). It uses "The Cage" only once, in the episode guide in the middle of the book (in the "Menagerie" entry). However, in the photo section it refers to the Rigel fortress shot as "matte shot for 'Menagerie'," which is ambiguous. It talks very little about the first pilot, and mostly just calls it "the first pilot" (aha, maybe that's where I got it).

So yeah, he did call it "The Cage" before Asherman, but only in passing, so I think Asherman deserves more credit for codifying that usage (though ultimately the credit goes to whoever it was at Paramount that decided to retroactively rename the episode in its home video release).

 

[WRStone]

Actually, the first reference to "The Cage" appears in GR's first-draft pitch, dated March 11, 1964.

You can click the link to get the whole PDF, but for convenience's sake:

THE NEXT CAGE. The desperation of our series lead, caged and on exhibition like an animal, then offered a mate.

It appears on Page 1 and is the first example of an episode that the series might do.

The name changed from "The Next Cage" to "The Cage" to "The Menagerie." Fannish lore picked up the intermediate title very early on as a way to differentiate between the pilot and the aired two-parter. GR also picked up the differentiation, probably during his lecture circuit years when he showed "The Cage" and the blooper reels.

Dakota Smith

 

[Maurice]

I suspect that few remember that Mork and Mindy was a spin-off of Happy Days ...

And even fewer are aware that Mork was just supposed to be a dream of Fonzie's.

I believe it was a dream of Richie Cunningham's, not Fonzie's.

 

[Christopher]

Actually, the first reference to "The Cage" appears in GR's first-draft pitch, dated March 11, 1964.

Well, of course, that goes without saying. I already explained that it was the original working title for the pilot but was abandoned before the pilot went into production. Certainly anyone who'd read The Making of Star Trek was well aware that it was called "The Cage" throughout its preproduction, and was changed to "The Menagerie" just before filming began. I never claimed that Asherman coined that title, just that he chose to refer to the pilot by its working title to distinguish it from the 2-parter. To quote Asherman's own words from p. 27 of the first-edition Star Trek Compendium (Wallaby Books, 1981):

The title of "Star Trek's" [sic] first pilot was changed to "The Menagerie" before it was completed. To avoid confusion between this original pilot, and the later, aired two-part episode "The Menagerie," this pilot is referred to as "The Cage" throughout this book.

Fannish lore picked up the intermediate title very early on as a way to differentiate between the pilot and the aired two-parter. GR also picked up the differentiation, probably during his lecture circuit years when he showed "The Cage" and the blooper reels.

Okay, I didn't know that. Maybe I overstated Asherman's role in this (although certainly by employing the practice in a widely published book he made it far more commonly known than it had been when it was just "fannish lore" and the lecture circuit), but the point I was trying to make is simply that, from its production in 1964 through its home video release in 1986, the official title of the first pilot was actualy "The Menagerie." Any use of "The Cage" to refer to it was unofficial until Paramount made it official with the home video release. Which is something I think is interesting, because it's got to be pretty rare for a television episode to be officially retitled decades after it was made. I know it's happened with certain movies when they change distributors -- like how the version of Marooned seen on Mystery Science Theater 3000 was retitled Space Travelers -- and sometimes with old TV series to distinguish their syndicated reruns from new episodes still in production. But for something like this, it's got to be pretty rare. And it's convenient that the first pilot happens to be the only Star Trek episode without an onscreen title, so nothing in the film itself had to be altered.

 

[WRStone]

Yep, no question: if you'd been around Desilu from 1964-1969, the pilot would have been called "The Menagerie." It was only later that the differentiation changed it.

 

[Saxman1]

When I was a kid I thought it was all original material with the changes made for that episode. I even thought post-accident Pike was Hunter.

This! I was 6!

 

[evilnate]

Gotta side with Christopher on this one. The advances in the mediums have changed how TV operates, but given similar circumstances today, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't still work.

Look over at Doctor Who, for example. Tooting my own horn, I'd figured out who River Song was in the last moment of Series 5. The moment there was a married couple in the TARDIS, I knew immediately that there would be a child and it would have to be River Song.

I keep up on some of the Doctor Who spoilers. I watch deleted scenes, clips, etc. I doubt they're going to do anything that will surprise me regarding the big details. The writing is so good that it doesn't matter. Yes, I have a very good idea of where the current arc is going -- but I'll still watch every week because how they get there is still interesting.

I don't see how "The Menagerie" would be any different. I'd know more about it in advance of it airing than I would have in '66, but the fun is in seeing how the story plays, not knowing the details of the story per se.

The only shows I've seen where their pilots simply didn't work is when the pilots just weren't very good. Catch the unaired pilot of The Big Bang Theory, for example. I love the show as it has aired because I completely identify with all the male cast.

Penny is a creature of pure fantasy (sorry, hot non-nerds do not hang out with nerds), but she's a replacement for the female lead in the original pilot -- who simply didn't work. The original female lead, "Katie," was too realistic. She behaved exactly like real hot non-nerds who take advantage of nerds, and it killed a lot of the premise's humor.

There are scenes and echoes of that pilot that made it into the series. You could not have made a series based on that pilot because the audience would have (correctly) seen Katie as a conniving bitch; and Leonard and Sheldon as a couple of hard-up nerds who should know far better than to be around her.

"The Cage" doesn't have that problem. As a story, it still works. You could rename the characters, move the lines around a bit, and still have a story that would play in TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, or ENT. It would still play as the next summer blockbuster -- albeit expanded and with tons of CGI and lens flares ...

Dakota Smith

I see both Christopher and your points, however, what I was getting is that there would be a lot of teeth gnashing about so completely reusing that episode if the majority of fans had already seen the episode via other means - which in this day and age is highly likely. That said, "The Cage" (or "The Menagerie" ) is pretty unique in the realm of first pilots. It's different enough from the series proper that it actually works - with no modifications - as a prequal to the series proper, and it is a solid story on it's own. I completely agree that regardless of what format you see it in; be it stand-alone, or in "The Menagerie" wrapper, that it is one of the best pure sci-fi stories that Trek ever produced, and it is timeless. The connections in feel between "The Cage" and Forbbidden Planet give it feel of a bygone era, but timeless at the same time, if that makes any sense.

 

[EnsignHarper]

"The Cage" doesn't have that problem. As a story, it still works. You could rename the characters, move the lines around a bit, and still have a story that would play in TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, or ENT. It would still play as the next summer blockbuster -- albeit expanded and with tons of CGI and lens flares ...

Dakota Smith

In fact, supposedly when Majel saw the VOY opener, she told Berman, et.al., " I like this version of The Cage" - supposedly.....

Actually, The Menagerie/Cage/whatever really IS one of the best pilots ever done - it did its job perfectly - setting up a solid base for a series to build on. I have also seen where some serious critics have made the claim that it was one of the BEST filmed SF pieces done to that point EVER. I think that MIGHT be stretching a bit, but in some ways it DID change the SF game.

And one more thing. Occasionally you see some of the fanboys/girls here who HATE the transporter for whatever reasons. They STILL do not get what Roddenberry got almost 50 years ago. Roddenberry HAD at first thought of shuttles or whatever, but as a writer instinctively knew that in television, you need to get into the action FAST. What is interesting, if it happened just by chance, the VERY first scenes EVER filmed for any version of Star Trek were the transporter room scenes. Interesting, isn't it?

 

[mb22]

Not to belabor the point, but I just checked the 1978 Best of Trek paperback (which collected articles published during the mid 1970s). The title "The Cage" is used three times in reference to the pilot. While this usage might be "unofficial", the Best of Trek series was put out by a large mainstream publisher (New American Library) and certianly qualifies as "widely published".

 

[Captain Robert April]

It was such common practice in the early days to refer to the first pilot as "The Cage" that it took nitpickers like me and Christopher to point out that the actual title was "The Menagerie".

Well, since Pike uses both terms in dialogue ("We're in a menagerie, a cage..."), it works either way.

 

[scotpens]

. . . This wasn't an unheard-of concept at the time due to spin-offs. I suspect that few remember that Mork and Mindy was a spin-off of Happy Days ...

Or that Happy Days was itself a spinoff, having originated as an episode of the comedy anthology series Love American Style.

The 1970s could rightly be called the Decade of the Spinoff. All In the Family (itself an Americanized version of the British series Till Death Us Do Part) begat The Jeffersons and Maude. Maude begat Good Times. The short-lived sitcom Fish was spun off Barney Miller. The Mary Tyler Moore show spawned Rhoda, Phyllis and Lou Grant.

A contemporary joke was that MTM Productions was all set to debut a new show, Carlton the Doorman. (For those who don't remember, Carlton was never-seen apartment doorman on Rhoda; viewers only heard his voice on the intercom.)

 

[J.T.B.]

A contemporary joke was that MTM Productions was all set to debut a new show, Carlton the Doorman. (For those who don't remember, Carlton was never-seen apartment doorman on Rhoda; viewers only heard his voice on the intercom.)

No joke, I thought I remembered seeing a promo for that show back in the day. A little Googling and it turns out there actually was a pilot for an animated show called Carlton Your Doorman. The series was not picked up, but the episode was aired once in 1980.

--Justin

 

[WRStone]

The Mary Tyler Moore show spawned Rhoda, Phyllis and Lou Grant.

I am always amazed that such a successful sit-com spawned a drama like Lou Grant. It's reminiscent of the modern Whoniverse. Captain Jack and the Doctor share adventures that are always a little more light-hearted, but when by himself, Captain Jack is just a train wreck of an immortal.

I like that. It bothers me intensely when shared universes have no room for different tones and different kinds of stories -- and here I'm thinking of the DC Universe.

There was a time when a guy like Ralph Dibney, the Elongated Man, could have serious adventures with in Justice League of America, but when guesting in The Flash or in a his own back-up series, he was very light-hearted. Here was a stretchy guy whose nose wiggled when he sensed a mystery.

That was fun. It was nice that not every part of the DC Universe was deadly serious or worse.

Nowadays, there is no room for anything at DC that isn't dark, tortured, and bloody. First they murdered Ralph's wife Sue in a particularly horrible fashion. I was collecting JSA at the time, which was otherwise a reasonably fun book. Then they drug Sue's charred body over for Doctor Mid-Nite to perform an autopsy. I stopped reading comics after that: it was just that horrific.

Then Ralph went from a light-hearted character to a train wreck. Then he became disturbingly obsessed with resurrecting his dead wife. Then they killed him.

As I say, I thought it neat that Lou Grant could go from producing a Minneapolis TV news show run by semi-incompetents to editing a serious Los Angeles newspaper. That's actually how my life has been: I've had jobs where I've been dragged into the ridiculous and then gone on to one where everything is done just right.

I think it's neat that the Doctor will always have adventures of one tone while Captain Jack will have another. It's neat that you can have a super-hero who dresses up like a giant bat at night to fight criminals and his colleague has a nose that can "smell a mystery."

When everything must be dark, gritty, and horrific, you've left reality behind.

Dakota Smith