"The Cage"

[Guest SP-1]

I have the color version on tape and I watched/listened to it earlier today. The major difference is, of course, the cast. All but Nimoy were cut when the second pilot was made, in favor of Shatner, Kelly, and the others, and that pilot was the one that was picked up.

 

Has anyone else around here seen it? What did you think about it? While I love Kirk, I would have loved to have seen a couple more episodes with Pike and co. He and the doctor here had an interesting, yet different kind of friendship than what would develop between Kirk and McCoy later on. Spock was a bit more emotional here as well.

 

Just wondering if anyone else had seen it and what they thought.

 

--SP

[Guest WrestlingDeacon]

I've seen it on some Trek special a few years ago. Of course, most of the episode is contained within the series two parter "The Menagerie." Smart use of the existing film.

 

The Number One (played by Majel Barret) seems to act more like what we know a Vulcan to be, while Spock comes off as the brash rookie like Chekov would in the regular series. From what I've heard, the network didn't like the alien or the lady first officer and told Roddenberry he could only keep one. So he kept Spock, knowing he would be the break out role and he could find other work for Majel, and just sort of combined the ideas for the two characters.

 

One of my favorite movies is the Searchers, so I find Jeffery Hunter to be a likable and intriguing screen prescence. He actually reminds me a bit of Scott Bakula on the new series. He's a man of action, but he won't fly off the handle like Kirk does and he's more willing to think things through.

 

The old doctor ties into Roddenberry's pitch of a "wagon train to the stars." In westerns you always have the grizzled old doctor dispensing booze and advice more than medicine. You can actually find a lot of parallels between the first pilot and the series' Rawhide and Wagon Train in the cast setup. On the other hand, it's said this pilot was rejected for being too "cerebral."

[Guest SP-1]

It was pretty heavy on the thinking for a sixties show. The normal Trek was smart, but wasn't eactly the same as The Cage was in terms of the thinking involved. More action.

[Guest TheZsaszHorsemen]

It was good, but I don't think this thread will be complete until we get a pic of the green Orion slave woman up.

[Guest red_file]

Memory has been too kind to the green slave woman. Reality just doesn't quite live up.

 

I was never really all that impressed with "The Cage." Maybe it was because I was too conditioned towards Trek as I knew it, or something, but it always rubbed me the wrong way.

 

Wasn't there supposed to be a captain before Pike as well?

[Guest SP-1]

Robert April. I'm not even sure he's been mentioned on-screen, though.

[Guest WrestlingDeacon]

They did an episode of the cartoon series about Robert April. He's like way over 80 and the Enterprise is taking him to a retirement community or something since he was the ship's first captain. They go through a cloud that starts de-aging everyone and April has to find some way to stop it as he's in his thirties again while the rest of the crew turns into babies. I believe that's about the only time Robert April has factored into a Star Trek show.

[Guest MrRant]

I like both episodes and I thought that they made a good connection on how to explain what was going on.

 

I have both on tape.

[cawthon777 0]

I was huge into Star Trek back when I was 10ish, right around the time of the 25th anniversary. I believe I rented The Cage at Blockbuster once after marking out for The Menagerie in syndication (both parts of which I now own via the CBS Video Library collection).

 

As a much younger kid (7 or so), I thought - without seeing all of The Menagerie - that the big brained aliens were responsible for making Pike an invalid. If that were the case, the pilot might have been more interesting.