Today, Winter makes a down payment on Spring. It's twenty degrees warmer than it was yesterday, and there is Not. A. Cloud. In. The. Sky.
It's time to walk some dogs.
I'm not the only person to decide that today would be a good idea. While walking down Broadway in Stowe, we pass a man walking his two dogs, whom he describes to me as "purebred mutts", and Klea pauses to greet them. A few minutes later, we pass a woman walking her dog, and she smiles at the basenjis as we do so.
Walking down Frederick Street, we pass by a woman standing just outside her house's chainlink fence, and she's petting a brown pit bull inside the fence whom she introduces as Buddy. While the basenjis and Buddy sniff at each others' faces through the fence, a boy comes up to introduce himself as Michael, state that he is 12 years old, ask if the basenjis are chihuahuas, ask if the basenjis bite, ask if the basenjis like children, ask if the basenjis like strangers, ask if he can pet the basenjis, and ask how old the basenjis are. While I explain about the basenjis, Klea walks up to Michael and gives him her customary "do you have any food for me?" sniff. Having established that there is no food forthcoming, she leads us back up the street, and we make our way home.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Dog walk: 1/5/12
The sun made one of her* rare appearances today (they tell me Pittsburgh is the fourth-cloudiest city in America), so it was time to take the basenjis out for a walk. Despite the sunshine, the temperature was only a few degrees above freezing, so we did not have one of our usual leisurely afternoon walks. Also contributing to the brevity of the walk was the rock salt scattered across the roads and sidewalks in the wake of a recent snowstorm; dogs find walking on rock salt painful.
Nevertheless, the dogs took their time, stopping to sniff at the roadside litter that is an omnipresent fact of life in McKees Rocks. Klea found a paper bag from Wendy's that had been discarded by a passing car on Churchill Street some time before, and was preparing to gorge herself on french fries before I pulled her away. I also had to pull her away from some discarded chicken bones on Fruit Way. Ever since Buffalo Wings have become a fast food staple in this country, discarded chicken bones have become the bane of every dog owner's existence. They're everywhere, and any time a dog gobbles one up, there's a risk of bone shards getting caught in its throat.
But despite its short duration, and despite the hazards we met along the way, it was good to get out into the sunshine with the dogs, a faint echo of better days.
*All Tolkien aficionados know that the sun is feminine, and the moon masculine.
Nevertheless, the dogs took their time, stopping to sniff at the roadside litter that is an omnipresent fact of life in McKees Rocks. Klea found a paper bag from Wendy's that had been discarded by a passing car on Churchill Street some time before, and was preparing to gorge herself on french fries before I pulled her away. I also had to pull her away from some discarded chicken bones on Fruit Way. Ever since Buffalo Wings have become a fast food staple in this country, discarded chicken bones have become the bane of every dog owner's existence. They're everywhere, and any time a dog gobbles one up, there's a risk of bone shards getting caught in its throat.
But despite its short duration, and despite the hazards we met along the way, it was good to get out into the sunshine with the dogs, a faint echo of better days.
*All Tolkien aficionados know that the sun is feminine, and the moon masculine.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Recap: The Cage (4 of 4)
This is the fourth and final part of a recap of the original Star Trek pilot, "The Cage", that I posted to the rec.arts.startrek.misc newsgroup back in November 2005 under the screen name Empok Nor. The first three parts are, as Vina would put it, here and here (and here).
The starship Enterprise, under Captain Christopher Pike, has been lured to the planet Talos IV by a fake distress call, and Pike captured by the telepathic Talosians. The Talosians are making Pike relive past episodes in his life via telepathic illusions, accompanied by a young woman named Vina who insists that she is not an illusion. The Talosians finally hit on the idea of tempting Pike with a life he can't have: selling wild animal-women as sex slaves (and with Vina, as always, in the starring role). We pick up the story in
ACT FOUR
A corridor of the Enterprise. Spock and the Geologist are getting kitted out in their field jackets. Spock says, "We've located a magnetic field that seems to come from their underground generator."
"But could that be an illusion too?" wonders the Geologist as Tyler and Garison walk past. Spock doesn't answer. The two of them follow Tyler and Garison (who has his backpack on again) into the transporter room. Colt and Number One are already inside.
"You all know the situation," says Number One. "We're hoping to transport down inside the Talosian community."
"If our meansurements and readings are an illusion also," Spock observes, "one could find oneself materialized inside solid rock."
"Nothing will be said if any volunteer wants to back out," says Number One.
Nobody wants to back out, and they all take their places on the transporter stage.
Pitcairn motions to Yamata, and the transporter hum rises.
Number One and Colt dematerialize, but the other four do not.
"The women!" Spock exclaims. You've got to give him credit for not saying "the girls!"
Pitcairn and Yamata frantically press various buttons. Spock rushes off the transporter stage, looking worried.
Let's take a moment now to speculate on how the Talosians managed this. There was nothing illusory about what took place: Number One and Colt beamed down, and the others didn't. At this point, the Talosians haven't demonstrated any telekinetic ability, although they might have it. In that case, they might have disabled all but two of the transporter pads. OTOH, the Talosians seem to prefer to manipulate minds rather than machines. In that case, they would have manipulated Pitcairn and/or Yamata into switching off the other pads without realizing they were doing it.
***********************
The cell, as Number One and Colt materialize. Number One turns and exclaims, "Captain!"
We pan left to see Default Vina putting the moves on Pike. "Captain?" Number One repeats.
Vina removes her hands from Pike, looks up, and shouts, "No! Let me finish!" Given that it's been 18 years since she's been with a man, you can see her point. She storms off.
Number One is puzzled. "But, we were a landing party of six."
"We're the only ones transported," Colt observes.
Vina, who knows exactly what's going on, snarls, "That's not fair, you don't need them."
With startling swiftness, Pike tears open Colt's field jacket and pulls out her laser pistol. Then he turns and looks at Number One, who already has hers out. She hands hers over, and he checks both. "They don't work," he says.
Once again, a pause while we consider what's actually going on. The Talosians might have telekinetically disabled the lasers, but most likely, they're keeping Pike and Number One from seeing that the lasers are still operational.
"They were fully charged when we left," says Number One. She pulls out her telecommunicator and fiddles with it. "It's dead, I can't get the signal." Did Number One actually activate her telecommunicator, or did she only think she did? Probably the latter. Looking up at Pike she wonders, "What is it?"
Pike shakes his head. "Don't say anything," he tells her. He walks over to the stone block wall and lets the laser pistols drop onto the floor in front of the sliding stone. "I'm filling my mind with a picture of beating their huge misshapen heads to pulp! Thoughts so primitive they block out everything else. I'm filling my mind with hate." The thought he's hiding from the Talosians is: I know these laser pistols are still fully charged, and you're keeping me from seeing it. They're still dangerous, so I'm dropping them next to your little trap door and hoping you'll try to take them. And then . . .
"How long can you block yourself?" Vina chides him. "A few minutes? An hour? How can that help?"
"Leave him alone," Colt tells her.
"He doesn't need you," Vina insists. "He's already picked me."
Colt is mystefied. "Picked her?" she says to Pike. "For what? I don't understand." Pike, though, is too busy hating the Talosians to answer her.
"Now there's a fine choice for intelligent offspring," Vina snarks.
"Offspring?" says an even more puzzled Colt. "As in children?"
Nodding toward a busily hating Pike, Number One observes, "Offspring as in he's Adam, is that it?"
"You're no better choice," says a catty Vina. "They'd have more luck crossing him with a computer."
Number One isn't going to stand for this sort of nonsense. "Well, shall we do a little time computation? There was a Vina listed on that expedition as an adult crewman. Now, adding eighteen years to your age then . . . "
Number One is interrupted by the arrival of the Keeper.
"It's not fair," storms Vina. "I did what you asked!"
The Keeper ignores her and addresses Pike. "Since you resist the present specimen, you now have a selection."
Pike is still busy hating the Keeper. "I'll break out of this zoo somehow and get to you. Is your blood red like ours? I'm going to find out."
The Keeper ignores Pike's unfriendly response, determined as always to keep the conversation on track. "Each of the two new specimens has qualities in her favor. The female you call Number One has the superior mind and would produce highly intelligent children. Although she seems to lack emotion, this is largely a pretense. She often has fantasies involving you." (These last two sentences are spoken in a different voice. They redubbed the Keeper's voice for the televised version of "The Menagerie" because the owner of the original voice, Malachi Throne, was a guest star in the episode. Since these two lines didn't make it into the original, they've still got Throne's dub.)
If someone told me Number One often had fantasies involving me, it would definitely make me lose my train of thought, but Christopher Pike is made of sterner stuff. "All I want to do is get my hands on you," he tells the Keeper, and you can tell he doesn't mean it in a good way. "Can you read these thoughts? Images of hate, killing."
Undeterred, the Keeper continues, "The other new arrival has considered you unreachable, but is now is realizing this has changed." Colt is staring at the floor. "The factors in her favor are youth and strength, plus ususually strong female drives." Which presumably means that Colt is jonesing to find a man to marry and start a family. Ah, Gene, I love you, but you are such a pig.
"You'll find my thoughts more interesting," Pike snarls. "Thoughts so primitive you can't even understand. Emotions so ugly --" Pike cuts off as a wave of pain passes through his body. We don't know what he's experiencing, but it looks bad. Number One and Colt look helpless. Vina looks dismayed.
"Wrong thinking is punishable. Right thinking will be as quickly rewarded," says the Keeper, channelling Big Brother. "You will find it an effective combination." He turns and leaves. Asshole.
Pike comes back panting for breath, and finds himself being held up by Number One and Colt. As Number One starts to speak he says, "No, don't help me. I have to concentrate. They can't read through hate."
The elevator doors open again, revealing the Keeper. Vina looks sadly at Pike.
***********************
The Enterprise bridge. Spock enters from the turbolift, followed by Boyce and the Geologist. Tyler has moved to the helm station, and Vincent is at navigation. Valdini, still standing next to the turbolift, comes to attention as Spock passes, then returns to at-ease.
"Address intercraft," says Spock as he sits in the captain's chair.
"Open, sir," says Vincent.
"This is the Acting Captain speaking," says Spock. "We have no choice now but to consider the safety of this vessel, and the remainder of the crew. We're leaving."
Tyler turns and starts punching controls.
"All decks," says Spock, "prepare for hyperdrive. Time warp factor --"
"Mr. Spock, the ship's controls have gone dead!" Tyler exclaims.
The lights on the bridge start going out.
"Engine room," Spock calls out.
"Open," says Tyler as he rushes to the engineering station.
"Mr. Spock here. Switch to rockets, we're blasting out."
"All systems are out, bridge," says an anonymous voice from Engineering. "We've got nothing."
Rushing to the captain's chair, Tyler exclaims, "There's nothing! Every system aboard is fading out!"
Acting Captain Spock looks around the darkened bridge, helpless.
And again, we're left with the question: were the Talosians able to shut down the ship's power, or does the crew just think they have?
************************
The elevator opens, and the Keeper steps out. A soft version of the Talosian theme is playing.
In the cell, Vina is asleep on the comma-shaped bed, Number One (still in her field jacket) is sitting on it, slumped over, and Pike and Colt are on the floor leaning against it. Pike is the only one still awake. He catches sight of the moving block rolling slowly open, but presumably he's still blocking the Talosians enough to keep them from knowing about it.
The Keeper reaches in for the laser pistols, and Pike springs into action, grabbing him by the arm and jerking him into the cell. This is the first time we've seen the two of them in physical proximity, and the Keeper is surprisingly small. (GR cast a woman as the Keeper.)
The women are all awakened by the ruckus, and watch as Pike wrestles the Keeper to the ground and grabs him by the throat.
"Now you hold still or I'll break your neck," Pike warns the Keeper.
"Don't hurt him, they don't mean to be evil," Vina pleads.
"I've had some samples of how 'good' they are," Pike growls.
The Keeper turns into the ape creature from Act Two and snarls at Pike. Pike keeps his hands firmly around the thing's neck and warns, "You stop this illusion or I'll twist your head off!"
The Keeper can read Pike's mind, so he knows the captain's not kidding. He resumes his real appearance. "All right," says Pike, "now, you try one more illusion, you try anything, and I'll break your neck." The Keeper knows Pike's not kidding about that, either.
Next comes Plan B: "Your ship," the Keeper gasps. "Release . . . me . . . or . . . will . . . destroy . . . it."
****************************
The Enterprise bridge is still dark. There are a couple of portable lights pointed at the helm-navigation console, which is in a state of partial disassembly as the crew try to figure out what's wrong.
"Nothing," says a frustrated Spock as he sets down a bag of tools. "Without the batteries we lose gravitation, oxygen."
There's a sudden burst of noise. "The computer," Tyler exclaims as he rushes over to the library station, displacing the crewman manning it.
We see the computer's screen as it flashes brief pictures of satellites, re-entry vehicles, the Earth's moon, maps of the Earth.
"I can't shut if off!" Tyler exclaims. "It's running through our library: tapes, micro-records, everything! It doesn't make sense!"
"Could be we've waited too long," says Spock.
We see the computer's screen as if flashes brief pictures of starscapes, human anatomy, a man on horseback, the Monitor duking it out with the Virginia, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln.
"They're collecting all the information stored in this fly. They've decided to swat us," Spock continues.
More presidents: Washington, Lincoln, Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ. Plants, animals, Chesapeake Bay, Earth's solar system, more satellites . . .
**************************
The cell. Pike jerks the Keeper to his feet.
"He's not bluffing, Captain," says Vina. "With illusion, they can make your crew work the wrong controls or push any button it takes to destroy your ship."
Looking at the Keeper, Pike says, "I'm going to gamble you're too intelligent to kill for no reason at all." He drags the Keeper over to Number One, and leaves her with her arm around his throat while he picks up the laser pistols. He points one at the transparency and fires, with no effect. The transparency remains undamaged. He tosses the laser onto the bed and fires the other one, adjusts the setting, then fires again.
Walking over and pointing the laser pistol at the Keeper's head, he continues: "On the other hand, I've got a reason. I'm willing to bet you've created an illusion this laser is empty. I think it just blasted a hole in that window, and you're keeping us from seeing it. You want me to test my theory out on your head?"
A hole appears in the transparency.
"Captain," says Colt, gesturing at the transparency.
Smiling, Pike leads the Keeper through the hole, followed by Number One, Colt and Vina. They get into the elevator.
*****************************
The surface of Talos IV. The rocky outcrop now has a great big notch in it. The metal doors are gone, and so is half of the elevator itself. As they exit the elevator, Pike orders, "Make contact, Number One." Vina walks off, and Pike and the still-captive Keeper follow her. Number One and Colt remain standing by the elevator.
Glancing at the damage, Number One remarks, "They kept us from seeing this, too. We cut through and never knew it." She takes out her telecommunicator and opens it, but nothing happens. Hurrying over to join Pike, she says, "Captain," and shows him the nonfunctional telecommunicator.
"As you see," says the Keeper, "your attempt to escape accomplished nothing."
"I want to contact our ship," says Pike.
"You are now on the surface, where we wished you to be. With the female of your choice, you will now begin carefully guided lives."
"Start by burying you?" says Pike.
"That is your choice," says the Keeper coolly. "To help you reclaim the planet's surface, our zoological gardens will provide you with a variety of plant life."
"Look," says Pike, "I'll make a deal with you. You and your life, for the lives of these two Earth women."
Again, the Keeper refuses to allow the conversation to move away from his preferred subject. "Since our lifespan is many times yours, we have time to evolve you into a society trained to serve as artisans, technicians --"
"Do you understand what I'm saying?" Pike interrupts. "You give me proof that our ship is all right and send these two back, and I'll stay with Vina."
Number One glances down at her laser and twists a control on the barrel. A low hum starts to build up. Colt's eyes bug out. "It's wrong to create a whole race of humans to live as slaves," Number One says levelly.
The Keeper looks appalled. "Is this a deception? Do you intend to destroy yourselves?" Despite her outward composure, Number One must be really, really pissed if the Keeper can't tell from reading her mind that she means it.
"What is that?" asks Vina.
"The weapon is building up an overload, a forced-chamber explosion," Pike explains. "You still have time to go underground." When Vina doesn't move, Pike shoves her toward the elevator and barks, "Well, go on!" Glaring at the Keeper, he adds, "And just to show you how primitive humans are, Talosian, you go with her."
"If . . . if you all think it's this important," says Vina uncertainly, "then I can't go either. I guess if they have one human being they might try again." It looks like the Talosians don't own Vina any more.
Pike notices the elevator returning to the surface with Beavis and Butthead. "Wait," he tells Number One, and she ratchets her laser back down to normal.
"Their method of storing records is crude and consumed much time," Butthead thinks at the Keeper. "Are you prepared to assimilate it?"
The Keeper nods, then stands there while the veins in his head get all throbby. After twelve seconds spent assimilating crudely stored records, a thoroughly appalled Keeper turns to look at Pike. "We had not believed this possible. The customs and history of your race show a unique hatred of captivity. Even when it's pleasant and benevolent, you prefer death. This makes you too violent and dangerous a species for our needs."
"He means that they can't use you," Vina explains. "You're free to go back to the ship."
Pike is nonplussed. "So that's it? No apologies? You captured one of us, threatened all of us . . . "
"Your unsuitability has condemned the Talosian race to eventual death," Butthead points out. "Is this not sufficient?"
"No other specimen has shown your adaptability," the Keeper adds. "You were our last hope."
Pike, being the good guy that he is, starts trying to figure out some way to help his former captors. "Wouldn't some form of trade, mutual cooperation . . . ?"
"Your race would learn our power of illusion, and destroy itself too," says the Keeper.
Number One's communicator signals. "Captain," she says, "we have transporter control now."
Pike looks at the Keeper, looks up at Beavis and Butthead, and says, "Let's get back to the ship."
Vina shakes her head. "I can't. I can't go with you."
*************************
A close-up of some flashing lights on the transporter console. Pitcairn is saying, "Sir, it just came on, we can't shut the power off."
We pull back to see Spock and Vincent standing in the transporter room as a comm whistle sounds. "Mr. Spock here."
The voice of Tyler announces, "All power has come on, Mr. Spock. The helm is answering to controls." I guess they put the helm console back together again. Or else they only thought they disassembled it.
Spock and Vincent are hurrying out of the transporter room when they are brought up by the sound of the transporter operating. Colt materializes on the transporter stage, then steps off and turns to watch as Number One does the same. She also steps off and turns to watch, but nothing else happens.
"The Captain," exclaims Vincent.
****************************
On Talos IV, we see Vina standing by the rocky knoll. The Keeper turns to look at her, and his veins start throbbing.
Vina's hair slowly turns from blonde to gray and her face starts getting wrinkled. Her nose literally gets bent out of shape, a scar runs from her forehead across to her right cheekbone, another twists her mouth to the left. Her spine twists to the right, and her left shoulder becomes a huge, misshapen lump. Her hair fades from gray to white.
Pike looks appalled.
"You see why I can't go with you?" Real Vina whispers.
Pike looks at the Keeper. "This is the female's true appearance," he confirms.
"They found me in the wreckage," says Real Vina, "a dying lump of flesh. They rebuilt me. Everything works. But they had never seen a human. They had no guide for putting me back together." She turns and hobbles back to the elevator as a minor key version of the Vina theme plays.
The Keeper says, "It was necessary to convince you her desire to stay is an honest one."
"You'll give her back her illusion of beauty?"
"And more."
The full Vina theme returns as we see Default Vina turn and take the hand of an illusory Christopher Pike. She leads him up to the elevator, which is flanked by Beavis and Butthead.
"She has an illusion, and you have reality," the Keeper says to Pike. "May you find your way as pleasant."
Pike watches as Default Vina and Illusion Pike descend in the elevator.
***********************
The Enterprise transporter room. Colt is sitting on the transporter stage, and Spock is standing next to her, as Pitcairn says, "Mr. Spock, the system is coming on again." Number One joins Spock by the transporter console. Say, since Number One is in there, shouldn't Pitcairn have addressed his comment to her?
Colt turns around and watches as Pike materializes.
"What's happened to Vina?" asks Colt.
"Isn't she coming with us?" asks Number One.
"No," Pike says. "No, and I agreed with her reasons." He steps off the transporter stage, leaving the two women to exchange puzzled looks.
*************************
THE TAG
The Enterprise bridge. Pike, Number One, Colt and Spock emerge from the turbolift. Valdini comes to attention. Boyce comes up to Pike and says, "Hold on a minute."
"Oh, I feel fine," says Pike. "Just fine."
"Yeah, you look a hundred percent better," says Boyce suspiciously.
"Well, you recommended a rest and a change of pace, didn't you?"
"Mm hm."
"I've even been home," Pike says. "That make you happy?"
Boyce is puzzled, but doesn't respond. Turning away from the doctor, Pike bumps into Colt again. "Yeoman," he says.
"Yes, sir," Colt says with a long-suffering look in her eyes.
"I told you that when I'm on the bridge I want . . . " he trails off as Colt holds up a clipboard. "Oh yes, the, ah, report. Thank you." Pike notices Tyler watching them, and a brief but intense glare sends the navigator on his way.
Summoning up her reserves of courage, Colt asks, "Sir, I was wondering, just curious. Who would have been Eve?" Tyler, standing next to Vincent, is looking back in their direction.
Number One says sharply, "Yeoman, you've delivered your report."
"Yes, ma'am," says Colt stiffly, then to Pike, "Yes, sir." She turns and heads back to the turbolift.
Tyler, on his way back to navigation, pauses by Pike and says, "Eve, sir?" Another glare from Pike sends him on his way with another "Yes, sir."
As Pike takes a seat Boyce comes up. "Eve as in Adam?"
"Eve as in all ships' doctors are dirty old men," Pike answers. Boyce grins and claps Pike on the shoulder as he heads for the turbolift.
"What are we running, a cadet ship?" Pike demands. "Number One, are we ready or not?"
"All decks show ready, sir."
"Engage." Pike returns his attention to Yeoman Colt's report as Clipboard Guy resumes his position to the left of the captain's chair and the Star Trek theme comes up. In the viewscreen, Talos IV recedes into the distance.
The Enterprise vanishes into the starlit distance.
CLOSING CREDITS
DIRECTED BY ROBERT BUTLER
WRITTEN AND PRODUCED BY GENE RODDENBERRY
CO-STARRING LEONARD NIMOY AS MISTER SPOCK
MAJEL BARRETT (as Number One) JOHN HOYT (as Doctor Boyce)
PETER DURYEA (as Tyler) LAUREL GOODWIN (as Yeoman Colt)
A DESILU PRODUCTION
(In addition, Meg Wylie played the Keeper, Georgia Schmidt and Serena Sands played Beavis and Butthead, Jon Lormer played Dr. Theodore Haskins, Leonard Mudie and Anthony Jochim played survivors #1 and #2, Ed Madden played the Geologist, Adam Roarke played C.P.O. Garison, Clegg Hoyt played Transporter Chief Pitcairn, Mike Dugan played the Kaylar, Robert Philips played the Fleet Officer, Joseph Mell played the Orion Trader, and featuring Tango the Wonder Horse as himself.)
Stephen E. Whitfield reports that filming of "The Menagerie" took twelve days (so that filming ended either on 9 December or 23 December 1964, depending on which source you rely on). Postproduction ended in February 1965 after a total of $630,000 was spent. When the pilot was eventually screened for the suits at NBC, they liked it, but thought it was "too cerebral", which was suitspeak for "way too smart for the dimwits who watch network television", so the pilot was rejected.
Eventually, Star Trek did make it onto the air, with an almost entirely new cast. As the first season wore on, the production crew found themselves coming closer and closer to punting a scheduled airdate. In desperation, GR dug out "The Menagerie", wrote a two-part episode around it, filmed roughly forty minutes' worth of new footage with the new cast which he intercut with the old footage, and sent the result off to NBC. The two-part episode also bore the title "The Menagerie", so it became customary to refer to the original, unaltered pilot by its former title, "The Cage".
With the broadcast of the two-part episode, the story of Captain Pike's visit to Talos IV entered Star Trek canon. Until the premier of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987, "The Menagerie" was the only Star Trek story featuring a crew other than Captain Kirk's: something of an anomaly. TNG, though, redefined Star Trek: it was no longer a show (and series of movies) about Captain Kirk; it was now a franchise about a wider universe, of which the adventures of Captain Kirk were only a part. In the wake of TNG, Pocket Books began publishing original novels featuring Captain Pike and his crew, the first being D.C. Fontana's 1989 novel Vulcan's Glory. This was followed in 1991 by Michael Jan Friedman's Legacy and Peter David's The Rift, in 1998 by Jerry Oltion's The Captain's Table: Where Sea Meets Sky, and in 2006 by Margaret Wander Bonanno's Burning Dreams. Fontana's novel takes place two years before "The Cage", the first section of David's novel takes place a few days after "The Cage", and the novels by Oltion and Friedman seem to take place a few months after "The Cage", while Bonanno's novel covers Pike's entire life.
As with any non-canon works by different authors, there are inconsistencies among these novels, most notably concerning Number One's actual name. According to Fontana, the people of Number One's planet have no names, only ranks, so that Number One's name, to the extent that she has one, is literally Number One; according to David, Number One does have a name, but one that her crewmates find unpronounceable, hence the reliance on her title; and according to Oltion, Number One's name is Lefler. In contrast to Number One's real name (or lack thereof), David did choose to follow Fontana's lead in naming Pike's chief engineer Caitlin Barry.
Apart from the obvious differences in terminology and crew complement, "The Cage" is notable for what it doesn't have: the Starfleet and the Federation. Number One notes the absence of Earth ships or colonies near the Talos star group; the survivors ask the Enterprise crew about Earth; Boyce's jumpsuit has the Earth on its breast pocket. Instead of going to a starbase for medical assistance, the Enterprise is headed for "the Vega colony".
Some other observations: it's become commonplace to refer to the green women Vina appeared to be as Orion slave girls, but from the context it's apparent that Orion is actually an Earth colony. Pike suggests that he might become an Orion trader, and the Orion Trader in Pike's illusion seems to be a human. Boyce refers to "green animal-woman slaves", but doesn't refer to them as "Orion slaves", suggesting that the animal-woman slaves are simply the Orion colony's stock in trade; the green animal-woman slaves might very well come from some other world. On the other hand, the Fleet Officer does remark that the planet's inhabitants "like being taken advantage of", implying that the green women are indeed native to Orion, and that settlers from Earth have taken over the planet and are enslaving and selling its green-skinned native inhabitants. (If you think about it, this is a much darker picture of the future than we're used to seeing from Star Trek.) In subsequent episodes of various Star Trek series, of course, it's become canon that the green slave girls are indeed from Orion.
Where did the images of Dr. Haskins and the other survivors come from? The logical answer is that they came from Vina. She was part of the complement of the S.S. Columbia; after the Talosians rescued/captured her, she would have spent the next eighteen years re-living various memories, including presumably memories of her time aboard the Columbia. Haskins and the others must be suitably aged versions of Vina's memories of her crewmates.
Much of "The Cage" is presented to us from Pike's point of view. We see what he saw, including the various illusions the Talosians projected into his mind. This raises the question of what an objective outside observer would have seen. He would, for instance, have seen the first landing party from the Enterprise interacting with various bits of thin air. Was Vina physically present? The fact that she disappeared along with the rest of the "survivors" seems to indicate that the real Vina remained underground in her own cell; while the Talosians projected an illusion of Survivor Vina into the minds of Pike and the others, they were also projecting an illusion of the landing party into Vina's cell: two interactive illusions.
The Enterprise crew really did beam down the laser cannon, and really did fire it at the rocky outcrop, because Number One noticed that the outcrop had been blasted when they returned to the surface. Did the Enterprise really lose power when Spock tried to leave orbit, or was that an illusion? Possibly the former, because the Talosians did demonstrate some telekinetic abilities when they operated the transporter to beam Yeoman Colt, Number One and Pike up from the surface, and when they operated the library computer on the bridge. Also, if the loss of power was an illusion, presumably the Talosians would have preferred to maintain that illusion by hiding the fact that they were accessing the ship's records. The fact that the bridge crew saw the library computer station come back online strongly suggests that it really had been offline, along with the rest of the ship's systems.
When did Vina enter Pike's cell? She didn't seem to be there at first, but when Pike's Rigel VII illusion ended, she was. Then, when the Talosians punished her, she vanished again. Did she enter through the back wall, unnoticed by Pike, and then leave the same way, or was she an illusion the whole time? When the Mojave/Orion illusion began, Pike was alone, but when it ended, he was with Vina. Vina remained with him until his escape, when she joined him on the surface, so presumably she was definitely physically present in his cell at the end of the Mojave/Orion illusion, unless Vina never left her own cell in the Talosian menagerie at any point, and was always an illusion, including during Pike's escape to the surface. If Vina had beamed up to the ship with the others and returned with them to Earth, that would settle the matter; as it is, we'll never be entirely certain if she was ever physically present with the others.
Internal chronology: Per Memory Alpha, it is now generally accepted that "The Cage" takes place in the year 2254, placing it eleven years before the second TOS pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and ninety-nine years after the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Terra Prime" (and ninety-three years after the events depicted in Riker's holodeck program in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "These are the Voyages", though the episode itself is set in the year 2370).
The starship Enterprise, under Captain Christopher Pike, has been lured to the planet Talos IV by a fake distress call, and Pike captured by the telepathic Talosians. The Talosians are making Pike relive past episodes in his life via telepathic illusions, accompanied by a young woman named Vina who insists that she is not an illusion. The Talosians finally hit on the idea of tempting Pike with a life he can't have: selling wild animal-women as sex slaves (and with Vina, as always, in the starring role). We pick up the story in
ACT FOUR
A corridor of the Enterprise. Spock and the Geologist are getting kitted out in their field jackets. Spock says, "We've located a magnetic field that seems to come from their underground generator."
"But could that be an illusion too?" wonders the Geologist as Tyler and Garison walk past. Spock doesn't answer. The two of them follow Tyler and Garison (who has his backpack on again) into the transporter room. Colt and Number One are already inside.
"You all know the situation," says Number One. "We're hoping to transport down inside the Talosian community."
"If our meansurements and readings are an illusion also," Spock observes, "one could find oneself materialized inside solid rock."
"Nothing will be said if any volunteer wants to back out," says Number One.
Nobody wants to back out, and they all take their places on the transporter stage.
Pitcairn motions to Yamata, and the transporter hum rises.
Number One and Colt dematerialize, but the other four do not.
"The women!" Spock exclaims. You've got to give him credit for not saying "the girls!"
Pitcairn and Yamata frantically press various buttons. Spock rushes off the transporter stage, looking worried.
Let's take a moment now to speculate on how the Talosians managed this. There was nothing illusory about what took place: Number One and Colt beamed down, and the others didn't. At this point, the Talosians haven't demonstrated any telekinetic ability, although they might have it. In that case, they might have disabled all but two of the transporter pads. OTOH, the Talosians seem to prefer to manipulate minds rather than machines. In that case, they would have manipulated Pitcairn and/or Yamata into switching off the other pads without realizing they were doing it.
***********************
The cell, as Number One and Colt materialize. Number One turns and exclaims, "Captain!"
We pan left to see Default Vina putting the moves on Pike. "Captain?" Number One repeats.
Vina removes her hands from Pike, looks up, and shouts, "No! Let me finish!" Given that it's been 18 years since she's been with a man, you can see her point. She storms off.
Number One is puzzled. "But, we were a landing party of six."
"We're the only ones transported," Colt observes.
Vina, who knows exactly what's going on, snarls, "That's not fair, you don't need them."
With startling swiftness, Pike tears open Colt's field jacket and pulls out her laser pistol. Then he turns and looks at Number One, who already has hers out. She hands hers over, and he checks both. "They don't work," he says.
Once again, a pause while we consider what's actually going on. The Talosians might have telekinetically disabled the lasers, but most likely, they're keeping Pike and Number One from seeing that the lasers are still operational.
"They were fully charged when we left," says Number One. She pulls out her telecommunicator and fiddles with it. "It's dead, I can't get the signal." Did Number One actually activate her telecommunicator, or did she only think she did? Probably the latter. Looking up at Pike she wonders, "What is it?"
Pike shakes his head. "Don't say anything," he tells her. He walks over to the stone block wall and lets the laser pistols drop onto the floor in front of the sliding stone. "I'm filling my mind with a picture of beating their huge misshapen heads to pulp! Thoughts so primitive they block out everything else. I'm filling my mind with hate." The thought he's hiding from the Talosians is: I know these laser pistols are still fully charged, and you're keeping me from seeing it. They're still dangerous, so I'm dropping them next to your little trap door and hoping you'll try to take them. And then . . .
"How long can you block yourself?" Vina chides him. "A few minutes? An hour? How can that help?"
"Leave him alone," Colt tells her.
"He doesn't need you," Vina insists. "He's already picked me."
Colt is mystefied. "Picked her?" she says to Pike. "For what? I don't understand." Pike, though, is too busy hating the Talosians to answer her.
"Now there's a fine choice for intelligent offspring," Vina snarks.
"Offspring?" says an even more puzzled Colt. "As in children?"
Nodding toward a busily hating Pike, Number One observes, "Offspring as in he's Adam, is that it?"
"You're no better choice," says a catty Vina. "They'd have more luck crossing him with a computer."
Number One isn't going to stand for this sort of nonsense. "Well, shall we do a little time computation? There was a Vina listed on that expedition as an adult crewman. Now, adding eighteen years to your age then . . . "
Number One is interrupted by the arrival of the Keeper.
"It's not fair," storms Vina. "I did what you asked!"
The Keeper ignores her and addresses Pike. "Since you resist the present specimen, you now have a selection."
Pike is still busy hating the Keeper. "I'll break out of this zoo somehow and get to you. Is your blood red like ours? I'm going to find out."
The Keeper ignores Pike's unfriendly response, determined as always to keep the conversation on track. "Each of the two new specimens has qualities in her favor. The female you call Number One has the superior mind and would produce highly intelligent children. Although she seems to lack emotion, this is largely a pretense. She often has fantasies involving you." (These last two sentences are spoken in a different voice. They redubbed the Keeper's voice for the televised version of "The Menagerie" because the owner of the original voice, Malachi Throne, was a guest star in the episode. Since these two lines didn't make it into the original, they've still got Throne's dub.)
If someone told me Number One often had fantasies involving me, it would definitely make me lose my train of thought, but Christopher Pike is made of sterner stuff. "All I want to do is get my hands on you," he tells the Keeper, and you can tell he doesn't mean it in a good way. "Can you read these thoughts? Images of hate, killing."
Undeterred, the Keeper continues, "The other new arrival has considered you unreachable, but is now is realizing this has changed." Colt is staring at the floor. "The factors in her favor are youth and strength, plus ususually strong female drives." Which presumably means that Colt is jonesing to find a man to marry and start a family. Ah, Gene, I love you, but you are such a pig.
"You'll find my thoughts more interesting," Pike snarls. "Thoughts so primitive you can't even understand. Emotions so ugly --" Pike cuts off as a wave of pain passes through his body. We don't know what he's experiencing, but it looks bad. Number One and Colt look helpless. Vina looks dismayed.
"Wrong thinking is punishable. Right thinking will be as quickly rewarded," says the Keeper, channelling Big Brother. "You will find it an effective combination." He turns and leaves. Asshole.
Pike comes back panting for breath, and finds himself being held up by Number One and Colt. As Number One starts to speak he says, "No, don't help me. I have to concentrate. They can't read through hate."
The elevator doors open again, revealing the Keeper. Vina looks sadly at Pike.
***********************
The Enterprise bridge. Spock enters from the turbolift, followed by Boyce and the Geologist. Tyler has moved to the helm station, and Vincent is at navigation. Valdini, still standing next to the turbolift, comes to attention as Spock passes, then returns to at-ease.
"Address intercraft," says Spock as he sits in the captain's chair.
"Open, sir," says Vincent.
"This is the Acting Captain speaking," says Spock. "We have no choice now but to consider the safety of this vessel, and the remainder of the crew. We're leaving."
Tyler turns and starts punching controls.
"All decks," says Spock, "prepare for hyperdrive. Time warp factor --"
"Mr. Spock, the ship's controls have gone dead!" Tyler exclaims.
The lights on the bridge start going out.
"Engine room," Spock calls out.
"Open," says Tyler as he rushes to the engineering station.
"Mr. Spock here. Switch to rockets, we're blasting out."
"All systems are out, bridge," says an anonymous voice from Engineering. "We've got nothing."
Rushing to the captain's chair, Tyler exclaims, "There's nothing! Every system aboard is fading out!"
Acting Captain Spock looks around the darkened bridge, helpless.
And again, we're left with the question: were the Talosians able to shut down the ship's power, or does the crew just think they have?
************************
The elevator opens, and the Keeper steps out. A soft version of the Talosian theme is playing.
In the cell, Vina is asleep on the comma-shaped bed, Number One (still in her field jacket) is sitting on it, slumped over, and Pike and Colt are on the floor leaning against it. Pike is the only one still awake. He catches sight of the moving block rolling slowly open, but presumably he's still blocking the Talosians enough to keep them from knowing about it.
The Keeper reaches in for the laser pistols, and Pike springs into action, grabbing him by the arm and jerking him into the cell. This is the first time we've seen the two of them in physical proximity, and the Keeper is surprisingly small. (GR cast a woman as the Keeper.)
The women are all awakened by the ruckus, and watch as Pike wrestles the Keeper to the ground and grabs him by the throat.
"Now you hold still or I'll break your neck," Pike warns the Keeper.
"Don't hurt him, they don't mean to be evil," Vina pleads.
"I've had some samples of how 'good' they are," Pike growls.
The Keeper turns into the ape creature from Act Two and snarls at Pike. Pike keeps his hands firmly around the thing's neck and warns, "You stop this illusion or I'll twist your head off!"
The Keeper can read Pike's mind, so he knows the captain's not kidding. He resumes his real appearance. "All right," says Pike, "now, you try one more illusion, you try anything, and I'll break your neck." The Keeper knows Pike's not kidding about that, either.
Next comes Plan B: "Your ship," the Keeper gasps. "Release . . . me . . . or . . . will . . . destroy . . . it."
****************************
The Enterprise bridge is still dark. There are a couple of portable lights pointed at the helm-navigation console, which is in a state of partial disassembly as the crew try to figure out what's wrong.
"Nothing," says a frustrated Spock as he sets down a bag of tools. "Without the batteries we lose gravitation, oxygen."
There's a sudden burst of noise. "The computer," Tyler exclaims as he rushes over to the library station, displacing the crewman manning it.
We see the computer's screen as it flashes brief pictures of satellites, re-entry vehicles, the Earth's moon, maps of the Earth.
"I can't shut if off!" Tyler exclaims. "It's running through our library: tapes, micro-records, everything! It doesn't make sense!"
"Could be we've waited too long," says Spock.
We see the computer's screen as if flashes brief pictures of starscapes, human anatomy, a man on horseback, the Monitor duking it out with the Virginia, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln.
"They're collecting all the information stored in this fly. They've decided to swat us," Spock continues.
More presidents: Washington, Lincoln, Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ. Plants, animals, Chesapeake Bay, Earth's solar system, more satellites . . .
**************************
The cell. Pike jerks the Keeper to his feet.
"He's not bluffing, Captain," says Vina. "With illusion, they can make your crew work the wrong controls or push any button it takes to destroy your ship."
Looking at the Keeper, Pike says, "I'm going to gamble you're too intelligent to kill for no reason at all." He drags the Keeper over to Number One, and leaves her with her arm around his throat while he picks up the laser pistols. He points one at the transparency and fires, with no effect. The transparency remains undamaged. He tosses the laser onto the bed and fires the other one, adjusts the setting, then fires again.
Walking over and pointing the laser pistol at the Keeper's head, he continues: "On the other hand, I've got a reason. I'm willing to bet you've created an illusion this laser is empty. I think it just blasted a hole in that window, and you're keeping us from seeing it. You want me to test my theory out on your head?"
A hole appears in the transparency.
"Captain," says Colt, gesturing at the transparency.
Smiling, Pike leads the Keeper through the hole, followed by Number One, Colt and Vina. They get into the elevator.
*****************************
The surface of Talos IV. The rocky outcrop now has a great big notch in it. The metal doors are gone, and so is half of the elevator itself. As they exit the elevator, Pike orders, "Make contact, Number One." Vina walks off, and Pike and the still-captive Keeper follow her. Number One and Colt remain standing by the elevator.
Glancing at the damage, Number One remarks, "They kept us from seeing this, too. We cut through and never knew it." She takes out her telecommunicator and opens it, but nothing happens. Hurrying over to join Pike, she says, "Captain," and shows him the nonfunctional telecommunicator.
"As you see," says the Keeper, "your attempt to escape accomplished nothing."
"I want to contact our ship," says Pike.
"You are now on the surface, where we wished you to be. With the female of your choice, you will now begin carefully guided lives."
"Start by burying you?" says Pike.
"That is your choice," says the Keeper coolly. "To help you reclaim the planet's surface, our zoological gardens will provide you with a variety of plant life."
"Look," says Pike, "I'll make a deal with you. You and your life, for the lives of these two Earth women."
Again, the Keeper refuses to allow the conversation to move away from his preferred subject. "Since our lifespan is many times yours, we have time to evolve you into a society trained to serve as artisans, technicians --"
"Do you understand what I'm saying?" Pike interrupts. "You give me proof that our ship is all right and send these two back, and I'll stay with Vina."
Number One glances down at her laser and twists a control on the barrel. A low hum starts to build up. Colt's eyes bug out. "It's wrong to create a whole race of humans to live as slaves," Number One says levelly.
The Keeper looks appalled. "Is this a deception? Do you intend to destroy yourselves?" Despite her outward composure, Number One must be really, really pissed if the Keeper can't tell from reading her mind that she means it.
"What is that?" asks Vina.
"The weapon is building up an overload, a forced-chamber explosion," Pike explains. "You still have time to go underground." When Vina doesn't move, Pike shoves her toward the elevator and barks, "Well, go on!" Glaring at the Keeper, he adds, "And just to show you how primitive humans are, Talosian, you go with her."
"If . . . if you all think it's this important," says Vina uncertainly, "then I can't go either. I guess if they have one human being they might try again." It looks like the Talosians don't own Vina any more.
Pike notices the elevator returning to the surface with Beavis and Butthead. "Wait," he tells Number One, and she ratchets her laser back down to normal.
"Their method of storing records is crude and consumed much time," Butthead thinks at the Keeper. "Are you prepared to assimilate it?"
The Keeper nods, then stands there while the veins in his head get all throbby. After twelve seconds spent assimilating crudely stored records, a thoroughly appalled Keeper turns to look at Pike. "We had not believed this possible. The customs and history of your race show a unique hatred of captivity. Even when it's pleasant and benevolent, you prefer death. This makes you too violent and dangerous a species for our needs."
"He means that they can't use you," Vina explains. "You're free to go back to the ship."
Pike is nonplussed. "So that's it? No apologies? You captured one of us, threatened all of us . . . "
"Your unsuitability has condemned the Talosian race to eventual death," Butthead points out. "Is this not sufficient?"
"No other specimen has shown your adaptability," the Keeper adds. "You were our last hope."
Pike, being the good guy that he is, starts trying to figure out some way to help his former captors. "Wouldn't some form of trade, mutual cooperation . . . ?"
"Your race would learn our power of illusion, and destroy itself too," says the Keeper.
Number One's communicator signals. "Captain," she says, "we have transporter control now."
Pike looks at the Keeper, looks up at Beavis and Butthead, and says, "Let's get back to the ship."
Vina shakes her head. "I can't. I can't go with you."
*************************
A close-up of some flashing lights on the transporter console. Pitcairn is saying, "Sir, it just came on, we can't shut the power off."
We pull back to see Spock and Vincent standing in the transporter room as a comm whistle sounds. "Mr. Spock here."
The voice of Tyler announces, "All power has come on, Mr. Spock. The helm is answering to controls." I guess they put the helm console back together again. Or else they only thought they disassembled it.
Spock and Vincent are hurrying out of the transporter room when they are brought up by the sound of the transporter operating. Colt materializes on the transporter stage, then steps off and turns to watch as Number One does the same. She also steps off and turns to watch, but nothing else happens.
"The Captain," exclaims Vincent.
****************************
On Talos IV, we see Vina standing by the rocky knoll. The Keeper turns to look at her, and his veins start throbbing.
Vina's hair slowly turns from blonde to gray and her face starts getting wrinkled. Her nose literally gets bent out of shape, a scar runs from her forehead across to her right cheekbone, another twists her mouth to the left. Her spine twists to the right, and her left shoulder becomes a huge, misshapen lump. Her hair fades from gray to white.
Pike looks appalled.
"You see why I can't go with you?" Real Vina whispers.
Pike looks at the Keeper. "This is the female's true appearance," he confirms.
"They found me in the wreckage," says Real Vina, "a dying lump of flesh. They rebuilt me. Everything works. But they had never seen a human. They had no guide for putting me back together." She turns and hobbles back to the elevator as a minor key version of the Vina theme plays.
The Keeper says, "It was necessary to convince you her desire to stay is an honest one."
"You'll give her back her illusion of beauty?"
"And more."
The full Vina theme returns as we see Default Vina turn and take the hand of an illusory Christopher Pike. She leads him up to the elevator, which is flanked by Beavis and Butthead.
"She has an illusion, and you have reality," the Keeper says to Pike. "May you find your way as pleasant."
Pike watches as Default Vina and Illusion Pike descend in the elevator.
***********************
The Enterprise transporter room. Colt is sitting on the transporter stage, and Spock is standing next to her, as Pitcairn says, "Mr. Spock, the system is coming on again." Number One joins Spock by the transporter console. Say, since Number One is in there, shouldn't Pitcairn have addressed his comment to her?
Colt turns around and watches as Pike materializes.
"What's happened to Vina?" asks Colt.
"Isn't she coming with us?" asks Number One.
"No," Pike says. "No, and I agreed with her reasons." He steps off the transporter stage, leaving the two women to exchange puzzled looks.
*************************
THE TAG
The Enterprise bridge. Pike, Number One, Colt and Spock emerge from the turbolift. Valdini comes to attention. Boyce comes up to Pike and says, "Hold on a minute."
"Oh, I feel fine," says Pike. "Just fine."
"Yeah, you look a hundred percent better," says Boyce suspiciously.
"Well, you recommended a rest and a change of pace, didn't you?"
"Mm hm."
"I've even been home," Pike says. "That make you happy?"
Boyce is puzzled, but doesn't respond. Turning away from the doctor, Pike bumps into Colt again. "Yeoman," he says.
"Yes, sir," Colt says with a long-suffering look in her eyes.
"I told you that when I'm on the bridge I want . . . " he trails off as Colt holds up a clipboard. "Oh yes, the, ah, report. Thank you." Pike notices Tyler watching them, and a brief but intense glare sends the navigator on his way.
Summoning up her reserves of courage, Colt asks, "Sir, I was wondering, just curious. Who would have been Eve?" Tyler, standing next to Vincent, is looking back in their direction.
Number One says sharply, "Yeoman, you've delivered your report."
"Yes, ma'am," says Colt stiffly, then to Pike, "Yes, sir." She turns and heads back to the turbolift.
Tyler, on his way back to navigation, pauses by Pike and says, "Eve, sir?" Another glare from Pike sends him on his way with another "Yes, sir."
As Pike takes a seat Boyce comes up. "Eve as in Adam?"
"Eve as in all ships' doctors are dirty old men," Pike answers. Boyce grins and claps Pike on the shoulder as he heads for the turbolift.
"What are we running, a cadet ship?" Pike demands. "Number One, are we ready or not?"
"All decks show ready, sir."
"Engage." Pike returns his attention to Yeoman Colt's report as Clipboard Guy resumes his position to the left of the captain's chair and the Star Trek theme comes up. In the viewscreen, Talos IV recedes into the distance.
The Enterprise vanishes into the starlit distance.
CLOSING CREDITS
DIRECTED BY ROBERT BUTLER
WRITTEN AND PRODUCED BY GENE RODDENBERRY
CO-STARRING LEONARD NIMOY AS MISTER SPOCK
MAJEL BARRETT (as Number One) JOHN HOYT (as Doctor Boyce)
PETER DURYEA (as Tyler) LAUREL GOODWIN (as Yeoman Colt)
A DESILU PRODUCTION
(In addition, Meg Wylie played the Keeper, Georgia Schmidt and Serena Sands played Beavis and Butthead, Jon Lormer played Dr. Theodore Haskins, Leonard Mudie and Anthony Jochim played survivors #1 and #2, Ed Madden played the Geologist, Adam Roarke played C.P.O. Garison, Clegg Hoyt played Transporter Chief Pitcairn, Mike Dugan played the Kaylar, Robert Philips played the Fleet Officer, Joseph Mell played the Orion Trader, and featuring Tango the Wonder Horse as himself.)
Stephen E. Whitfield reports that filming of "The Menagerie" took twelve days (so that filming ended either on 9 December or 23 December 1964, depending on which source you rely on). Postproduction ended in February 1965 after a total of $630,000 was spent. When the pilot was eventually screened for the suits at NBC, they liked it, but thought it was "too cerebral", which was suitspeak for "way too smart for the dimwits who watch network television", so the pilot was rejected.
Eventually, Star Trek did make it onto the air, with an almost entirely new cast. As the first season wore on, the production crew found themselves coming closer and closer to punting a scheduled airdate. In desperation, GR dug out "The Menagerie", wrote a two-part episode around it, filmed roughly forty minutes' worth of new footage with the new cast which he intercut with the old footage, and sent the result off to NBC. The two-part episode also bore the title "The Menagerie", so it became customary to refer to the original, unaltered pilot by its former title, "The Cage".
With the broadcast of the two-part episode, the story of Captain Pike's visit to Talos IV entered Star Trek canon. Until the premier of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987, "The Menagerie" was the only Star Trek story featuring a crew other than Captain Kirk's: something of an anomaly. TNG, though, redefined Star Trek: it was no longer a show (and series of movies) about Captain Kirk; it was now a franchise about a wider universe, of which the adventures of Captain Kirk were only a part. In the wake of TNG, Pocket Books began publishing original novels featuring Captain Pike and his crew, the first being D.C. Fontana's 1989 novel Vulcan's Glory. This was followed in 1991 by Michael Jan Friedman's Legacy and Peter David's The Rift, in 1998 by Jerry Oltion's The Captain's Table: Where Sea Meets Sky, and in 2006 by Margaret Wander Bonanno's Burning Dreams. Fontana's novel takes place two years before "The Cage", the first section of David's novel takes place a few days after "The Cage", and the novels by Oltion and Friedman seem to take place a few months after "The Cage", while Bonanno's novel covers Pike's entire life.
As with any non-canon works by different authors, there are inconsistencies among these novels, most notably concerning Number One's actual name. According to Fontana, the people of Number One's planet have no names, only ranks, so that Number One's name, to the extent that she has one, is literally Number One; according to David, Number One does have a name, but one that her crewmates find unpronounceable, hence the reliance on her title; and according to Oltion, Number One's name is Lefler. In contrast to Number One's real name (or lack thereof), David did choose to follow Fontana's lead in naming Pike's chief engineer Caitlin Barry.
Apart from the obvious differences in terminology and crew complement, "The Cage" is notable for what it doesn't have: the Starfleet and the Federation. Number One notes the absence of Earth ships or colonies near the Talos star group; the survivors ask the Enterprise crew about Earth; Boyce's jumpsuit has the Earth on its breast pocket. Instead of going to a starbase for medical assistance, the Enterprise is headed for "the Vega colony".
Some other observations: it's become commonplace to refer to the green women Vina appeared to be as Orion slave girls, but from the context it's apparent that Orion is actually an Earth colony. Pike suggests that he might become an Orion trader, and the Orion Trader in Pike's illusion seems to be a human. Boyce refers to "green animal-woman slaves", but doesn't refer to them as "Orion slaves", suggesting that the animal-woman slaves are simply the Orion colony's stock in trade; the green animal-woman slaves might very well come from some other world. On the other hand, the Fleet Officer does remark that the planet's inhabitants "like being taken advantage of", implying that the green women are indeed native to Orion, and that settlers from Earth have taken over the planet and are enslaving and selling its green-skinned native inhabitants. (If you think about it, this is a much darker picture of the future than we're used to seeing from Star Trek.) In subsequent episodes of various Star Trek series, of course, it's become canon that the green slave girls are indeed from Orion.
Where did the images of Dr. Haskins and the other survivors come from? The logical answer is that they came from Vina. She was part of the complement of the S.S. Columbia; after the Talosians rescued/captured her, she would have spent the next eighteen years re-living various memories, including presumably memories of her time aboard the Columbia. Haskins and the others must be suitably aged versions of Vina's memories of her crewmates.
Much of "The Cage" is presented to us from Pike's point of view. We see what he saw, including the various illusions the Talosians projected into his mind. This raises the question of what an objective outside observer would have seen. He would, for instance, have seen the first landing party from the Enterprise interacting with various bits of thin air. Was Vina physically present? The fact that she disappeared along with the rest of the "survivors" seems to indicate that the real Vina remained underground in her own cell; while the Talosians projected an illusion of Survivor Vina into the minds of Pike and the others, they were also projecting an illusion of the landing party into Vina's cell: two interactive illusions.
The Enterprise crew really did beam down the laser cannon, and really did fire it at the rocky outcrop, because Number One noticed that the outcrop had been blasted when they returned to the surface. Did the Enterprise really lose power when Spock tried to leave orbit, or was that an illusion? Possibly the former, because the Talosians did demonstrate some telekinetic abilities when they operated the transporter to beam Yeoman Colt, Number One and Pike up from the surface, and when they operated the library computer on the bridge. Also, if the loss of power was an illusion, presumably the Talosians would have preferred to maintain that illusion by hiding the fact that they were accessing the ship's records. The fact that the bridge crew saw the library computer station come back online strongly suggests that it really had been offline, along with the rest of the ship's systems.
When did Vina enter Pike's cell? She didn't seem to be there at first, but when Pike's Rigel VII illusion ended, she was. Then, when the Talosians punished her, she vanished again. Did she enter through the back wall, unnoticed by Pike, and then leave the same way, or was she an illusion the whole time? When the Mojave/Orion illusion began, Pike was alone, but when it ended, he was with Vina. Vina remained with him until his escape, when she joined him on the surface, so presumably she was definitely physically present in his cell at the end of the Mojave/Orion illusion, unless Vina never left her own cell in the Talosian menagerie at any point, and was always an illusion, including during Pike's escape to the surface. If Vina had beamed up to the ship with the others and returned with them to Earth, that would settle the matter; as it is, we'll never be entirely certain if she was ever physically present with the others.
Internal chronology: Per Memory Alpha, it is now generally accepted that "The Cage" takes place in the year 2254, placing it eleven years before the second TOS pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and ninety-nine years after the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Terra Prime" (and ninety-three years after the events depicted in Riker's holodeck program in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "These are the Voyages", though the episode itself is set in the year 2370).
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Recap: The Cage (3 of 4)
This is the third part of a recap of the original Star Trek pilot, "The Cage", that I posted to the rec.arts.startrek.misc newsgroup back in November 2005 under the screen name Empok Nor. The first two parts are, as Vina would put it, here and here.
The starship Enterprise, under Captain Christopher Pike, has been lured to the planet Talos IV by a fake distress call, and Pike captured by the telepathic Talosians. The Talosians are making Pike relive past episodes in his life via telepathic illusions, accompanied by a young woman named Vina who insists that she is not an illusion. We pick up the story in
ACT THREE
The cell, later. Pike is testing the stone blocks for weak points again. He doesn't see one of the blocks open like a sliding door. Only when he hears a glassy click does he look down and see it closing. He tries to get to it before it closes, but he's too late. On the floor below the block is something that looks like a cross between a test tube and a brandy snifter with a couple inches of blueish-green liquid in it. Then he looks toward the picture window and sees the Keeper standing outside it.
Instead of just thinking at Pike, the Keeper actually opens his mouth and speaks. "The vial contains a nourishing protein complex."
"Is the Keeper actually communicating with one of his animals?" snarks Pike. In the original series, they almost never got into the question of how members of Starfleet were able to communicate with alien races. They always spoke English, and nobody remarked on it. Here, though, it makes sense to assume that the Keeper has picked up English from reading Pike's mind.
"If the form and the color is not appealing, it can appear as any food you wish to visualize," the Keeper continues.
"And if I prefer --" Pike begins.
"To starve? You overlook the unpleasant alternative of punishment."
Pike's eyes close and his hands clench. Suddenly he is surrounded by flames and kneeling in a bubbling fluid while he screams in pain.
Pike is back in his cell, the vial in his hand. "From a fable you once heard in childhood," the Keeper notes. "You will now consume the nourishment."
Pike gasps, "Why not just put irresistible hunger in my mind? But you can't, can you? You do have limitations, don't you?"
The Keeper is starting to look annoyed. "If you continue to disobey, from deeper in your mind there are things even more unpleasant."
Pike looks down at the vial, thinks things over for a moment, then drinks it. Glaring at the Keeper, he stands up, then suddenly throws himself at the transparency. Bwong! The Keeper, startled, jumps back.
Pike is grinning. "That's very interesting."
"Now, to the female," the Keeper says as he regains his composure. (A bit of advice for any future space travelers out there. Never trust anyone who refers to a woman as "the female".)
"You were startled," Pike points out. "Weren't you reading my mind then?"
The Keeper, though, doesn't want to pursue that line of inquiry. "As you've conjectured, an Earth vessel did crash on our planet, but with only a single survivor." The Talosians presumably picked this bit of conjecture out of Pike's mind.
"Now, let's stay on the first subject," Pike insists. "All I wanted for that moment was to get my hands around your neck."
The Keeper refuses to be swayed from his topic of conversation. "We repaired the survivor's injuries, and found the species interesting."
"Do primitive thoughts put up a block you can't read through?"
The Keeper is starting to sound pissed as he steps on Pike's lines. "It became necessary to attract a mate."
Pike finally gives up and says, "All right, all right, let's talk about the girl. You seem to be going out of your way to make her attractive, to make me feel protective."
Approaching the cell again, the Keeper says earnestly, "This is necessary in order to perpetuate the species."
"It seems more important to you now that I begin to accept her, like her."
"We wish our specimens to be happy in their new life."
Pike isn't buying it. "Assuming that's a lie, why would you want me attracted to her? So I'll feel love and a husband-wife relationship? That'd be necessary only if you intend to build a family group, or perhaps a whole human community."
Turning away, the Keeper says, "With the female now properly conditioned --"
"You mean properly punished," Pike says angrily.
The Keeper turns to look back at him.
"I'm the one who's not cooperating!" Pike snarls. "Why don't you punish me?"
"First, an emotion of protectiveness. Now, one of sympathy. Excellent," smirks the Keeper. He turns and enters the elevator with a pling. Yeah, he's an asshole all right. And it isn't hard to figure out where Matt Groening got the model for Homer Simpson's boss.
Pike stands there and glares at him, then the background behind him blurs with a vroon sound. Pike is now wearing a denim jacket over a blue turtleneck. Behind him are two horses standing next to a small tree.
"Do you want some coffee, dear?" The scene opens out to a picnic lunch set in a wooded clearing. Domestic Vina, with wavy shoulder-length hair and dressed in a white riding outfit, kneels next to a blanket as she removes items from a picnic basket. "I left a thermos hooked to m' saddle," Domestic Vina continues.
To the sound of birdsong and a western acoustic guitar, Pike approaches the horse. The horse neighs, and Pike realizes that he recognizes him. "Tango! You old devil, you. Sorry, I don't have any . . . " Feeling the pocket of his denim jacket, Pike removes a couple of sugar cubes. "They think of everything, don't they?" he remarks to Vina as he gives Tango the treat.
As he starts to approach her she reminds him, "Honey, the coffee." Giving her an okay whatever look, Pike goes back to Tango and unhooks the thermos from his saddle.
"Isn't it good to be home?" says Domestic Vina.
"They read our minds very well," Pike remarks. "Home, anything else I want. If I cooperate, is that it?" Putting a hand to her head, Domestic Vina gives him a warm smile combined with a warning look as she says, "Have you forgotten my headaches, darling? I get them when you talk strangely like this."
Handing her the thermos, Pike says, "Look, I'm sorry they punish you, but we can't let them --"
"My!" Domestic Vina interrupts, "It turned out to be a lovely day, didn't it?"
Relenting, Pike says, "It's funny, about twenty-four hours ago I was telling the ship's doctor how much I wanted something that's not very different from what we have here. Escape from reality, life with no frustrations, no responsibilities. And now that I have it, I understand the doctor's answer."
"I hope you're hungry," says Domestic Vina. "These little white sandwiches are your mother's recipe for chicken tuna." Good lord, do people actually eat chicken tuna sandwiches? That sounds gross.
"Because you either live life, bruises, skinned knees and all, or you turn your back on it and start dying."
Domestic Vina is not at all happy to hear Pike talking like this. Tango and the other horse, meanwhile, continue to stand placidly by their tree.
"The doctor's gonna be happy about one part of it, at least," says Pike as he takes in the vista through the trees. "He said I needed a rest."
"It's a lovely place to rest," Domestic Vina points out.
"Yeah, I used to ride through here when I was a kid. It's not as pretty as some of the parks around the big cities, but . . . " Nodding toward a city off in the distance, he says, "That's Mojave, that's where I was born."
With a smile, Domestic Vina says, "Is that supposed to be news to your wife?"
This clearly creeps out Pike. He turns back and glares at Domestic Vina.
"You're home," she insists, giving it the old college try. "You can even stay if you want. Wouldn't it be nice to show your children where you once played?"
"These 'headaches', they'll be hereditary, you know," Pike points out. "Would you wish them on a child, or a whole group of children?"
Domestic Vina is getting annoyed. "Foolish," she mutters.
"Is it? Look," he says as he kneels next to her on the blanket, "first they made me protect you, and then feel sympathy for you. And now we have these . . . familiar surroundings and a husband-wife relationship. Well, they don't need all this for just passion. What they're after is respect and mutual dependence."
Domestic Vina really, really doesn't want to hear Pike talking like this. Desperately she breaks in with an artificially chipper, "They say in the olden days all this was a desert, just blowing sand and cactus."
"But we're not here, neither of us," Pike insists. "We're in a menagerie, a cage."
"No!" growls Domestic Vina.
"I can't help either one of us if you won't give me a chance. Now, you told me once that they used illusions as a narcotic. They couldn't even repair the machines left by their ancestors. Is that why they want us? To build a colony of slaves?"
Now Domestic Vina's the one getting frustrated. "Stop!" she implores him. "Don't you care what they'll do to us?"
But Pike presses on. "Back in my cage it seemed for a couple of minutes that our keeper couldn't read my thoughts. Do emotions like hate, keeping hate in your mind, does that block off our minds from them?"
Resigned, Domestic Vina admits, "Yes. They can't read through primitive emotions. But you can't keep it up for long enough. I've tried. They keep at you and at you, year after year, tricking and punishing. And they've won. They own me. And you must hate me for that."
The Vina theme slowly comes up as Pike takes her hand and says, "Oh, no, I don't hate you. I can guess what it was like."
"That's not enough," says Domestic Vina. "Don't you see? They read my thoughts, my feelings, my dream of what would be the perfect man, and that's why they picked you. I can't help but love you. And they expect you to feel the same way."
"If they can read my mind," says Pike, "then they know I'm attracted to you." We suddenly pull back from Pike, showing him on the Talosians' monitor. "I was from the very first moment I saw you in the survivors' camp." A shot of the Keeper and Butthead as they look on. "You were like a wild little animal."
"A curious species," Butthead thinks to the Keeper. "They have fantasies they hide even from themselves."
Back on the Talosians' monitor, Domestic Vina observes, "I'm beginning to see why none of this has worked for you. You've been home; and fighting, as on Rigel, that's not new to you either. A person's strongest dreams are about what he can't do. Yes, a ship's captain, always having to be so formal, so decent and honest and proper." A shot of the Keeper, Beavis and Butthead as they look on. "You must wonder what it would be like to forget all that." The Keeper waves his arm, and there's a vroon sound.
Back to Pike, as the background behind him blurs into the main hall of a palace. Pike is now wearing a shimmery magenta and teal outfit with a torc of woven gold around his neck. The music is a vaguely middle-easternish mix of flute and percussion with the occasional chord from a harp. Pike is reclining at a low table laden with food, and reclining along with him are a chubby balding guy in an elaborate robe with an earring in his left ear (the Orion Trader, the Star Trek Concordance calls him), and a guy in a gold-edged uniform with gold shoulders boards (the Fleet Officer). Both of Pike's companions have knowing smirks. The table sits next to a pool, on the far side of which are four musicians in middle-easternish outfits and a green dancing girl in an outfit that's mostly bare skin with patches of fabric. Behind the musicians and the dancing girl are some fountains and a couple of burning torches.
"Nice place you have here, Mr. Pike," the Fleet Officer smirks.
We get a close-up of the dancing girl's green face and bright red lips, then back to Pike as he realizes: "Vina!"
The Orion Trader smirks, "Glistening green, almost like secret dreams a bored ship's captain might have."
Back to Glistening Green Vina, moving in a way that says, come and get it, big boy!
"Funny how they are on this planet," observes the Fleet Officer with a leer, "actually like being taken advantage of."
A wide angle of Pike and the others watching the entertainment as the Fleet Officer drinks from some weird-looking cornucopia-looking goblet.
A shot of Vina dancing up a storm, then a brief glimpse of Pike as he goes gulp!
"Suppose you had all of space to choose from," remarks the Fleet Officer, "and this was only one small sample."
"Wouldn't you say it's worth a man's soul?" remarks the Orion Trader.
Extreme close-up of Pike getting really hot and bothered. More shots of Glistening Green Vina, then Pike jumps up from the table and takes off, and good lord, he's wearing red shoes with pointed toes. Yes, Captain Pike, you are in Hell.
Pike rushes through a door and down a hallway, and the silk hangings on the wall quickly give way to bare rock illuminated with torches. Back when I was twelve years old and watching this scene in "The Menagerie Part II", this next bit would really creep me out: the music is still playing back in the main hall as Pike looks around at the rock walls, then suddenly fades out. Pike rushes back to find the doors gone and a rock wall in their place. Creepy.
Pike peers around for a few seconds at the rock-walled tunnel he now finds himself in, then turns around to see Glistening Green Vina standing there holding a torch. The look on her face says, come and get it, big boy!
(continue to part 4)
The starship Enterprise, under Captain Christopher Pike, has been lured to the planet Talos IV by a fake distress call, and Pike captured by the telepathic Talosians. The Talosians are making Pike relive past episodes in his life via telepathic illusions, accompanied by a young woman named Vina who insists that she is not an illusion. We pick up the story in
ACT THREE
The cell, later. Pike is testing the stone blocks for weak points again. He doesn't see one of the blocks open like a sliding door. Only when he hears a glassy click does he look down and see it closing. He tries to get to it before it closes, but he's too late. On the floor below the block is something that looks like a cross between a test tube and a brandy snifter with a couple inches of blueish-green liquid in it. Then he looks toward the picture window and sees the Keeper standing outside it.
Instead of just thinking at Pike, the Keeper actually opens his mouth and speaks. "The vial contains a nourishing protein complex."
"Is the Keeper actually communicating with one of his animals?" snarks Pike. In the original series, they almost never got into the question of how members of Starfleet were able to communicate with alien races. They always spoke English, and nobody remarked on it. Here, though, it makes sense to assume that the Keeper has picked up English from reading Pike's mind.
"If the form and the color is not appealing, it can appear as any food you wish to visualize," the Keeper continues.
"And if I prefer --" Pike begins.
"To starve? You overlook the unpleasant alternative of punishment."
Pike's eyes close and his hands clench. Suddenly he is surrounded by flames and kneeling in a bubbling fluid while he screams in pain.
Pike is back in his cell, the vial in his hand. "From a fable you once heard in childhood," the Keeper notes. "You will now consume the nourishment."
Pike gasps, "Why not just put irresistible hunger in my mind? But you can't, can you? You do have limitations, don't you?"
The Keeper is starting to look annoyed. "If you continue to disobey, from deeper in your mind there are things even more unpleasant."
Pike looks down at the vial, thinks things over for a moment, then drinks it. Glaring at the Keeper, he stands up, then suddenly throws himself at the transparency. Bwong! The Keeper, startled, jumps back.
Pike is grinning. "That's very interesting."
"Now, to the female," the Keeper says as he regains his composure. (A bit of advice for any future space travelers out there. Never trust anyone who refers to a woman as "the female".)
"You were startled," Pike points out. "Weren't you reading my mind then?"
The Keeper, though, doesn't want to pursue that line of inquiry. "As you've conjectured, an Earth vessel did crash on our planet, but with only a single survivor." The Talosians presumably picked this bit of conjecture out of Pike's mind.
"Now, let's stay on the first subject," Pike insists. "All I wanted for that moment was to get my hands around your neck."
The Keeper refuses to be swayed from his topic of conversation. "We repaired the survivor's injuries, and found the species interesting."
"Do primitive thoughts put up a block you can't read through?"
The Keeper is starting to sound pissed as he steps on Pike's lines. "It became necessary to attract a mate."
Pike finally gives up and says, "All right, all right, let's talk about the girl. You seem to be going out of your way to make her attractive, to make me feel protective."
Approaching the cell again, the Keeper says earnestly, "This is necessary in order to perpetuate the species."
"It seems more important to you now that I begin to accept her, like her."
"We wish our specimens to be happy in their new life."
Pike isn't buying it. "Assuming that's a lie, why would you want me attracted to her? So I'll feel love and a husband-wife relationship? That'd be necessary only if you intend to build a family group, or perhaps a whole human community."
Turning away, the Keeper says, "With the female now properly conditioned --"
"You mean properly punished," Pike says angrily.
The Keeper turns to look back at him.
"I'm the one who's not cooperating!" Pike snarls. "Why don't you punish me?"
"First, an emotion of protectiveness. Now, one of sympathy. Excellent," smirks the Keeper. He turns and enters the elevator with a pling. Yeah, he's an asshole all right. And it isn't hard to figure out where Matt Groening got the model for Homer Simpson's boss.
Pike stands there and glares at him, then the background behind him blurs with a vroon sound. Pike is now wearing a denim jacket over a blue turtleneck. Behind him are two horses standing next to a small tree.
"Do you want some coffee, dear?" The scene opens out to a picnic lunch set in a wooded clearing. Domestic Vina, with wavy shoulder-length hair and dressed in a white riding outfit, kneels next to a blanket as she removes items from a picnic basket. "I left a thermos hooked to m' saddle," Domestic Vina continues.
To the sound of birdsong and a western acoustic guitar, Pike approaches the horse. The horse neighs, and Pike realizes that he recognizes him. "Tango! You old devil, you. Sorry, I don't have any . . . " Feeling the pocket of his denim jacket, Pike removes a couple of sugar cubes. "They think of everything, don't they?" he remarks to Vina as he gives Tango the treat.
As he starts to approach her she reminds him, "Honey, the coffee." Giving her an okay whatever look, Pike goes back to Tango and unhooks the thermos from his saddle.
"Isn't it good to be home?" says Domestic Vina.
"They read our minds very well," Pike remarks. "Home, anything else I want. If I cooperate, is that it?" Putting a hand to her head, Domestic Vina gives him a warm smile combined with a warning look as she says, "Have you forgotten my headaches, darling? I get them when you talk strangely like this."
Handing her the thermos, Pike says, "Look, I'm sorry they punish you, but we can't let them --"
"My!" Domestic Vina interrupts, "It turned out to be a lovely day, didn't it?"
Relenting, Pike says, "It's funny, about twenty-four hours ago I was telling the ship's doctor how much I wanted something that's not very different from what we have here. Escape from reality, life with no frustrations, no responsibilities. And now that I have it, I understand the doctor's answer."
"I hope you're hungry," says Domestic Vina. "These little white sandwiches are your mother's recipe for chicken tuna." Good lord, do people actually eat chicken tuna sandwiches? That sounds gross.
"Because you either live life, bruises, skinned knees and all, or you turn your back on it and start dying."
Domestic Vina is not at all happy to hear Pike talking like this. Tango and the other horse, meanwhile, continue to stand placidly by their tree.
"The doctor's gonna be happy about one part of it, at least," says Pike as he takes in the vista through the trees. "He said I needed a rest."
"It's a lovely place to rest," Domestic Vina points out.
"Yeah, I used to ride through here when I was a kid. It's not as pretty as some of the parks around the big cities, but . . . " Nodding toward a city off in the distance, he says, "That's Mojave, that's where I was born."
With a smile, Domestic Vina says, "Is that supposed to be news to your wife?"
This clearly creeps out Pike. He turns back and glares at Domestic Vina.
"You're home," she insists, giving it the old college try. "You can even stay if you want. Wouldn't it be nice to show your children where you once played?"
"These 'headaches', they'll be hereditary, you know," Pike points out. "Would you wish them on a child, or a whole group of children?"
Domestic Vina is getting annoyed. "Foolish," she mutters.
"Is it? Look," he says as he kneels next to her on the blanket, "first they made me protect you, and then feel sympathy for you. And now we have these . . . familiar surroundings and a husband-wife relationship. Well, they don't need all this for just passion. What they're after is respect and mutual dependence."
Domestic Vina really, really doesn't want to hear Pike talking like this. Desperately she breaks in with an artificially chipper, "They say in the olden days all this was a desert, just blowing sand and cactus."
"But we're not here, neither of us," Pike insists. "We're in a menagerie, a cage."
"No!" growls Domestic Vina.
"I can't help either one of us if you won't give me a chance. Now, you told me once that they used illusions as a narcotic. They couldn't even repair the machines left by their ancestors. Is that why they want us? To build a colony of slaves?"
Now Domestic Vina's the one getting frustrated. "Stop!" she implores him. "Don't you care what they'll do to us?"
But Pike presses on. "Back in my cage it seemed for a couple of minutes that our keeper couldn't read my thoughts. Do emotions like hate, keeping hate in your mind, does that block off our minds from them?"
Resigned, Domestic Vina admits, "Yes. They can't read through primitive emotions. But you can't keep it up for long enough. I've tried. They keep at you and at you, year after year, tricking and punishing. And they've won. They own me. And you must hate me for that."
The Vina theme slowly comes up as Pike takes her hand and says, "Oh, no, I don't hate you. I can guess what it was like."
"That's not enough," says Domestic Vina. "Don't you see? They read my thoughts, my feelings, my dream of what would be the perfect man, and that's why they picked you. I can't help but love you. And they expect you to feel the same way."
"If they can read my mind," says Pike, "then they know I'm attracted to you." We suddenly pull back from Pike, showing him on the Talosians' monitor. "I was from the very first moment I saw you in the survivors' camp." A shot of the Keeper and Butthead as they look on. "You were like a wild little animal."
"A curious species," Butthead thinks to the Keeper. "They have fantasies they hide even from themselves."
Back on the Talosians' monitor, Domestic Vina observes, "I'm beginning to see why none of this has worked for you. You've been home; and fighting, as on Rigel, that's not new to you either. A person's strongest dreams are about what he can't do. Yes, a ship's captain, always having to be so formal, so decent and honest and proper." A shot of the Keeper, Beavis and Butthead as they look on. "You must wonder what it would be like to forget all that." The Keeper waves his arm, and there's a vroon sound.
Back to Pike, as the background behind him blurs into the main hall of a palace. Pike is now wearing a shimmery magenta and teal outfit with a torc of woven gold around his neck. The music is a vaguely middle-easternish mix of flute and percussion with the occasional chord from a harp. Pike is reclining at a low table laden with food, and reclining along with him are a chubby balding guy in an elaborate robe with an earring in his left ear (the Orion Trader, the Star Trek Concordance calls him), and a guy in a gold-edged uniform with gold shoulders boards (the Fleet Officer). Both of Pike's companions have knowing smirks. The table sits next to a pool, on the far side of which are four musicians in middle-easternish outfits and a green dancing girl in an outfit that's mostly bare skin with patches of fabric. Behind the musicians and the dancing girl are some fountains and a couple of burning torches.
"Nice place you have here, Mr. Pike," the Fleet Officer smirks.
We get a close-up of the dancing girl's green face and bright red lips, then back to Pike as he realizes: "Vina!"
The Orion Trader smirks, "Glistening green, almost like secret dreams a bored ship's captain might have."
Back to Glistening Green Vina, moving in a way that says, come and get it, big boy!
"Funny how they are on this planet," observes the Fleet Officer with a leer, "actually like being taken advantage of."
A wide angle of Pike and the others watching the entertainment as the Fleet Officer drinks from some weird-looking cornucopia-looking goblet.
A shot of Vina dancing up a storm, then a brief glimpse of Pike as he goes gulp!
"Suppose you had all of space to choose from," remarks the Fleet Officer, "and this was only one small sample."
"Wouldn't you say it's worth a man's soul?" remarks the Orion Trader.
Extreme close-up of Pike getting really hot and bothered. More shots of Glistening Green Vina, then Pike jumps up from the table and takes off, and good lord, he's wearing red shoes with pointed toes. Yes, Captain Pike, you are in Hell.
Pike rushes through a door and down a hallway, and the silk hangings on the wall quickly give way to bare rock illuminated with torches. Back when I was twelve years old and watching this scene in "The Menagerie Part II", this next bit would really creep me out: the music is still playing back in the main hall as Pike looks around at the rock walls, then suddenly fades out. Pike rushes back to find the doors gone and a rock wall in their place. Creepy.
Pike peers around for a few seconds at the rock-walled tunnel he now finds himself in, then turns around to see Glistening Green Vina standing there holding a torch. The look on her face says, come and get it, big boy!
(continue to part 4)
Monday, January 2, 2012
Recap: The Cage (2 of 4)
This is the second part of a recap of the original Star Trek pilot, "The Cage", that I posted to the rec.arts.startrek.misc newsgroup back in November 2005 under the screen name Empok Nor. The first part is here. The starship Enterprise, under Captain Christopher Pike, has been lured to the planet Talos IV by a fake distress call, and Pike captured by the telepathic Talosians. We pick up the story in
ACT TWO
Pike wakes up in a cell. He's lying on a silver bed shaped like a comma, with a thin silver blanket covering him. Behind him, taking up one whole wall of the cell, is a big window showing a corridor with a bunch of other cells facing it. The cell's other walls are rough stone. The soundtrack is the Menagerie theme, a quiet, percussive version of the Talosian theme.
Pike throws off the blanket, sits up, and looks around. He notices that his sparkly jacket, harness, laser pistol, and telecommunicator are gone. He stands up and knocks experimentally on the window. Then he throws himself against it, producing a bwong sound. Looking out, he sees an ape creature in one of the neighboring cells, and a bird creature in another. A Talosian appears down at the end of the corridor. Closer at hand, an elevator opens with a pling sound, the Menagerie theme gives way to the Talosian theme, and the Keeper and his posse enter. They approach his cell. Looking at them from behind, it's hard not to notice how much the backs of their heads resemble asses. It's true: the Talosians are the original buttheads.
The Keeper and a member of his posse, whom I'll call Butthead, stand in front, while the other two Talosians, Beavis and Stuart, remain a few steps behind them. Pike and the Talosians stare at each other for a couple seconds before Pike asks, "Can you hear me?"
No response from the Talosians.
Pike continues, "My name is Christopher Pike, commander of the space vehicle Enterprise, from a stellar group at the other end of this galaxy. Our intentions are peaceful. Can you understand me?"
The veins in Butthead's head start pulsing, and though his lips don't move, we hear him say, "It appears, Magistrate, that the intelligence of the subject is shockingly limited."
The Keeper's veins pulse in reply and we hear: "This is no surprise, since its vessel was baited here so easily with a simulated message. As you can read in its thoughts, it is only now beginning to realize that the survivors and encampment were a simple illusion we placed in their minds."
"You're not speaking, yet I can hear you," Pike points out.
"You will note the confusion as it reads our thought transmissions," the Keeper smugs.
The Captain is starting to get ticked off at the Talosians' attitude, and who can blame him? He crosses his arms as he says, "All right, then, telepathy. You can read my mind, I can read yours. Now, unless you want my ship to considering capturing me an unfriendly act --"
Still smugging for all he's worth, the Keeper interrupts with, "You now see the primitive fear-threat reaction."
Cut to a shot of Pike, showing him becoming even more annoyed.
Back to the Keeper: "The specimen is about to boast of his strength, the weaponry of his vessel, and so on."
A frustrated Pike readies himself for another body-blow against the glass wall, but pauses as the Keeper continues, "Next, frustrated into a need to display physical prowess, the creature will throw himself against the transparency."
Pike does so, producing another bwong sound, then again, and again. Bwong. Bwong. The Keeper smiles a particularly smug smile. God, what an asshole.
"If you were in here, wouldn't you test the strength of these walls too?" Pike snarls. "There's a way out of any cage, and I'll find it!"
"Despite its frustration," the Keeper observes, "the creature appears more adaptable than our specimens from other planets. We can soon begin the experiment."
Musical sting as we get a close-up of Pike glaring at the Talosians.
********************
We see a drawing of a planet as Mr. Spock provides voice-over: "The inhabitants of this planet must live deep underground."
Cut to a wide shot of the briefing room. At one end of the table we see the planet, Talos IV, on a bulky video monitor. Talos IV looks suspiciously like the Earth's moon. Seated around the table are Tyler, the Geologist, Number One, Spock and Boyce. Yeoman Colt is standing behind Number One with her hands behind her back. Number One has her chin resting on the backs of her hands again. Spock continues, "Probably manufacture food and other needs down there."
A shot of Spock, Boyce and the video monitor as Spock manipulates a control. The drawing of Talos IV is replaced by a photograph of the barren surface. Spock says, "Our tests indicate the planet's surface, without considerably more vegetation or some animals, is simply too barren to support life."
Shot of Number One and Colt as the former says, "So we just thought we saw survivors there."
Back to Spock and Boyce as Spock nods. "Exactly. An illusion, placed in our minds by this planet's inhabitants."
"It was a perfect illusion," Boyce notes. "They had us seeing just what we wanted to see: human beings who'd survived with dignity and bravery. Everything entirely logical, right down to the building of the camp, the tattered clothing, everything."
Cut to a shot of Number One leaning back in her chair.
Cut to a close-up of Boyce: "Now, let's be sure we understand the danger of this," he explains to the viewers at home. "The inhabitants of this planet can read our minds. They can create illusions out of a person's own thoughts, memories and experiences, even out of a person's own desires. Illusions just as real and solid as this tabletop," Boyce raps on the tabletop to make his point, "and just as impossible to ignore."
Number One asks, "Any guesses on what they might want one of us for?"
Spock answers, "They may simply be studying the Captain to find out how Earth people are put together. Or it could be something more."
"Then why aren't we doing anything?" Tyler demands, as the Geologist looks on. "Now, that entry may have stood up against hand lasers, but we can transmit the ship's power against it, enough to blast half a continent!"
Spock looks uncharacteristically amused at Tyler. "Look," he says as he flips a switch, causing a rough drawing of a Talosian to appear on the video monitor. "Brains three times the size of ours. If we start buzzing about down there," he continues rather flippantly, "we're liable to find their mental power is so great, they could reach out and swat this ship as though it were a fly."
Tyler isn't convinced. "It's Captain Pike they've got," he reminds them. "He needs help, and he probably needs it fast." He looks to Number One, as do the rest of them.
She sighs and says, "Engineering deck will rig to transmit ship's power. We'll try blasting through that metal."
Wide angle of the briefing room as Number One rises, followed by the others. They troop out of the briefing room stage right with the Geologist bringing up the rear, a binder in his hand. He may not have many lines, or even a name, but the Geologist has all the cool props.
**********************
Pike in his cell, pacing. We can see that the back wall of the cell consists of stone blocks, rather than the rough stone of the walls bordering the transparency. Pike is probing the stone blocks for a weak point when we pull back to show that he is being watched on the Talosians' irregularly shaped monitor. The Talosian theme resumes. We cut to a shot of the Keeper and Butthead. Butthead thinks out loud, "Thousands of us are already probing the creature's thoughts, Magistrate. We find excellent memory capacity."
The Keeper nods and thinks back, "I read most strongly a recent death struggle in which it fought to protect its life. We will begin with this, giving the specimen something more interesting to protect."
Back to Pike, still testing the stone blocks in his cell. There is a vroon sound as the background behind him shimmers, changing from his cell to a hillside with red tumbleweeds mixed among some rocks. Pike himself looks the same, except that he's now wearing a field jacket over his gold tunic. He looks around as the Talosian theme gives way to a quicker-paced version of the Vina theme with a beat behind it.
We get a Pike's-eye view of a landscape dominated by a huge walled building with golden cupolas and silver minarets standing on the rocky shore of a still body of water. A huge cratered world hangs in the sky behind the building, with a much smaller ringed world to its left. The sky is purple, shading to pink near the horizon.
Cut back to Pike as a female voice offscreen calls, "Come on! We must hide ourselves!"
Cut to another shot of the building, slightly closer now. We see the tiny figure of Pike, his back to us, standing in the road while the equally tiny figure of a woman in a billowing white and orange dress approaches him from the building. The female voice continues, "Come! Come! Hurry!" The woman reaches Pike and takes him by the hand, saying, "It's deserted. There'll be weapons and perhaps food."
Cut back to Pike as he says, "This is Rigel VII." Yup. Remember that conversation he had with Boyce in his cabin? He was trapped in a deserted fortress and attacked by a Rigellian warrior.
Cut to the woman. It's Vina, in damsel-in-distress mode. Her blond hair is longer and done up in a braid looping over her head. The white dress has a floral design and a low neck. Behind her, we see a gate flanked by two blue-painted columns. Damsel Vina, a look of terror on her face, says, "Please! We must hide ourselves!"
Back to Pike. "I was in a cage, a cell, in some kind of a zoo. I must still be there."
Damsel Vina, tugging at his arm: "Come on!"
Pike, still not coming on: "They've reached into my mind and taken the memory of somewhere I've been."
Damsel Vina looks fearfully to her left as we hear a gutteral roar. "The Kaylar!" she exclaims, and turns to run back into the fortress.
Pike keeps hold of her as he says, "It's starting just as it did two weeks ago."
Damsel Vina gives Pike one last terrified look before freeing herself from him and hightailing it for the fortress.
"Except for you," Pike finishes, before following her.
Shot of Damsel Vina and Pike running for the gate.
Shot of Pike as he passes the gate and enters the courtyard. There are more red tumbleweeds, as well as various broken swords, maces, spears and whatnot littering the ground. Pike looks around before spotting Damsel Vina and joining her behind a cart. "Longer hair," he says, "different dress, but it is you, the one the survivors called Vina." There's another gutteral roar and Damsel Vina starts looking around for somewhere to hide. Pike, though, ignores the approaching Kaylar. "Or rather," he continues, "the image of Vina. But why you again? Why didn't they create a different girl?" A third gutteral roar. Pike and Damsel Vina both look up.
Shot of the gate as the Kaylar enters. He's got a big round fur hat with metal cheekplates and a horsetail (or perhaps his own hair) coming out of the top. A fur jerkin with a wide metal belt, baggy animal-hide pants, and tall furry boots complete the ensemble. He's carrying a triangular golden shield on his left arm and a nasty-looking axe in his right hand.
The Vina theme gives way to dramatic music dominated by horns. We cut back and forth between the Kaylar stalking into the courtyard and Pike and Damsel Vina crouching behind the cart. Damsel Vina tells Pike, "Quick! If you attack while it's not looking . . . "
"But it's only a dream," Pike insists.
Back to the Kaylar, who roars again just before tearing a door off its hinges and stalking into the chamber beyond.
"You have to kill him, as you did here before," Damsel Vina tells him.
"You can tell my jailors I won't go along with it," Pike answers. "I'm not an animal performing for its supper."
"It doesn't matter what you call this," Damsel Vina says. "You'll feel it, that's what matters! You'll feel every moment of whatever happens to you!" She accidentally knocks over a shield, and an uh-oh expression crosses her face. Women, huh?
Cut to the now-doorless doorway as the Kaylar stalks back out into the courtyard. We get a close-up of the Kaylar's bearded face, and boy, is he ugly! He's got narrow slitty eyes and a set of sharp, crooked teeth that would put a Ferengi to shame.
Cut back to Pike. "Please!" pleads a distressed Damsel Vina. "Don't you know what he'll do to me?"
Keeping Damsel Vina behind him, Pike edges back from the Kaylar. The dramatic horns build to a climax as he propels Damsel Vina over to a stairway, then picks up a mace from the ground, holding it double-handed in front of him. The Kaylar approaches Pike and swings the axe at him as the dramatic horns go into overdrive. Pike ducks under the axe and slams his mace against the Kaylar's shield, driving him back a few paces. As the Kaylar recovers, Pike picks up a round red shield with a six-pointed gold star. The Kaylar charges at Pike and swings the axe again, which Pike again avoids, giving the Kaylar another slam on the shield with the mace. This time the Kaylar stands his ground. He takes another swing at Pike, then another, with Pike dodging each one. Pike, though, is backing up, and we see Damsel Vina behind him, retreating up the stairs. Pike throws the mace at the Kaylar, beaning him with it, and the Kaylar bounces off an ugly statue and falls to the ground.
Pike takes advantage of the respite to ask Damsel Vina, "Why would an illusion be frightened?"
Glaring at him, Damsel Vina says, "Because that's the way you imagined me."
"Who are you?" Pike wonders. "You act as if this is real to you, too."
"Careful," she exclaims, and heads up the stairs.
The Kaylar gets back on his feet. Pike picks up a spear and levels it at the Kaylar. The Kaylar doesn't seem to notice. His eyes are wide, now. Wide, and bugfuck crazy. A swing of his axe chops Pike's spear in two. Pike drops his half of the spear and throws some dirt into the Kaylar's eyes. As they reach the top of the stairs Damsel Vina picks up something that might be an oversized cricket bat and shawns it at him, but the Kaylar stops it with his shield.
Pike and Damsel Vina are backing down a landing, throwing things at the Kaylar as he advances on them. Pike picks up a scimitar and hacks at the Kaylar, to no effect. The Kaylar knocks it from his hand, then pushes him off the landing, leaving Damsel Vina at his mercy. Pike lands in the dirt of the courtyard and lies there, stunned by the fall.
Damsel Vina picks up a morningstar on a chain and swings it at the Kaylar, to no effect. The Kaylar throws away his shield and axe and grabs Damsel Vina, who screams. Pike staggers to his knees and grabs a dagger, throwing it into the Kaylar's back. A pissed-off Kaylar turns to glare at Pike, grabs the morningstar from Damsel Vina, and prepares to jump down. Pike grabs a jagged spearhead and plants it in the ground. The Kaylar, thrown off balance by a last-second shove from Damsel Vina, impales himself. The dramatic horns climax, the Kaylar tumbles over, and Damsel Vina turns around.
The quieter Vina theme returns. As Pike looks up at Damsel Vina, the background behind him shimmers, accompanied by the vroon sound (which is different from the bwooby sound made by the disappearance of Survivor Vina and the encampment). We dissolve to a shot of Vina, her back still turned, her own background shifting to the cell. She turns around, looks at the cell, exhales, smiles in relief, and says, "It's over." This is Default Vina. Her neatly brushed blonde hair reaches down to her neck, and she's wearing a sleeveless scoop-necked minidress in Talosian metallic gray. Default Vina approaches Pike, who is now standing in the middle of the cell, wraps her arms around him, and rests her head on his shoulder. Pike doesn't react. Default Vina glances to her left, stiffens, steps back from Pike, and straightens her dress.
We cut to the Keeper and his posse, looking in at them as the Talosian theme resumes. The Keeper and Butthead join Beavis in the elevator. The elevator door closes with a pling sound as Stuart heads back down the corridor.
Pike turns to look at Vina. "Why are you here?"
Default Vina gives him a girly smile and says, "To please you."
"Are you real?"
"As real as you wish."
Pike isn't buying it. "Oh, no, no, that's not an answer." He moves away from her. "I've never met you before. I've never even imagined you."
Vina gives him another girly smile. "Perhaps they've made me out of dreams you've forgotten."
"What, and dressed you in the same metal fabric they wear?"
"I have to wear something," she says with a little shrug. "Don't I?"
Pike rolls his eyes.
"I can wear whatever you wish," Vina continues, "be anything you wish."
Pike is starting to get angry. He approaches Vina again. "So they can see how their specimen performs? They want to see how I react, is that it?"
Vina is starting to sound a little desperate. "Don't you have a dream, something you've always wanted very badly?"
But Pike has something else on his mind. "Or do they do more than just watch me? Do they . . . feel with me, too?"
Vina isn't giving up that easily. "You can have whatever dream you want. I can be anything, any woman you've ever imagined. You can have anything you want in the whole universe." Turning him to face her, she takes him by the shoulders and adds, "Let me please you."
"Yes," says Pike. "Yes, you can please me. You can tell me about them." A disappointed Vina draws her hands away from him as he continues, "Is there any way I can keep them from probing my mind, from using my thoughts against me?" Vina's starting to look scared. "Does that frighten you? Does that mean there is a way?"
Vina shakes her head. "You're a fool."
"Since you're not real, there's really not much point in continuing this conversation, is there?" Pike turns and walks away from her again.
************************
Back on the surface, we can see Number One and four other Enterprise crewmen, including Tyler and Vincent. They're all wearing jackets, and they all have goggles hanging from their necks. Two of the crewmen are operating controls on a device of some sort. Number One is on the telecommunicator, saying, "All circuits engaged, Mr. Spock."
We hear the filtered voice of Spock respond, "Standing by, Number One."
As we pan around to get a better look at the device, Number One calls out, "Take cover." She and the other crewmen (including, we now see, Boyce), pull their goggles up over their eyes and duck behind some rocks. Number One ends up kneeling down next to Boyce. As the device starts to hum, we see it's some sort of big-ass gun, and it's pointed at the rocky outcrop. We hear the filtered voice of Spock counting down from ten as the hum gets louder. When he hits five some flashy lights start going on and off in the barrel. When he hits one a blue beam shoots out and hits the rocky outcrop, blasting away more rock. The hum continues to get louder, sounding now like the warp engines ramping up to maximum speed.
"Increase to full power," Number One calls to Spock.
More rock blasting out. When all the rock is done being blasted, we can see the metal doors of the Talosians' elevator. They're glowing red, but that's it.
"Can you give us any more?" she calls.
The beam gets brighter, and the metal doors are glowing white, but that's it.
"Our circuits are beginning to heat," Spock calls down. "We'll have to cease power."
"Disengage," she finally calls out.
The blue beam cuts out, and the hum dies down. The doors quickly fade from white to red to dull gray.
Number One and Boyce pull off their goggles as Tyler leads the other crewmen back to the device. "The top of that knoll should have been sheared off the first second," she says.
"Maybe it was," says Boyce. "It's what I tried to explain in the briefing room. Their power of illusion is so great we can't be sure of anything we do, anything we see." He gets up and joins the other crewmen, leaving an uneasy Number One.
****************************
Default Vina is standing in a corner of the cell, saying, "Perhaps if you ask me some questions I could answer." She walks over to join Pike, who is sitting on the comma-shaped bed.
"How far can they control my mind?" he asks.
"If I tell you," Default Vina bargains, "then will you pick some dream you've had and let me live it with you?"
Pike turns to look at her and says, "Perhaps."
Not the firmest of committments, but it's good enough for Default Vina. "They can't actually make you do anything you don't want to do."
"But they can try to trick me with their illusions," Pike guesses.
Nodding, she says, "And, uh, they can punish you when you're not cooperative. You'll find out about that."
Pike reflects on this for a moment, then asks, "Did they ever live on the surface of this planet?" She nods.
"Why did they go underground?"
"War, thousands of centuries ago."
"That's why it's so barren up there?"
Default Vina nods again. "The planet's only now becoming able to support life again."
"But the Talosians who came underground found life limited here," Pike hypothesizes, "and they concentrated on developing their mental powers."
Another nod from Default Vina. Her tone of voice becomes analytical. Clearly, she's given the Talosians' lifestyle a lot of thought. "But they found it's a trap, like a narcotic. Because when dreams become more important than reality, you give up travel, building, creating. You even forget how to repair the machines left behind by your ancestors. You just sit, living and re-living other lives left behind in the thought-records."
"Or just probing the minds of zoo specimens like me," Pike adds.
"You're better than a theater to them," Default Vina assures him. "They create an illusion for you and watch you react, feel your emotions. They have a whole collection of specimens, descendants of life brought back long ago from all over this part of the galaxy."
Pike is starting to put two and two together. "Which means they had to have more than one of each animal."
Default Vina realizes she's said too much. "Please . . . "
"They'll need a pair of humans, too. Where do they intend to get the Earth woman?"
While Pike is asking this, the elevator door opens and the Keeper emerges, accompanied by the Talosian theme.
Default Vina objects, "You said that if I answered your questions --"
"But that was a bargain with something that didn't exist. You said you weren't real, remember?"
Default Vina catches the Keeper's eye. Does he nod at her, giving her permission to tell Pike the truth about her, or is he giving her a "this is your last chance" look? It's difficult to say. At any rate, she says, "I'm a woman, as real and as human as you are. We're like . . . Adam and Eve. If we --" Abruptly, Default Vina looks up at the ceiling as a look of terror crosses her face. "Don't! Please! Don't punish me! I'm trying! I'm trying!" She collapses onto the bed and starts writhing in pain, then vanishes in a blur, leaving her dress behind.
Pike prods at the empty dress before turning and catching sight of the Keeper. The Keeper turns and walks back to the elevator, which closes with a pling sound.
(continue to part 3)
ACT TWO
Pike wakes up in a cell. He's lying on a silver bed shaped like a comma, with a thin silver blanket covering him. Behind him, taking up one whole wall of the cell, is a big window showing a corridor with a bunch of other cells facing it. The cell's other walls are rough stone. The soundtrack is the Menagerie theme, a quiet, percussive version of the Talosian theme.
Pike throws off the blanket, sits up, and looks around. He notices that his sparkly jacket, harness, laser pistol, and telecommunicator are gone. He stands up and knocks experimentally on the window. Then he throws himself against it, producing a bwong sound. Looking out, he sees an ape creature in one of the neighboring cells, and a bird creature in another. A Talosian appears down at the end of the corridor. Closer at hand, an elevator opens with a pling sound, the Menagerie theme gives way to the Talosian theme, and the Keeper and his posse enter. They approach his cell. Looking at them from behind, it's hard not to notice how much the backs of their heads resemble asses. It's true: the Talosians are the original buttheads.
The Keeper and a member of his posse, whom I'll call Butthead, stand in front, while the other two Talosians, Beavis and Stuart, remain a few steps behind them. Pike and the Talosians stare at each other for a couple seconds before Pike asks, "Can you hear me?"
No response from the Talosians.
Pike continues, "My name is Christopher Pike, commander of the space vehicle Enterprise, from a stellar group at the other end of this galaxy. Our intentions are peaceful. Can you understand me?"
The veins in Butthead's head start pulsing, and though his lips don't move, we hear him say, "It appears, Magistrate, that the intelligence of the subject is shockingly limited."
The Keeper's veins pulse in reply and we hear: "This is no surprise, since its vessel was baited here so easily with a simulated message. As you can read in its thoughts, it is only now beginning to realize that the survivors and encampment were a simple illusion we placed in their minds."
"You're not speaking, yet I can hear you," Pike points out.
"You will note the confusion as it reads our thought transmissions," the Keeper smugs.
The Captain is starting to get ticked off at the Talosians' attitude, and who can blame him? He crosses his arms as he says, "All right, then, telepathy. You can read my mind, I can read yours. Now, unless you want my ship to considering capturing me an unfriendly act --"
Still smugging for all he's worth, the Keeper interrupts with, "You now see the primitive fear-threat reaction."
Cut to a shot of Pike, showing him becoming even more annoyed.
Back to the Keeper: "The specimen is about to boast of his strength, the weaponry of his vessel, and so on."
A frustrated Pike readies himself for another body-blow against the glass wall, but pauses as the Keeper continues, "Next, frustrated into a need to display physical prowess, the creature will throw himself against the transparency."
Pike does so, producing another bwong sound, then again, and again. Bwong. Bwong. The Keeper smiles a particularly smug smile. God, what an asshole.
"If you were in here, wouldn't you test the strength of these walls too?" Pike snarls. "There's a way out of any cage, and I'll find it!"
"Despite its frustration," the Keeper observes, "the creature appears more adaptable than our specimens from other planets. We can soon begin the experiment."
Musical sting as we get a close-up of Pike glaring at the Talosians.
********************
We see a drawing of a planet as Mr. Spock provides voice-over: "The inhabitants of this planet must live deep underground."
Cut to a wide shot of the briefing room. At one end of the table we see the planet, Talos IV, on a bulky video monitor. Talos IV looks suspiciously like the Earth's moon. Seated around the table are Tyler, the Geologist, Number One, Spock and Boyce. Yeoman Colt is standing behind Number One with her hands behind her back. Number One has her chin resting on the backs of her hands again. Spock continues, "Probably manufacture food and other needs down there."
A shot of Spock, Boyce and the video monitor as Spock manipulates a control. The drawing of Talos IV is replaced by a photograph of the barren surface. Spock says, "Our tests indicate the planet's surface, without considerably more vegetation or some animals, is simply too barren to support life."
Shot of Number One and Colt as the former says, "So we just thought we saw survivors there."
Back to Spock and Boyce as Spock nods. "Exactly. An illusion, placed in our minds by this planet's inhabitants."
"It was a perfect illusion," Boyce notes. "They had us seeing just what we wanted to see: human beings who'd survived with dignity and bravery. Everything entirely logical, right down to the building of the camp, the tattered clothing, everything."
Cut to a shot of Number One leaning back in her chair.
Cut to a close-up of Boyce: "Now, let's be sure we understand the danger of this," he explains to the viewers at home. "The inhabitants of this planet can read our minds. They can create illusions out of a person's own thoughts, memories and experiences, even out of a person's own desires. Illusions just as real and solid as this tabletop," Boyce raps on the tabletop to make his point, "and just as impossible to ignore."
Number One asks, "Any guesses on what they might want one of us for?"
Spock answers, "They may simply be studying the Captain to find out how Earth people are put together. Or it could be something more."
"Then why aren't we doing anything?" Tyler demands, as the Geologist looks on. "Now, that entry may have stood up against hand lasers, but we can transmit the ship's power against it, enough to blast half a continent!"
Spock looks uncharacteristically amused at Tyler. "Look," he says as he flips a switch, causing a rough drawing of a Talosian to appear on the video monitor. "Brains three times the size of ours. If we start buzzing about down there," he continues rather flippantly, "we're liable to find their mental power is so great, they could reach out and swat this ship as though it were a fly."
Tyler isn't convinced. "It's Captain Pike they've got," he reminds them. "He needs help, and he probably needs it fast." He looks to Number One, as do the rest of them.
She sighs and says, "Engineering deck will rig to transmit ship's power. We'll try blasting through that metal."
Wide angle of the briefing room as Number One rises, followed by the others. They troop out of the briefing room stage right with the Geologist bringing up the rear, a binder in his hand. He may not have many lines, or even a name, but the Geologist has all the cool props.
**********************
Pike in his cell, pacing. We can see that the back wall of the cell consists of stone blocks, rather than the rough stone of the walls bordering the transparency. Pike is probing the stone blocks for a weak point when we pull back to show that he is being watched on the Talosians' irregularly shaped monitor. The Talosian theme resumes. We cut to a shot of the Keeper and Butthead. Butthead thinks out loud, "Thousands of us are already probing the creature's thoughts, Magistrate. We find excellent memory capacity."
The Keeper nods and thinks back, "I read most strongly a recent death struggle in which it fought to protect its life. We will begin with this, giving the specimen something more interesting to protect."
Back to Pike, still testing the stone blocks in his cell. There is a vroon sound as the background behind him shimmers, changing from his cell to a hillside with red tumbleweeds mixed among some rocks. Pike himself looks the same, except that he's now wearing a field jacket over his gold tunic. He looks around as the Talosian theme gives way to a quicker-paced version of the Vina theme with a beat behind it.
We get a Pike's-eye view of a landscape dominated by a huge walled building with golden cupolas and silver minarets standing on the rocky shore of a still body of water. A huge cratered world hangs in the sky behind the building, with a much smaller ringed world to its left. The sky is purple, shading to pink near the horizon.
Cut back to Pike as a female voice offscreen calls, "Come on! We must hide ourselves!"
Cut to another shot of the building, slightly closer now. We see the tiny figure of Pike, his back to us, standing in the road while the equally tiny figure of a woman in a billowing white and orange dress approaches him from the building. The female voice continues, "Come! Come! Hurry!" The woman reaches Pike and takes him by the hand, saying, "It's deserted. There'll be weapons and perhaps food."
Cut back to Pike as he says, "This is Rigel VII." Yup. Remember that conversation he had with Boyce in his cabin? He was trapped in a deserted fortress and attacked by a Rigellian warrior.
Cut to the woman. It's Vina, in damsel-in-distress mode. Her blond hair is longer and done up in a braid looping over her head. The white dress has a floral design and a low neck. Behind her, we see a gate flanked by two blue-painted columns. Damsel Vina, a look of terror on her face, says, "Please! We must hide ourselves!"
Back to Pike. "I was in a cage, a cell, in some kind of a zoo. I must still be there."
Damsel Vina, tugging at his arm: "Come on!"
Pike, still not coming on: "They've reached into my mind and taken the memory of somewhere I've been."
Damsel Vina looks fearfully to her left as we hear a gutteral roar. "The Kaylar!" she exclaims, and turns to run back into the fortress.
Pike keeps hold of her as he says, "It's starting just as it did two weeks ago."
Damsel Vina gives Pike one last terrified look before freeing herself from him and hightailing it for the fortress.
"Except for you," Pike finishes, before following her.
Shot of Damsel Vina and Pike running for the gate.
Shot of Pike as he passes the gate and enters the courtyard. There are more red tumbleweeds, as well as various broken swords, maces, spears and whatnot littering the ground. Pike looks around before spotting Damsel Vina and joining her behind a cart. "Longer hair," he says, "different dress, but it is you, the one the survivors called Vina." There's another gutteral roar and Damsel Vina starts looking around for somewhere to hide. Pike, though, ignores the approaching Kaylar. "Or rather," he continues, "the image of Vina. But why you again? Why didn't they create a different girl?" A third gutteral roar. Pike and Damsel Vina both look up.
Shot of the gate as the Kaylar enters. He's got a big round fur hat with metal cheekplates and a horsetail (or perhaps his own hair) coming out of the top. A fur jerkin with a wide metal belt, baggy animal-hide pants, and tall furry boots complete the ensemble. He's carrying a triangular golden shield on his left arm and a nasty-looking axe in his right hand.
The Vina theme gives way to dramatic music dominated by horns. We cut back and forth between the Kaylar stalking into the courtyard and Pike and Damsel Vina crouching behind the cart. Damsel Vina tells Pike, "Quick! If you attack while it's not looking . . . "
"But it's only a dream," Pike insists.
Back to the Kaylar, who roars again just before tearing a door off its hinges and stalking into the chamber beyond.
"You have to kill him, as you did here before," Damsel Vina tells him.
"You can tell my jailors I won't go along with it," Pike answers. "I'm not an animal performing for its supper."
"It doesn't matter what you call this," Damsel Vina says. "You'll feel it, that's what matters! You'll feel every moment of whatever happens to you!" She accidentally knocks over a shield, and an uh-oh expression crosses her face. Women, huh?
Cut to the now-doorless doorway as the Kaylar stalks back out into the courtyard. We get a close-up of the Kaylar's bearded face, and boy, is he ugly! He's got narrow slitty eyes and a set of sharp, crooked teeth that would put a Ferengi to shame.
Cut back to Pike. "Please!" pleads a distressed Damsel Vina. "Don't you know what he'll do to me?"
Keeping Damsel Vina behind him, Pike edges back from the Kaylar. The dramatic horns build to a climax as he propels Damsel Vina over to a stairway, then picks up a mace from the ground, holding it double-handed in front of him. The Kaylar approaches Pike and swings the axe at him as the dramatic horns go into overdrive. Pike ducks under the axe and slams his mace against the Kaylar's shield, driving him back a few paces. As the Kaylar recovers, Pike picks up a round red shield with a six-pointed gold star. The Kaylar charges at Pike and swings the axe again, which Pike again avoids, giving the Kaylar another slam on the shield with the mace. This time the Kaylar stands his ground. He takes another swing at Pike, then another, with Pike dodging each one. Pike, though, is backing up, and we see Damsel Vina behind him, retreating up the stairs. Pike throws the mace at the Kaylar, beaning him with it, and the Kaylar bounces off an ugly statue and falls to the ground.
Pike takes advantage of the respite to ask Damsel Vina, "Why would an illusion be frightened?"
Glaring at him, Damsel Vina says, "Because that's the way you imagined me."
"Who are you?" Pike wonders. "You act as if this is real to you, too."
"Careful," she exclaims, and heads up the stairs.
The Kaylar gets back on his feet. Pike picks up a spear and levels it at the Kaylar. The Kaylar doesn't seem to notice. His eyes are wide, now. Wide, and bugfuck crazy. A swing of his axe chops Pike's spear in two. Pike drops his half of the spear and throws some dirt into the Kaylar's eyes. As they reach the top of the stairs Damsel Vina picks up something that might be an oversized cricket bat and shawns it at him, but the Kaylar stops it with his shield.
Pike and Damsel Vina are backing down a landing, throwing things at the Kaylar as he advances on them. Pike picks up a scimitar and hacks at the Kaylar, to no effect. The Kaylar knocks it from his hand, then pushes him off the landing, leaving Damsel Vina at his mercy. Pike lands in the dirt of the courtyard and lies there, stunned by the fall.
Damsel Vina picks up a morningstar on a chain and swings it at the Kaylar, to no effect. The Kaylar throws away his shield and axe and grabs Damsel Vina, who screams. Pike staggers to his knees and grabs a dagger, throwing it into the Kaylar's back. A pissed-off Kaylar turns to glare at Pike, grabs the morningstar from Damsel Vina, and prepares to jump down. Pike grabs a jagged spearhead and plants it in the ground. The Kaylar, thrown off balance by a last-second shove from Damsel Vina, impales himself. The dramatic horns climax, the Kaylar tumbles over, and Damsel Vina turns around.
The quieter Vina theme returns. As Pike looks up at Damsel Vina, the background behind him shimmers, accompanied by the vroon sound (which is different from the bwooby sound made by the disappearance of Survivor Vina and the encampment). We dissolve to a shot of Vina, her back still turned, her own background shifting to the cell. She turns around, looks at the cell, exhales, smiles in relief, and says, "It's over." This is Default Vina. Her neatly brushed blonde hair reaches down to her neck, and she's wearing a sleeveless scoop-necked minidress in Talosian metallic gray. Default Vina approaches Pike, who is now standing in the middle of the cell, wraps her arms around him, and rests her head on his shoulder. Pike doesn't react. Default Vina glances to her left, stiffens, steps back from Pike, and straightens her dress.
We cut to the Keeper and his posse, looking in at them as the Talosian theme resumes. The Keeper and Butthead join Beavis in the elevator. The elevator door closes with a pling sound as Stuart heads back down the corridor.
Pike turns to look at Vina. "Why are you here?"
Default Vina gives him a girly smile and says, "To please you."
"Are you real?"
"As real as you wish."
Pike isn't buying it. "Oh, no, no, that's not an answer." He moves away from her. "I've never met you before. I've never even imagined you."
Vina gives him another girly smile. "Perhaps they've made me out of dreams you've forgotten."
"What, and dressed you in the same metal fabric they wear?"
"I have to wear something," she says with a little shrug. "Don't I?"
Pike rolls his eyes.
"I can wear whatever you wish," Vina continues, "be anything you wish."
Pike is starting to get angry. He approaches Vina again. "So they can see how their specimen performs? They want to see how I react, is that it?"
Vina is starting to sound a little desperate. "Don't you have a dream, something you've always wanted very badly?"
But Pike has something else on his mind. "Or do they do more than just watch me? Do they . . . feel with me, too?"
Vina isn't giving up that easily. "You can have whatever dream you want. I can be anything, any woman you've ever imagined. You can have anything you want in the whole universe." Turning him to face her, she takes him by the shoulders and adds, "Let me please you."
"Yes," says Pike. "Yes, you can please me. You can tell me about them." A disappointed Vina draws her hands away from him as he continues, "Is there any way I can keep them from probing my mind, from using my thoughts against me?" Vina's starting to look scared. "Does that frighten you? Does that mean there is a way?"
Vina shakes her head. "You're a fool."
"Since you're not real, there's really not much point in continuing this conversation, is there?" Pike turns and walks away from her again.
************************
Back on the surface, we can see Number One and four other Enterprise crewmen, including Tyler and Vincent. They're all wearing jackets, and they all have goggles hanging from their necks. Two of the crewmen are operating controls on a device of some sort. Number One is on the telecommunicator, saying, "All circuits engaged, Mr. Spock."
We hear the filtered voice of Spock respond, "Standing by, Number One."
As we pan around to get a better look at the device, Number One calls out, "Take cover." She and the other crewmen (including, we now see, Boyce), pull their goggles up over their eyes and duck behind some rocks. Number One ends up kneeling down next to Boyce. As the device starts to hum, we see it's some sort of big-ass gun, and it's pointed at the rocky outcrop. We hear the filtered voice of Spock counting down from ten as the hum gets louder. When he hits five some flashy lights start going on and off in the barrel. When he hits one a blue beam shoots out and hits the rocky outcrop, blasting away more rock. The hum continues to get louder, sounding now like the warp engines ramping up to maximum speed.
"Increase to full power," Number One calls to Spock.
More rock blasting out. When all the rock is done being blasted, we can see the metal doors of the Talosians' elevator. They're glowing red, but that's it.
"Can you give us any more?" she calls.
The beam gets brighter, and the metal doors are glowing white, but that's it.
"Our circuits are beginning to heat," Spock calls down. "We'll have to cease power."
"Disengage," she finally calls out.
The blue beam cuts out, and the hum dies down. The doors quickly fade from white to red to dull gray.
Number One and Boyce pull off their goggles as Tyler leads the other crewmen back to the device. "The top of that knoll should have been sheared off the first second," she says.
"Maybe it was," says Boyce. "It's what I tried to explain in the briefing room. Their power of illusion is so great we can't be sure of anything we do, anything we see." He gets up and joins the other crewmen, leaving an uneasy Number One.
****************************
Default Vina is standing in a corner of the cell, saying, "Perhaps if you ask me some questions I could answer." She walks over to join Pike, who is sitting on the comma-shaped bed.
"How far can they control my mind?" he asks.
"If I tell you," Default Vina bargains, "then will you pick some dream you've had and let me live it with you?"
Pike turns to look at her and says, "Perhaps."
Not the firmest of committments, but it's good enough for Default Vina. "They can't actually make you do anything you don't want to do."
"But they can try to trick me with their illusions," Pike guesses.
Nodding, she says, "And, uh, they can punish you when you're not cooperative. You'll find out about that."
Pike reflects on this for a moment, then asks, "Did they ever live on the surface of this planet?" She nods.
"Why did they go underground?"
"War, thousands of centuries ago."
"That's why it's so barren up there?"
Default Vina nods again. "The planet's only now becoming able to support life again."
"But the Talosians who came underground found life limited here," Pike hypothesizes, "and they concentrated on developing their mental powers."
Another nod from Default Vina. Her tone of voice becomes analytical. Clearly, she's given the Talosians' lifestyle a lot of thought. "But they found it's a trap, like a narcotic. Because when dreams become more important than reality, you give up travel, building, creating. You even forget how to repair the machines left behind by your ancestors. You just sit, living and re-living other lives left behind in the thought-records."
"Or just probing the minds of zoo specimens like me," Pike adds.
"You're better than a theater to them," Default Vina assures him. "They create an illusion for you and watch you react, feel your emotions. They have a whole collection of specimens, descendants of life brought back long ago from all over this part of the galaxy."
Pike is starting to put two and two together. "Which means they had to have more than one of each animal."
Default Vina realizes she's said too much. "Please . . . "
"They'll need a pair of humans, too. Where do they intend to get the Earth woman?"
While Pike is asking this, the elevator door opens and the Keeper emerges, accompanied by the Talosian theme.
Default Vina objects, "You said that if I answered your questions --"
"But that was a bargain with something that didn't exist. You said you weren't real, remember?"
Default Vina catches the Keeper's eye. Does he nod at her, giving her permission to tell Pike the truth about her, or is he giving her a "this is your last chance" look? It's difficult to say. At any rate, she says, "I'm a woman, as real and as human as you are. We're like . . . Adam and Eve. If we --" Abruptly, Default Vina looks up at the ceiling as a look of terror crosses her face. "Don't! Please! Don't punish me! I'm trying! I'm trying!" She collapses onto the bed and starts writhing in pain, then vanishes in a blur, leaving her dress behind.
Pike prods at the empty dress before turning and catching sight of the Keeper. The Keeper turns and walks back to the elevator, which closes with a pling sound.
(continue to part 3)
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Recap: The Cage (1 of 4)
Recap: The Cage (part 1 of 4)
Back in late 2005, I decided to celebrate my acquisition of the original Star Trek on DVD by doing episode recaps which I posted to the alt.startrek and rec.arts.startrek.misc newsgroups. For reasons that I'm no longer clear on, I posted these recaps under the screenname Empok Nor. Now, as part of my policy of trying to post everything I've ever written on this blog, I now reclaim these recaps. I chose to recap the episodes in the order they were filmed rather than the order they aired, so that meant starting with the original Star Trek pilot, "The Cage".
Some background: In 1963 Gene Roddenberry was producing a TV series at MGM Studios called The Lieutenant that was airing on CBS. The suits at MGM figured CBS wouldn't pick up The Lieutenant for a second season, and they asked GR to come up with an idea for a new series. The series proposal he pitched them was one he had been working on since 1960: Star Trek, a science fiction series set on a spaceship. After several months went by with no reaction from the MGM suits, GR started shopping the series proposal around to the other TV studios. In April 1964, Desilu hired GR to produce TV pilots for them, on the basis of the Star Trek proposal and some other series ideas he outlined verbally. Within days, GR did a meeting with the suits at CBS to pitch Star Trek. They heard him out for two hours, then told him that they had already decided to go with Lost in Space.
Early the next month, the Star Trek proposal was sent to NBC, which liked the idea well enough to pay Desilu $20,000 to come up with three story outlines based on the series format. By the end of June, GR had cranked out the three outlines, and NBC picked the one called "The Cage" to be developed into a shooting script. GR spent the next several months writing the script, and also planning the design of the spaceship model, sets, props, costumes and so forth. At the end of September, GR submitted his script to NBC, which greenlighted the pilot. Preproduction required several more months, and in November construction of the sets began. Stephen E. Whitfield notes that the bridge set took six weeks and almost $60,000 to build. Filming of the pilot, now renamed "The Menagerie", began on 27 November 1964 (according to Memory Alpha) or 12 December 1964 (according to Whitfield).
**************************
OPENING CREDITS
We open with the first notes of the title theme and shots of the spaceship flashing across a starfield. This version of the title theme includes the "singing woman" motif. The first title appears, faintly blue: STAR TREK. The spaceship zooms across the screen again. Next title: STARRING JEFFREY HUNTER. Again the zooming ship. Next title: GUEST STAR SUSAN OLIVER. Next title: STAR TREK CREATED BY GENE RODDENBERRY as the spaceship cruises onto the screen from the left, and we approach the top of the saucer section. We linger momentarily over the words USS ENTERPRISE, then continue to close in on a bubble at the top of the saucer. A little window on top of the bubble opens into the bridge, which is done up in black and gray. Most of the stations (including the captain's chair) have small video receivers mounted on gooseneck supports. The crew wear black pants and tunics in muted colors.
Captain Christopher Pike, in a gold tunic, sits in the center chair. Number One, also in gold, sits at the helm position, while Lt. Jose "Joe" Tyler, also in gold, mans the navigation console. A crewman in a blue tunic stands by the turbolift doors. (In his novel The Rift Peter David states that this crewman's name is Valdini, and that he was killed in action on stardate 3619.2.) A crewman in a gold tunic mans the engineering station, while another blue-tunicked crewman stands to the right of the captain's chair holding a clipboard.
TEASER
Mr. Spock, in a blue tunic, approaches the captain's chair from behind, then takes up position to its left. "Check the circuits," Spock orders. Spock's race hasn't been established at this point. The series format described him as "probably half-Martian". He was also supposed to look even more satanic than he already did, with a "heavy-lidded face" and a "slightly reddish complexion". The red makeup didn't work out, so they ended up making him slightly greenish.
"All operating, sir," Tyler responds.
"Can't be the screen, then," Spock remarks.
We cut to the main viewscreen, showing stars. A ripple blurs across it, accompanied by the bleep sound that will later become the prelude to operating the transporter.
A two-shot of Spock and Captain Pike. "Definitely something out there, Captain," says Spock. "Headed this way." He turns to look back at the screen.
A shot of the main viewscreen over the shoulders of Pike, Tyler and Number One. "Could be these meteoroids," says Tyler as several meteoroids shoot past on the screen.
"No, it's something else," says Number One. "There's still something out there."
Back to the two-shot of Spock and Pike as they stare at the screen.
A shot of the screen over Tyler's shoulder as another ripple and bleep shimmies across it.
A quick shot of Pike, then a shot of Tyler as his red navigation alarm starts flashing. The alarm sound is two alternating tones, rather that the one tone we're used to. It's actually kind of wimpy sounding.
Back to the two-shot of Spock and Pike.
A profile shot of Tyler and Number One as the former says, "It's coming at the speed of light. Collision course."
A quick shot of Pike looking unruffled.
Back to the screen over Tyler's shoulder as another ripple crosses it.
A quick shot of a guy in a pale pink tunic at Communications turning to look at his instruments. (In The Rift, the Communications Officer's name is Vincent. Jerry Oltion mentions another comm officer named Dabisch in his Christopher Pike novel Where Sea Meets Sky, but Dabisch is a Galamite, while this fellow is clearly human, so Vincent it is).
A wide angle of the bridge as the wimpy two-tone alert alarm continues to sound.
A shot of the screen as another ripple disturbs the stars.
Back to the shot of Tyler as he says, "Meteoroid beam has not deflected it, Captain."
A shot of Number One as she turns back toward Pike and says, "Evasive maneuvers, sir?"
Two shot of S & P. "Steady as we go," says an impassive Pike.
The screen over Tyler's shoulder: more ripples.
Wide angle of the bridge. A shot of Pike as he glances at Spock.
The screen over Tyler's shoulder: one last ripple blurs the stars. The alarm stops sounding.
Vincent peers at his instruments and listens to a steady beeping: "It's a radio wave, sir. We're passing through an old-style distress signal."
Two shot of S & P: a still-impassive Pike exposits: "They were keyed to cause interference and attract attention this way." That sly dog knew what was going on the whole time. Spock moves away from him, on his way to the library computer station.
Vincent: "A ship in trouble making a forced landing, sir. That's it, no other message."
Wide angle of the bridge as Tyler works his board and says, "I have a fix. It comes from the Talos star group." He seems to have a little trouble with the name. The guy with the clipboard approaches Pike with a piece of paper for his attention, but the Captain shakes his head.
"We've no Earth ships or colonies that far out," Number One notes.
Shot of Spock as he stands next to his library computer station: "Their call letters check with a survey expedition. S. S. Columbia."
Switch to a shot of Spock's back as he looks at a viewscreen showing the Talos star group, which looks suspiciously like an astronomical photo of the Pleiades. "Disappeared in that region approximately eighteen years ago."
Profile shot of Tyler and Number One as the navigator nods and says, "It would take that long for a radio beam to travel from there to here."
Back to Spock as he waves his hand over his library computer, causing the screen to shift to a drawing of a planetary system. The caption in the bottom right reads 092 07 5083 TALOS GROUP. There are two stars very close together, and five planets orbiting them. The fourth planet out has a highly inclined orbit, way out of the system's ecliptic. Spock says, "Records show the Talos group has never been explored. Solar system similar to Earth's. Eleven planets." During this exposition, we shift back to a shot of a still-impassive Pike. Clipboard Guy is still waiting next to him.
Spock in profile. "Number four seems to be Class M." Spock turns to give Pike a significant look as he adds, "Oxygen atmosphere." It should be noted that this is the first time someone says "Class M" on Star Trek. Much, much later, on Star Trek: Enterprise, this expression is retconned as an abbreviation of the Vulcan term "Minshara-class planet."
Shot of Number One as she also turns to look at Pike, saying, "Then they could still be alive, even after eighteen years."
"If they survived the crash," Pike notes.
A puzzled Spock says, "We aren't going to go? To be certain?"
"Not without any indication of survivors, no," Pike insists. Glancing at Number One and Tyler, he orders, "Continue on to the Vega colony and take care of our own sick and injured first."
A quick shot of Number One, looking back at Pike again.
"You have the helm," Pike says as he rises from his chair. "Maintain present course." From offscreen Number One says, "Yes, sir." Clipboard Guy watches in annoyance as Pike strides past him to the turbolift without so much as a glance, then shrugs and resumes standing next to the Captain's chair. Number One and Spock share a concerned look.
****************************
ACT ONE
A ship's corridor. A casually dressed couple passes by, he in a blue striped shirt and white shorts, she in a sleeveless red top and white pleated miniskirt. They pass by Pike, who enters a door to the left. A sign next to the door reads CAP. PIKE.
We see a close-up of a telecommunicator (as it's called in the series format) as a pair of hands twist a knob and flip it open, resulting in the familiar TOS communicator sound. A metallic filtered voice says, "Boyce here." Pike's voice responds, "Drop by my cabin, doctor." The hands close the telecommunicator.
We follow Pike as he crosses his cabin and drops onto his bunk with a weary sigh. There's an odd-looking three-sided wooden cabinet in the middle of the cabin with a television screen on one side. sitting on top of the cabinet are a hand laser and a uniform cap. A niche in the wall across the room holds some bound volumes, what seems to be a trophy with four handles, a clipboard, and a few other unidentifiable odds and ends. A nightstand next to the bunk has another video receiver on a gooseneck mount.
We cut to the cabin's door as Doctor Philip "Bones" Boyce (as the series format calls him) enters, an elderly man wearing a blue jumpsuit with an Earth logo on the left breast pocket. He's carrying some sort of leather-bound case. He walks up to a counter, turns on an overhead light, and opens up the case. ( The Memory Alpha entry on "The Cage" notes that this scene between Pike and Boyce was the first to be filmed.)
Back to Pike, as he sits up: "What's that? I didn't say there was anything wrong with me."
Boyce spares Pike a glance as he continues to fiddle with the case. "I understand we, ah, picked up a distress signal." He removes some glassware from the case.
Back to Pike: "That's right," he says, as he rises from his bunk and crosses over to the wall niche. Picking up the clipboard and opening it, he continues, "Unless we get anything more positive on it, it seems to me the condition of our own crew takes precedence." Looking over at Boyce he adds, "I'd like to log the ship's doctor's opinion, too."
"Oh, I concur with yours, definitely," Boyce says as he continues to fiddle with his case.
Pike looks a little surprised at this, as though he were expecting Boyce to voice an objection. "Good, I'm glad you do," he says. Returning to sit on his bunk with the clipboard, he adds, "We're going to stop first at the Vega colony and replace anybody who needs hospitalization. We can also . . . " Pike trails off as he stares at Boyce. "What the devil are you putting in there, ice?"
Boyce smiles as he walks over and hands Pike a shot glass. "Who wants a warm martini?"
Well, Pike did tell Number One she had the helm, so I guess that means he's off duty. Taking the martini from Boyce, he says, "What makes you think I need one?"
Gesturing with a glass mixing rod, Boyce chuckles and says, "Sometimes a man will tell his bartender things he'll never tell his doctor." Picking up another shot glass, Boyce makes a little "cheers" gesture with it before sitting in a chair across from Pike's bunk. "What's been on your mind, Chris? The fight on Rigel Seven?"
Tossing the clipboard on his bunk, Pike says, "Shouldn't it be? My own yeoman and two others dead, seven injured."
"Was there anything you personally could have done to prevent it?" Boyce asked pointedly.
Pike isn't buying it. "Oh, I should have smelled trouble when I saw the swords and the armor. Instead of that, I let myself get trapped in that deserted fortress and attacked by one of their warriors!" Boyce sips from his glass during this exposition.
Shot of Boyce as he looks sorrowfully at Pike: "Chris, you set standards for yourself no one could meet! You treat everyone on board like a human being except yourself."
Shot of Pike, looking down at his drink, as Boyce continues, "And now you're tired, and you --"
Pike looks up suddenly and interrupts. "You bet I'm tired! You bet!" Reclining on his bunk, he continues. "I'm tired of being responsible for two hundred and three lives. I'm tired of deciding which mission is too risky and which isn't, and who's going on the landing party and who doesn't. And who lives . . . " glancing back down at his drink, "and who dies." Shaking his head and sighing, Pike adds, "I've had it, Phil."
Shot of Boyce: "To the point of finally taking my advice, a rest leave?"
Back to Pike: "To the point of considering resigning."
Boyce leans back in his chair in dismay. "And do what?" he says sarcastically.
Defiantly, Pike answers, "Well, for one thing, go home."
Boyce looks unconvinced.
Pike continues, "Nice little town with fifty miles of parkland around it." Another glance down, then up at Boyce. "Remember I told you I had two horses? We used to take some food and ride out all day."
Boyce takes another drink and snarks, "That sounds exciting. Ride out with a picnic lunch every day."
Back to the two shot of Pike and Boyce as a miffed Pike sits up again and insists, "I said that's one place I might go. I might go into business on Regulus or in the Orion colonies."
Boyce is incredulous. "You? An Orion trader, dealing in green animal-woman slaves?"
Gesturing with his hand, Pike says forcefully, "The point is, this isn't the only life available. There's a whole galaxy of things to choose from."
"Not for you," says Boyce.
Shot of the doctor as he leans back and ruminates. "A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head on and licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away."
Shot of Pike as he smiles and says, "Now you're beginning to talk like a doctor, bartender."
Smiling back, Boyce says, "Take your choice. We both get the same two kinds of customers: the living, and the dying."
Shot of Pike as he briefly reflects on the doctor's words before being interrupted by the page whistle.
Close-up of the video receiver as Pike switches it on. Spock appears and says, "Mr. Spock here. We're intercepting a follow-up message, sir. There are crash survivors on Talos." Spock fades away again. (So now we know that this character is called Mr. Spock.)
******************************
Close-up on a control panel. We pull back a bit to reveal orange paper scrolling out of a printer. Two hands reach in to grab the paper.
Cut to the bridge, as Vincent reads from the paper. An auburn-haired woman in a pale pink tunic is seated at the station, Vincent and Pike are standing on either side of her. Number One and Tyler are at their stations, Spock is standing next to Number One, Valdini is still standing by the turbolift doors, Boyce is standing in front of them, and Clipboard Guy is back to the right of the Captain's chair. "'Eleven survivors from crash,'" reads Vincent. "'Gravity and oxygen within limits. Food and water obtainable. But unless . . .' The message faded at that point, sir." The woman had been staring straight ahead, but now she looks up at Vincent. As Pike takes the paper from Vincent, the Redhead's eyes shift to him. (We never see her again. I wonder who she is?)
Shot of Pike as he reads the message for himself, then we pan around as he makes his way to stand by the Captain's chair and Vincent returns to his station. For the record, there are fourteen people scattered around the bridge.
"Address intercraft," Pike orders.
Tyler presses a button and says, "System open."
"This is the captain," states Pike, his voice slightly reverbing. "Our destination is the Talos star group."
Medium shot of Pike with Boyce and Valdini behind him. Pike continues, "Our time warp, factor seven."
Side shot of Tyler, Number One and Spock as Tyler works his controls. "Course computed and on the screen," he announces. Number One adds, "All decks have acknowledged, sir."
Back to Pike: "Engage."
Back to Tyler and Number One as they both work their controls and Spock moves off.
Wide angle on the bridge as the engines hum and the title theme comes up. The bridge shot starts to fade in and out as a starfield comes up and starts sliding past. Pike moves forward to stand next to Tyler, who holds up seven fingers to indicate they've reached time warp factor seven. Pike nods, and the bridge fades out.
Starfield drifting to the right.
The bridge fades in. Pike is still standing next to Tyler, who says, "On course, sir."
In the background, the turbolift doors open to reveal Yeoman J.M. Colt, a pretty young woman in a pale rose tunic with bright coppery hair carrying a clipboard. (She's not the Redhead we saw earlier -- her hair was darker.) As Pike turns around he almost runs into her. "Yeoman," he barks.
"Yes, sir," says Colt, standing stiffly at attention.
"I thought I told you that when I'm on the bridge that I expect --"
"That you wanted the reports by 0500," she finishes for him, with a hint of fear in her wide blue eyes. "It's 0500 now, sir."
Pike blinks, then glares up at Clipboard Guy. Clipboard Guy turns and leaves. "Oh. I see," Pike mumbles as Colt hands him the clipboard. "Thank you," he mumbles again as he looks through the reports, and she turns and walks off. Pike glares after her, then turns back to Number One.
Shot of Number One as she says with a smile, "She's replacing your former yeoman, sir."
"She does a good job, all right," Pike grudgingly admits to her. "It's just that I can't get used to having a woman on the bridge." (Pike has apparently not noticed that there were already two women on the bridge before Colt showed up.)
Number One looks up sharply at this.
Sighing, Pike says, "No offense, Lieutenant. You're different, of course."
Initially pleased, Number One frowns again when she realizes that Pike is implying she's not a real woman, then turns back to her console. (Presumably the Redhead is also different, somehow.)
****************************
Starfield, with the planet Talos IV approaching. We hear the opening notes of the title theme.
Shot of the main viewscreen, over the shoulders of Tyler and Spock. The screen is filled with a cloud-covered planet. "We've settled into orbit, sir," says Tyler.
Shot of Pike leaning on the bridge railing. Behind him, the turbolift opens to reveal a blue-tunicked crewman holding a sheet of white paper in a clear cover. The Star Trek Concordance identifies this man simply as "the Geologist". He hands Pike the paper, saying, "Geological lab report complete, Captain."
Spock steps up and hands Pike another paper, saying, "Preliminary lab survey ready, sir."
"Spectography?" says Pike as he skims the two reports.
"Our reading shows an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, sir," the Geologist responds. "Heavy with inert elements, but well within safety limits."
"Gravity?" Pike asks.
"Zero point nine of Earth," says the Geologist.
Shot of Tyler and Number One as the navigator reports, "Captain? Reflections, sir, from the planet's surface."
As Pike and Spock approach Tyler, he continues. "As I read it, they polarize out as rounded metal bits."
Back shot of Spock and Tyler facing the screen, which is still filled with a view of Talos IV. Tyler turns his head and adds, "Could be parts of a spaceship hull." From offscreen, Pike says, "Equip a landing party of six."
Shot of Pike looking at Spock and Tyler. "Do you feel up to it?" the Captain asks them.
"Yes, sir," says Spock.
"Yes, sir!" exclaims Tyler.
As the two men make for the turbolift, Number One looks put out as she rests her chin on the backs of her hands. Pike looks back at her and says, "Sorry, Number One. With so little information on this planet, we'll have to leave the ship's most experienced officer here covering it."
"Of course, sir," says a disappointed Number One.
Pike heads for the turbolift, where he joins Tyler, Spock, the Geologist, and a crewman in a pale rose tunic that the Star Trek Concordance identifies as C.P.O. Garison.
************************
The transporter room. We see Tyler and Spock attaching equipment to silver harnesses worn beneath sparkly gray jackets. There's a loud, rhythmic humming sound filling the room. GR originally intended this scene to be the viewing audience's introduction to the transporter concept, so director Robert Butler and he made an elaborate production of the transporter's use here. As it turned out, the audience's first sight of the transporter process was when Kirk, McCoy and Crewman Green sparkle in out of nowhere at the beginning of "The Man Trap".
As Pike enters, we pan right as he passes Boyce and approaches Transporter Chief Pitcairn, a heavyset crewcut man in a khaki coverall. Standing next to Pitcairn is an Asian man, also in a khaki coverall. (In The Rift the Asian man is named Yamata.) Ever since I first saw this scene back in the mid-70s, something struck me as odd about it. Now I've figured it out: Yamata is wearing glasses, the only person we've seen wearing glasses on Star Trek (except for Kirk in The Wrath of Khan). Pike says to Pitcairn, "There's no indication of problems down there, but let's not take any chances."
In a deep voice, Pitcairn says, "Yes, sir. There's a canyon to the left. We can set you down there completely unobserved." Say, shouldn't the chief have given some cardinal direction rather than "to the left"? Oh well; I suppose he meant "to the west".
"All right," says Pike as he turns and steps up onto the transporter stage, where he joins Spock, Tyler, Boyce, the Geologist and C.P.O. Garison. The Geologist has various bits of equipment hanging from straps, and the noncom, of course, gets to carry a big, heavy backpack.
We cut back to the transporter console, which has no less than two video monitors on gooseneck mounts. Yamata is no longer wearing glasses. The two men operate the controls as the transporter whine rises.
We cut back to the landing party as the transporter whine grows to a climax, and they all fade away accompanied by sparkles and a tinkly sound.
We cut to the surface of Talos IV as the landing party fades into view, accompanied by sparkles and a tinkly sound. They look around at Talos IV, which is a pretty desolate place full of jumbled rocks. Jagged mountains loom in the background, and clouds fill a green-tinged sky. The Geologist is inspecting one of the rocks.
Cut to a Pike's-eye view of the terrain ahead: more rocks, more jagged mountains, more cloudy green sky. There is a scrubby-looking plant on the right with red leaves.
Cut back to the landing party as they start forward. As they walk along, we become aware of a humming sound in the background. Tyler is in the lead, with a laser pistol in his hand. Spock follows him, also packing heat, and we notice his limp for the first time; his left leg was presumably injured during the fighting on Rigel VII. Pike is next, followed by Garison and Boyce, with the Geologist bringing up the rear. The humming becomes louder, and Pike and Spock approach a wiry plant with flat, shimmering blue leaves. Pike grabs a couple, and the humming dims. Spock grabs two more, and the humming dims even more. Spock grins briefly (yes, he does), then they release the leaves and Spock motions the others forward.
We dissolve to another shot of the landing party walking along, with the Geologist in the lead this time. He passes behind a boulder with more humming plants growing on it, leans on it, takes a look around, and spots something. Turning back to Pike, he whispers, "Sir," and looks forward again as Pike and Spock approach. Pike takes the lead and Spock stands just behind him.
A musical sting comes up as we cut to a Pike's-eye view of the survivors' encampment. There seems to be a still in the foreground and a ten-foot radar tower off to the left, along with makeshift shelters scattered about. A handful of white-haired people in ragged clothing move around in the background.
A shot of the landing party as they move forward.
A shot of two of the survivors. The one on the left, whose name we never learn, says, "They're men! They're humans!"
Pike and Spock lead the way into the encampment. Shaking hands with one of the survivors, Pike says, "Captain Christopher Pike, United Space Ship Enterprise."
"Doctor Theodore Haskins, American Continent Institute," says the survivor.
Shot of a group of six survivors, including Haskell: "Is Earth all right?" asks unnamed survivor #2.
Shot of Pike, Tyler, Boyce and Garison: "Same old Earth," Pike assures him."And you'll see it very soon."
"And you won't believe how fast you can get back," Tyler interjects. "Why, the time barrier's been broken! Our new ships can --" He breaks off, and stares past the survivors.
Back to the six survivors, who all turn around.
Shot of Survivor Vina stepping forward. She has unkempt blonde hair, and is wearing the frayed upper half of a blue coverall for a top and a burlap sack for a skirt. Her bearing is oddly distant, as though she's looking at everything through a telescope. She moves next to Haskins, who cheerfully introduces her. "This is Vina. Her parents are dead. She was born almost as we crashed."
As Haskins is speaking, we cut to a shot of a fascinated Pike. We pull back to see that Pike is being viewed on an irregularly shaped monitor.
A shot of the three beings watching Pike. These are the Talosians: frail, with big veiny heads, dressed in metallic gray robes. One of them, the Keeper, is wearing a gold medallion around his neck. The spooky Talosian theme is playing.
A shot of two Talosians flanking the monitor, on which we see the Enterprise crew and the survivors shaking hands and getting chummy.
A close-up of the Keeper.
A close-up of Pike on the monitor.
Another close-up of the Keeper. Yeah, his expression says, I got my eye on you, boy.
On the monitor, Pike and Survivor Vina are giving each other the eye.
The Keeper turns to look at the other two Talosians, nods, and off they go. The Keeper turns and peers out of the TV set at the viewer.
Cut to the survivors' encampment, as the landing party are helping the survivors pack up their stuff. Pike opens his telecommunicator and calls, "Enterprise." The voice of Number One replies, "Landing party, come in." As Pike moves offscreen, we see Survivor Vina following him.
We follow Survivor Vina as she joins Pike and Haskins. Pike is still talking to Number One: "We'll begin transporting the survivors and their effects up to you very shortly."
"Quarters are being prepared, sir," we hear Number One respond. "Have I permission to send out scouting and scientific parties now?"
"That's affirmative on the . . . " Pike trails off as he becomes aware that Survivor Vina is staring at him.
A close-up of Survivor Vina, with her disconcerting blue eyes and disheveled blonde hair. She's giving Pike that far-end-of-the-telescope look, and as she speaks, the eerie Vina theme insinuates itself into the soundtrack. "You appear to be healthy and intelligent, Captain. A prime specimen."
Back to an uneasy-looking Pike as Number One says, "I didn't get that last message, Captain."
"Uh, affirmative on request," he mumbles distractedly into his telecommunicator. "Landing party out."
Back to a three shot of Pike, Haskins and Survivor Vina as Boyce moseys on up. "You must forgive her choice of words, Captain," says a jolly-looking Haskins. "She's lived her whole life with a collection of aging scientists."
Boyce says to Pike, "If they can, ah, spare you a moment, I'd like to make my medical report."
Another close-up of telescope-look Survivor Vina as she says, "I think it's time to show the Captain our secret."
Back to Boyce and Pike as Boyce says, "Their health is excellent. Almost too good."
A two shot of Haskins and Survivor Vina as Haskins says, "There's a reason for our condition. But we've had some doubt if Earth is ready to learn the secret." Y'know, in a sense, he's telling the truth. "Let the girl show you," Haskins continues. "We'll accept her judgment."
A shot of an uncertain-looking Pike, then back to Haskins and Survivor Vina. We pan left as she moves away from Haskins, and Pike follows her.
Survivor Vina leads Pike through the desolate landscape of Talos IV, still accompanied by the Vina theme. "You're tired," Survivor Vina tells Pike as she takes his hand. "Don't worry, you'll feel much better soon." She leads him up to a rocky outcrop. Pike stands there for a moment, not getting it. Survivor Vina moves around a bit, gesturing with her arms, looking for all the world like a shabbily-dressed Vanna White. "Don't you see it?" she says in a pixieish voice. "Here, and here."
Pike is still wondering what's going on. "Uh, I don't understand."
"You will," says Survivor Vina, and now her voice is all business. "You're a perfect choice." She ripples out of sight with a bwooby sound, taking the Vina theme with her.
A shot of the survivors' encampment, as the survivors and their effects suddenly vanish with another bwooby sound.
Back to the rocky outcrop. A hidden door in the rockface opens. Pike turns to look. The Keeper's two buddies emerge from the hidden door, along with an up-tempo version of the Talosian theme. The first Talosian points something at Pike, which produces a crackling sound and a stream of orange smoke, and Pike is down for the count.
Back at the area formerly known as the survivors' encampment, the five members of the landing party are looking stunned, until Tyler whips out his laser pistol and runs off, shouting "Captain!" The others follow, Spock having unholstered his own laser pistol. C.P.O. Garison leaves the heavy backpack lying on the ground.
Back at the rocky outcrop, the Talosians have managed to drag Pike into the hidden doorway, which turns out to be an elevator. They start moving down as the camouflaged doors close. The landing party finally arrives, and Tyler tries to force the doors open. When that fails, he leaps off the rocky outcrop, and he and Spock fire their lasers at it. They blast away some of the rock facade, but have no other effect. The Geologist then fires his laser, and more facade is blown away, but that's it. Tyler cranks up his laser to full power and fires another blast. More rock facade gets blasted away, but the doors remain undamaged. Tyler keeps firing at full power for sixteen seconds, but all he gets is a red glow from a small circle of door. When he stops firing, the glow quickly fades.
Spock activates his telecommunicator and says, "Spock here."
"Landing party, come in," says Number One.
"There is no survivors' encampment, Number One," says Spock. "This is all some sort of trap. We've lost the Captain. Do you read?"
(continue to part 2)
Back in late 2005, I decided to celebrate my acquisition of the original Star Trek on DVD by doing episode recaps which I posted to the alt.startrek and rec.arts.startrek.misc newsgroups. For reasons that I'm no longer clear on, I posted these recaps under the screenname Empok Nor. Now, as part of my policy of trying to post everything I've ever written on this blog, I now reclaim these recaps. I chose to recap the episodes in the order they were filmed rather than the order they aired, so that meant starting with the original Star Trek pilot, "The Cage".
Some background: In 1963 Gene Roddenberry was producing a TV series at MGM Studios called The Lieutenant that was airing on CBS. The suits at MGM figured CBS wouldn't pick up The Lieutenant for a second season, and they asked GR to come up with an idea for a new series. The series proposal he pitched them was one he had been working on since 1960: Star Trek, a science fiction series set on a spaceship. After several months went by with no reaction from the MGM suits, GR started shopping the series proposal around to the other TV studios. In April 1964, Desilu hired GR to produce TV pilots for them, on the basis of the Star Trek proposal and some other series ideas he outlined verbally. Within days, GR did a meeting with the suits at CBS to pitch Star Trek. They heard him out for two hours, then told him that they had already decided to go with Lost in Space.
Early the next month, the Star Trek proposal was sent to NBC, which liked the idea well enough to pay Desilu $20,000 to come up with three story outlines based on the series format. By the end of June, GR had cranked out the three outlines, and NBC picked the one called "The Cage" to be developed into a shooting script. GR spent the next several months writing the script, and also planning the design of the spaceship model, sets, props, costumes and so forth. At the end of September, GR submitted his script to NBC, which greenlighted the pilot. Preproduction required several more months, and in November construction of the sets began. Stephen E. Whitfield notes that the bridge set took six weeks and almost $60,000 to build. Filming of the pilot, now renamed "The Menagerie", began on 27 November 1964 (according to Memory Alpha) or 12 December 1964 (according to Whitfield).
**************************
OPENING CREDITS
We open with the first notes of the title theme and shots of the spaceship flashing across a starfield. This version of the title theme includes the "singing woman" motif. The first title appears, faintly blue: STAR TREK. The spaceship zooms across the screen again. Next title: STARRING JEFFREY HUNTER. Again the zooming ship. Next title: GUEST STAR SUSAN OLIVER. Next title: STAR TREK CREATED BY GENE RODDENBERRY as the spaceship cruises onto the screen from the left, and we approach the top of the saucer section. We linger momentarily over the words USS ENTERPRISE, then continue to close in on a bubble at the top of the saucer. A little window on top of the bubble opens into the bridge, which is done up in black and gray. Most of the stations (including the captain's chair) have small video receivers mounted on gooseneck supports. The crew wear black pants and tunics in muted colors.
Captain Christopher Pike, in a gold tunic, sits in the center chair. Number One, also in gold, sits at the helm position, while Lt. Jose "Joe" Tyler, also in gold, mans the navigation console. A crewman in a blue tunic stands by the turbolift doors. (In his novel The Rift Peter David states that this crewman's name is Valdini, and that he was killed in action on stardate 3619.2.) A crewman in a gold tunic mans the engineering station, while another blue-tunicked crewman stands to the right of the captain's chair holding a clipboard.
TEASER
Mr. Spock, in a blue tunic, approaches the captain's chair from behind, then takes up position to its left. "Check the circuits," Spock orders. Spock's race hasn't been established at this point. The series format described him as "probably half-Martian". He was also supposed to look even more satanic than he already did, with a "heavy-lidded face" and a "slightly reddish complexion". The red makeup didn't work out, so they ended up making him slightly greenish.
"All operating, sir," Tyler responds.
"Can't be the screen, then," Spock remarks.
We cut to the main viewscreen, showing stars. A ripple blurs across it, accompanied by the bleep sound that will later become the prelude to operating the transporter.
A two-shot of Spock and Captain Pike. "Definitely something out there, Captain," says Spock. "Headed this way." He turns to look back at the screen.
A shot of the main viewscreen over the shoulders of Pike, Tyler and Number One. "Could be these meteoroids," says Tyler as several meteoroids shoot past on the screen.
"No, it's something else," says Number One. "There's still something out there."
Back to the two-shot of Spock and Pike as they stare at the screen.
A shot of the screen over Tyler's shoulder as another ripple and bleep shimmies across it.
A quick shot of Pike, then a shot of Tyler as his red navigation alarm starts flashing. The alarm sound is two alternating tones, rather that the one tone we're used to. It's actually kind of wimpy sounding.
Back to the two-shot of Spock and Pike.
A profile shot of Tyler and Number One as the former says, "It's coming at the speed of light. Collision course."
A quick shot of Pike looking unruffled.
Back to the screen over Tyler's shoulder as another ripple crosses it.
A quick shot of a guy in a pale pink tunic at Communications turning to look at his instruments. (In The Rift, the Communications Officer's name is Vincent. Jerry Oltion mentions another comm officer named Dabisch in his Christopher Pike novel Where Sea Meets Sky, but Dabisch is a Galamite, while this fellow is clearly human, so Vincent it is).
A wide angle of the bridge as the wimpy two-tone alert alarm continues to sound.
A shot of the screen as another ripple disturbs the stars.
Back to the shot of Tyler as he says, "Meteoroid beam has not deflected it, Captain."
A shot of Number One as she turns back toward Pike and says, "Evasive maneuvers, sir?"
Two shot of S & P. "Steady as we go," says an impassive Pike.
The screen over Tyler's shoulder: more ripples.
Wide angle of the bridge. A shot of Pike as he glances at Spock.
The screen over Tyler's shoulder: one last ripple blurs the stars. The alarm stops sounding.
Vincent peers at his instruments and listens to a steady beeping: "It's a radio wave, sir. We're passing through an old-style distress signal."
Two shot of S & P: a still-impassive Pike exposits: "They were keyed to cause interference and attract attention this way." That sly dog knew what was going on the whole time. Spock moves away from him, on his way to the library computer station.
Vincent: "A ship in trouble making a forced landing, sir. That's it, no other message."
Wide angle of the bridge as Tyler works his board and says, "I have a fix. It comes from the Talos star group." He seems to have a little trouble with the name. The guy with the clipboard approaches Pike with a piece of paper for his attention, but the Captain shakes his head.
"We've no Earth ships or colonies that far out," Number One notes.
Shot of Spock as he stands next to his library computer station: "Their call letters check with a survey expedition. S. S. Columbia."
Switch to a shot of Spock's back as he looks at a viewscreen showing the Talos star group, which looks suspiciously like an astronomical photo of the Pleiades. "Disappeared in that region approximately eighteen years ago."
Profile shot of Tyler and Number One as the navigator nods and says, "It would take that long for a radio beam to travel from there to here."
Back to Spock as he waves his hand over his library computer, causing the screen to shift to a drawing of a planetary system. The caption in the bottom right reads 092 07 5083 TALOS GROUP. There are two stars very close together, and five planets orbiting them. The fourth planet out has a highly inclined orbit, way out of the system's ecliptic. Spock says, "Records show the Talos group has never been explored. Solar system similar to Earth's. Eleven planets." During this exposition, we shift back to a shot of a still-impassive Pike. Clipboard Guy is still waiting next to him.
Spock in profile. "Number four seems to be Class M." Spock turns to give Pike a significant look as he adds, "Oxygen atmosphere." It should be noted that this is the first time someone says "Class M" on Star Trek. Much, much later, on Star Trek: Enterprise, this expression is retconned as an abbreviation of the Vulcan term "Minshara-class planet."
Shot of Number One as she also turns to look at Pike, saying, "Then they could still be alive, even after eighteen years."
"If they survived the crash," Pike notes.
A puzzled Spock says, "We aren't going to go? To be certain?"
"Not without any indication of survivors, no," Pike insists. Glancing at Number One and Tyler, he orders, "Continue on to the Vega colony and take care of our own sick and injured first."
A quick shot of Number One, looking back at Pike again.
"You have the helm," Pike says as he rises from his chair. "Maintain present course." From offscreen Number One says, "Yes, sir." Clipboard Guy watches in annoyance as Pike strides past him to the turbolift without so much as a glance, then shrugs and resumes standing next to the Captain's chair. Number One and Spock share a concerned look.
****************************
ACT ONE
A ship's corridor. A casually dressed couple passes by, he in a blue striped shirt and white shorts, she in a sleeveless red top and white pleated miniskirt. They pass by Pike, who enters a door to the left. A sign next to the door reads CAP. PIKE.
We see a close-up of a telecommunicator (as it's called in the series format) as a pair of hands twist a knob and flip it open, resulting in the familiar TOS communicator sound. A metallic filtered voice says, "Boyce here." Pike's voice responds, "Drop by my cabin, doctor." The hands close the telecommunicator.
We follow Pike as he crosses his cabin and drops onto his bunk with a weary sigh. There's an odd-looking three-sided wooden cabinet in the middle of the cabin with a television screen on one side. sitting on top of the cabinet are a hand laser and a uniform cap. A niche in the wall across the room holds some bound volumes, what seems to be a trophy with four handles, a clipboard, and a few other unidentifiable odds and ends. A nightstand next to the bunk has another video receiver on a gooseneck mount.
We cut to the cabin's door as Doctor Philip "Bones" Boyce (as the series format calls him) enters, an elderly man wearing a blue jumpsuit with an Earth logo on the left breast pocket. He's carrying some sort of leather-bound case. He walks up to a counter, turns on an overhead light, and opens up the case. ( The Memory Alpha entry on "The Cage" notes that this scene between Pike and Boyce was the first to be filmed.)
Back to Pike, as he sits up: "What's that? I didn't say there was anything wrong with me."
Boyce spares Pike a glance as he continues to fiddle with the case. "I understand we, ah, picked up a distress signal." He removes some glassware from the case.
Back to Pike: "That's right," he says, as he rises from his bunk and crosses over to the wall niche. Picking up the clipboard and opening it, he continues, "Unless we get anything more positive on it, it seems to me the condition of our own crew takes precedence." Looking over at Boyce he adds, "I'd like to log the ship's doctor's opinion, too."
"Oh, I concur with yours, definitely," Boyce says as he continues to fiddle with his case.
Pike looks a little surprised at this, as though he were expecting Boyce to voice an objection. "Good, I'm glad you do," he says. Returning to sit on his bunk with the clipboard, he adds, "We're going to stop first at the Vega colony and replace anybody who needs hospitalization. We can also . . . " Pike trails off as he stares at Boyce. "What the devil are you putting in there, ice?"
Boyce smiles as he walks over and hands Pike a shot glass. "Who wants a warm martini?"
Well, Pike did tell Number One she had the helm, so I guess that means he's off duty. Taking the martini from Boyce, he says, "What makes you think I need one?"
Gesturing with a glass mixing rod, Boyce chuckles and says, "Sometimes a man will tell his bartender things he'll never tell his doctor." Picking up another shot glass, Boyce makes a little "cheers" gesture with it before sitting in a chair across from Pike's bunk. "What's been on your mind, Chris? The fight on Rigel Seven?"
Tossing the clipboard on his bunk, Pike says, "Shouldn't it be? My own yeoman and two others dead, seven injured."
"Was there anything you personally could have done to prevent it?" Boyce asked pointedly.
Pike isn't buying it. "Oh, I should have smelled trouble when I saw the swords and the armor. Instead of that, I let myself get trapped in that deserted fortress and attacked by one of their warriors!" Boyce sips from his glass during this exposition.
Shot of Boyce as he looks sorrowfully at Pike: "Chris, you set standards for yourself no one could meet! You treat everyone on board like a human being except yourself."
Shot of Pike, looking down at his drink, as Boyce continues, "And now you're tired, and you --"
Pike looks up suddenly and interrupts. "You bet I'm tired! You bet!" Reclining on his bunk, he continues. "I'm tired of being responsible for two hundred and three lives. I'm tired of deciding which mission is too risky and which isn't, and who's going on the landing party and who doesn't. And who lives . . . " glancing back down at his drink, "and who dies." Shaking his head and sighing, Pike adds, "I've had it, Phil."
Shot of Boyce: "To the point of finally taking my advice, a rest leave?"
Back to Pike: "To the point of considering resigning."
Boyce leans back in his chair in dismay. "And do what?" he says sarcastically.
Defiantly, Pike answers, "Well, for one thing, go home."
Boyce looks unconvinced.
Pike continues, "Nice little town with fifty miles of parkland around it." Another glance down, then up at Boyce. "Remember I told you I had two horses? We used to take some food and ride out all day."
Boyce takes another drink and snarks, "That sounds exciting. Ride out with a picnic lunch every day."
Back to the two shot of Pike and Boyce as a miffed Pike sits up again and insists, "I said that's one place I might go. I might go into business on Regulus or in the Orion colonies."
Boyce is incredulous. "You? An Orion trader, dealing in green animal-woman slaves?"
Gesturing with his hand, Pike says forcefully, "The point is, this isn't the only life available. There's a whole galaxy of things to choose from."
"Not for you," says Boyce.
Shot of the doctor as he leans back and ruminates. "A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head on and licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away."
Shot of Pike as he smiles and says, "Now you're beginning to talk like a doctor, bartender."
Smiling back, Boyce says, "Take your choice. We both get the same two kinds of customers: the living, and the dying."
Shot of Pike as he briefly reflects on the doctor's words before being interrupted by the page whistle.
Close-up of the video receiver as Pike switches it on. Spock appears and says, "Mr. Spock here. We're intercepting a follow-up message, sir. There are crash survivors on Talos." Spock fades away again. (So now we know that this character is called Mr. Spock.)
******************************
Close-up on a control panel. We pull back a bit to reveal orange paper scrolling out of a printer. Two hands reach in to grab the paper.
Cut to the bridge, as Vincent reads from the paper. An auburn-haired woman in a pale pink tunic is seated at the station, Vincent and Pike are standing on either side of her. Number One and Tyler are at their stations, Spock is standing next to Number One, Valdini is still standing by the turbolift doors, Boyce is standing in front of them, and Clipboard Guy is back to the right of the Captain's chair. "'Eleven survivors from crash,'" reads Vincent. "'Gravity and oxygen within limits. Food and water obtainable. But unless . . .' The message faded at that point, sir." The woman had been staring straight ahead, but now she looks up at Vincent. As Pike takes the paper from Vincent, the Redhead's eyes shift to him. (We never see her again. I wonder who she is?)
Shot of Pike as he reads the message for himself, then we pan around as he makes his way to stand by the Captain's chair and Vincent returns to his station. For the record, there are fourteen people scattered around the bridge.
"Address intercraft," Pike orders.
Tyler presses a button and says, "System open."
"This is the captain," states Pike, his voice slightly reverbing. "Our destination is the Talos star group."
Medium shot of Pike with Boyce and Valdini behind him. Pike continues, "Our time warp, factor seven."
Side shot of Tyler, Number One and Spock as Tyler works his controls. "Course computed and on the screen," he announces. Number One adds, "All decks have acknowledged, sir."
Back to Pike: "Engage."
Back to Tyler and Number One as they both work their controls and Spock moves off.
Wide angle on the bridge as the engines hum and the title theme comes up. The bridge shot starts to fade in and out as a starfield comes up and starts sliding past. Pike moves forward to stand next to Tyler, who holds up seven fingers to indicate they've reached time warp factor seven. Pike nods, and the bridge fades out.
Starfield drifting to the right.
The bridge fades in. Pike is still standing next to Tyler, who says, "On course, sir."
In the background, the turbolift doors open to reveal Yeoman J.M. Colt, a pretty young woman in a pale rose tunic with bright coppery hair carrying a clipboard. (She's not the Redhead we saw earlier -- her hair was darker.) As Pike turns around he almost runs into her. "Yeoman," he barks.
"Yes, sir," says Colt, standing stiffly at attention.
"I thought I told you that when I'm on the bridge that I expect --"
"That you wanted the reports by 0500," she finishes for him, with a hint of fear in her wide blue eyes. "It's 0500 now, sir."
Pike blinks, then glares up at Clipboard Guy. Clipboard Guy turns and leaves. "Oh. I see," Pike mumbles as Colt hands him the clipboard. "Thank you," he mumbles again as he looks through the reports, and she turns and walks off. Pike glares after her, then turns back to Number One.
Shot of Number One as she says with a smile, "She's replacing your former yeoman, sir."
"She does a good job, all right," Pike grudgingly admits to her. "It's just that I can't get used to having a woman on the bridge." (Pike has apparently not noticed that there were already two women on the bridge before Colt showed up.)
Number One looks up sharply at this.
Sighing, Pike says, "No offense, Lieutenant. You're different, of course."
Initially pleased, Number One frowns again when she realizes that Pike is implying she's not a real woman, then turns back to her console. (Presumably the Redhead is also different, somehow.)
****************************
Starfield, with the planet Talos IV approaching. We hear the opening notes of the title theme.
Shot of the main viewscreen, over the shoulders of Tyler and Spock. The screen is filled with a cloud-covered planet. "We've settled into orbit, sir," says Tyler.
Shot of Pike leaning on the bridge railing. Behind him, the turbolift opens to reveal a blue-tunicked crewman holding a sheet of white paper in a clear cover. The Star Trek Concordance identifies this man simply as "the Geologist". He hands Pike the paper, saying, "Geological lab report complete, Captain."
Spock steps up and hands Pike another paper, saying, "Preliminary lab survey ready, sir."
"Spectography?" says Pike as he skims the two reports.
"Our reading shows an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, sir," the Geologist responds. "Heavy with inert elements, but well within safety limits."
"Gravity?" Pike asks.
"Zero point nine of Earth," says the Geologist.
Shot of Tyler and Number One as the navigator reports, "Captain? Reflections, sir, from the planet's surface."
As Pike and Spock approach Tyler, he continues. "As I read it, they polarize out as rounded metal bits."
Back shot of Spock and Tyler facing the screen, which is still filled with a view of Talos IV. Tyler turns his head and adds, "Could be parts of a spaceship hull." From offscreen, Pike says, "Equip a landing party of six."
Shot of Pike looking at Spock and Tyler. "Do you feel up to it?" the Captain asks them.
"Yes, sir," says Spock.
"Yes, sir!" exclaims Tyler.
As the two men make for the turbolift, Number One looks put out as she rests her chin on the backs of her hands. Pike looks back at her and says, "Sorry, Number One. With so little information on this planet, we'll have to leave the ship's most experienced officer here covering it."
"Of course, sir," says a disappointed Number One.
Pike heads for the turbolift, where he joins Tyler, Spock, the Geologist, and a crewman in a pale rose tunic that the Star Trek Concordance identifies as C.P.O. Garison.
************************
The transporter room. We see Tyler and Spock attaching equipment to silver harnesses worn beneath sparkly gray jackets. There's a loud, rhythmic humming sound filling the room. GR originally intended this scene to be the viewing audience's introduction to the transporter concept, so director Robert Butler and he made an elaborate production of the transporter's use here. As it turned out, the audience's first sight of the transporter process was when Kirk, McCoy and Crewman Green sparkle in out of nowhere at the beginning of "The Man Trap".
As Pike enters, we pan right as he passes Boyce and approaches Transporter Chief Pitcairn, a heavyset crewcut man in a khaki coverall. Standing next to Pitcairn is an Asian man, also in a khaki coverall. (In The Rift the Asian man is named Yamata.) Ever since I first saw this scene back in the mid-70s, something struck me as odd about it. Now I've figured it out: Yamata is wearing glasses, the only person we've seen wearing glasses on Star Trek (except for Kirk in The Wrath of Khan). Pike says to Pitcairn, "There's no indication of problems down there, but let's not take any chances."
In a deep voice, Pitcairn says, "Yes, sir. There's a canyon to the left. We can set you down there completely unobserved." Say, shouldn't the chief have given some cardinal direction rather than "to the left"? Oh well; I suppose he meant "to the west".
"All right," says Pike as he turns and steps up onto the transporter stage, where he joins Spock, Tyler, Boyce, the Geologist and C.P.O. Garison. The Geologist has various bits of equipment hanging from straps, and the noncom, of course, gets to carry a big, heavy backpack.
We cut back to the transporter console, which has no less than two video monitors on gooseneck mounts. Yamata is no longer wearing glasses. The two men operate the controls as the transporter whine rises.
We cut back to the landing party as the transporter whine grows to a climax, and they all fade away accompanied by sparkles and a tinkly sound.
We cut to the surface of Talos IV as the landing party fades into view, accompanied by sparkles and a tinkly sound. They look around at Talos IV, which is a pretty desolate place full of jumbled rocks. Jagged mountains loom in the background, and clouds fill a green-tinged sky. The Geologist is inspecting one of the rocks.
Cut to a Pike's-eye view of the terrain ahead: more rocks, more jagged mountains, more cloudy green sky. There is a scrubby-looking plant on the right with red leaves.
Cut back to the landing party as they start forward. As they walk along, we become aware of a humming sound in the background. Tyler is in the lead, with a laser pistol in his hand. Spock follows him, also packing heat, and we notice his limp for the first time; his left leg was presumably injured during the fighting on Rigel VII. Pike is next, followed by Garison and Boyce, with the Geologist bringing up the rear. The humming becomes louder, and Pike and Spock approach a wiry plant with flat, shimmering blue leaves. Pike grabs a couple, and the humming dims. Spock grabs two more, and the humming dims even more. Spock grins briefly (yes, he does), then they release the leaves and Spock motions the others forward.
We dissolve to another shot of the landing party walking along, with the Geologist in the lead this time. He passes behind a boulder with more humming plants growing on it, leans on it, takes a look around, and spots something. Turning back to Pike, he whispers, "Sir," and looks forward again as Pike and Spock approach. Pike takes the lead and Spock stands just behind him.
A musical sting comes up as we cut to a Pike's-eye view of the survivors' encampment. There seems to be a still in the foreground and a ten-foot radar tower off to the left, along with makeshift shelters scattered about. A handful of white-haired people in ragged clothing move around in the background.
A shot of the landing party as they move forward.
A shot of two of the survivors. The one on the left, whose name we never learn, says, "They're men! They're humans!"
Pike and Spock lead the way into the encampment. Shaking hands with one of the survivors, Pike says, "Captain Christopher Pike, United Space Ship Enterprise."
"Doctor Theodore Haskins, American Continent Institute," says the survivor.
Shot of a group of six survivors, including Haskell: "Is Earth all right?" asks unnamed survivor #2.
Shot of Pike, Tyler, Boyce and Garison: "Same old Earth," Pike assures him."And you'll see it very soon."
"And you won't believe how fast you can get back," Tyler interjects. "Why, the time barrier's been broken! Our new ships can --" He breaks off, and stares past the survivors.
Back to the six survivors, who all turn around.
Shot of Survivor Vina stepping forward. She has unkempt blonde hair, and is wearing the frayed upper half of a blue coverall for a top and a burlap sack for a skirt. Her bearing is oddly distant, as though she's looking at everything through a telescope. She moves next to Haskins, who cheerfully introduces her. "This is Vina. Her parents are dead. She was born almost as we crashed."
As Haskins is speaking, we cut to a shot of a fascinated Pike. We pull back to see that Pike is being viewed on an irregularly shaped monitor.
A shot of the three beings watching Pike. These are the Talosians: frail, with big veiny heads, dressed in metallic gray robes. One of them, the Keeper, is wearing a gold medallion around his neck. The spooky Talosian theme is playing.
A shot of two Talosians flanking the monitor, on which we see the Enterprise crew and the survivors shaking hands and getting chummy.
A close-up of the Keeper.
A close-up of Pike on the monitor.
Another close-up of the Keeper. Yeah, his expression says, I got my eye on you, boy.
On the monitor, Pike and Survivor Vina are giving each other the eye.
The Keeper turns to look at the other two Talosians, nods, and off they go. The Keeper turns and peers out of the TV set at the viewer.
Cut to the survivors' encampment, as the landing party are helping the survivors pack up their stuff. Pike opens his telecommunicator and calls, "Enterprise." The voice of Number One replies, "Landing party, come in." As Pike moves offscreen, we see Survivor Vina following him.
We follow Survivor Vina as she joins Pike and Haskins. Pike is still talking to Number One: "We'll begin transporting the survivors and their effects up to you very shortly."
"Quarters are being prepared, sir," we hear Number One respond. "Have I permission to send out scouting and scientific parties now?"
"That's affirmative on the . . . " Pike trails off as he becomes aware that Survivor Vina is staring at him.
A close-up of Survivor Vina, with her disconcerting blue eyes and disheveled blonde hair. She's giving Pike that far-end-of-the-telescope look, and as she speaks, the eerie Vina theme insinuates itself into the soundtrack. "You appear to be healthy and intelligent, Captain. A prime specimen."
Back to an uneasy-looking Pike as Number One says, "I didn't get that last message, Captain."
"Uh, affirmative on request," he mumbles distractedly into his telecommunicator. "Landing party out."
Back to a three shot of Pike, Haskins and Survivor Vina as Boyce moseys on up. "You must forgive her choice of words, Captain," says a jolly-looking Haskins. "She's lived her whole life with a collection of aging scientists."
Boyce says to Pike, "If they can, ah, spare you a moment, I'd like to make my medical report."
Another close-up of telescope-look Survivor Vina as she says, "I think it's time to show the Captain our secret."
Back to Boyce and Pike as Boyce says, "Their health is excellent. Almost too good."
A two shot of Haskins and Survivor Vina as Haskins says, "There's a reason for our condition. But we've had some doubt if Earth is ready to learn the secret." Y'know, in a sense, he's telling the truth. "Let the girl show you," Haskins continues. "We'll accept her judgment."
A shot of an uncertain-looking Pike, then back to Haskins and Survivor Vina. We pan left as she moves away from Haskins, and Pike follows her.
Survivor Vina leads Pike through the desolate landscape of Talos IV, still accompanied by the Vina theme. "You're tired," Survivor Vina tells Pike as she takes his hand. "Don't worry, you'll feel much better soon." She leads him up to a rocky outcrop. Pike stands there for a moment, not getting it. Survivor Vina moves around a bit, gesturing with her arms, looking for all the world like a shabbily-dressed Vanna White. "Don't you see it?" she says in a pixieish voice. "Here, and here."
Pike is still wondering what's going on. "Uh, I don't understand."
"You will," says Survivor Vina, and now her voice is all business. "You're a perfect choice." She ripples out of sight with a bwooby sound, taking the Vina theme with her.
A shot of the survivors' encampment, as the survivors and their effects suddenly vanish with another bwooby sound.
Back to the rocky outcrop. A hidden door in the rockface opens. Pike turns to look. The Keeper's two buddies emerge from the hidden door, along with an up-tempo version of the Talosian theme. The first Talosian points something at Pike, which produces a crackling sound and a stream of orange smoke, and Pike is down for the count.
Back at the area formerly known as the survivors' encampment, the five members of the landing party are looking stunned, until Tyler whips out his laser pistol and runs off, shouting "Captain!" The others follow, Spock having unholstered his own laser pistol. C.P.O. Garison leaves the heavy backpack lying on the ground.
Back at the rocky outcrop, the Talosians have managed to drag Pike into the hidden doorway, which turns out to be an elevator. They start moving down as the camouflaged doors close. The landing party finally arrives, and Tyler tries to force the doors open. When that fails, he leaps off the rocky outcrop, and he and Spock fire their lasers at it. They blast away some of the rock facade, but have no other effect. The Geologist then fires his laser, and more facade is blown away, but that's it. Tyler cranks up his laser to full power and fires another blast. More rock facade gets blasted away, but the doors remain undamaged. Tyler keeps firing at full power for sixteen seconds, but all he gets is a red glow from a small circle of door. When he stops firing, the glow quickly fades.
Spock activates his telecommunicator and says, "Spock here."
"Landing party, come in," says Number One.
"There is no survivors' encampment, Number One," says Spock. "This is all some sort of trap. We've lost the Captain. Do you read?"
(continue to part 2)
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