I was checking the interactive guide in my cable listings and noticed that the remastered Star Trek pilot episode “The Cage” will be on TV tonight. This is the one starring Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike. It also features Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock and Majel Barret as Number One. A variation of this episode was broadcast as the two-part episode “The Menagerie” with a wraparound story that has Mr. Spock committing mutiny and transporting an injured Captain Pike to the planet Talos IV against Starfleet orders. However tonight’s episode is the full original pilot episode without the wraparound scenes.
The remastered Star Trek episodes are broadcast over the air individually on a station-by-station basis, so you need to check your local listings. Or you can look here to find the station in your area broadcasting the remastered ST. Although they are remastered, the episodes are typically edited to fit in a 60 minute timeslot with commercials. These episodes will be uncut on DVD, but not necessarily uncut for broadcast.
Well, no “Cage.” Instead we got “Mudd’s Women.” It seems Paramount pulled “The Cage” from this week’s schedule for some unspecified reason. According to Wikipedia, it’s unknown when it will eventually air. Even Star Trek.com, CBS/Paramount’s official Star Trek site, had this episode scheduled to air this week.
So if a mod could please close this thread, I’d appreciate it. Thanks.
BTW, why did ST have two pilots – “The Cage” and “Where No Man Has Gone Before” – with an almost total (saving only Spock) change of cast & characters from the first to the second? Does anybody know?
To condense the story: NBC rejected “The Cage” as being “too cerebral” and for not having enough action. They saw potential in Roddenberry’s concept, however, and in an unprecedented step for that time, commissioned a new pilot, which was “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” Rather than waste the footage shot for “The Cage,” the Star Trek producers utilized it in “The Menagerie” and tied “The Cage” into ST continuity through the character of Spock, who was established as being on the Enterprise in the pilot.
Interestingly, when “The Cage” was respliced into “The Menagerie,” the original color negative was destroyed and considered lost. Roddenberry’s black and white reference copy of the episode was thought to be the only intact print to exist. The color scenes used in “The Menagerie” were intercut with scenes from the black and white reel for early home video release. In 1987, a film archivist found an unmarked reel in a Hollywood laboratory which contained the unused scenes trimmed in making “The Menagerie.” Realizing what he had, he arranged for the footage to be returned to Roddenberry. The episode was put back together and shown on television for the first time in 1988.
Additionally, the first episode of Star Trek actually broadcast (on September 8, 1966) was “The Man Trap”, supposedly chosen by network execs because it had a recognizable sci-fi monster, while other episodes Roddenberry had filmed (including Where No Man Has Gone Before) did not.
Well, Trek’s eventual co-producer (assistant director on “The Cage”) Robert Justman and Desilu executive Herb Solow, in their behind the scenes book “Inside Star Trek,” both say that the “too cerebral” tag was network speak for “boring” and “not enough action.” In addition, they say that most of the the execs knew that Majel Barrett (who played Number One in “The Cage”) was GR’s girlfriend, and pretty much denigrated her acting abilities as they watched the pilot. IIRC, they simply didn’t care for the rest of the cast for whatever reason, other than Hunter. Their later airbrushing of Spock’s ears in promo booklets is now legendary.
Really, “The Cage” doesn’t have a knock-down Kirkian brawl like we are used to, and like we got in WNMHGB between Kirk and demi-god Gary Mitchell (Gary Lockwood).
Yeh, but WNMHGB doesn’t have a green-skinned dancing slave girl or the captain screaming in Hell or any implied sexual tension between him and one of his officers. It’s a wash, really.
And why did they decide to make the bridge dome opaque? That opening shot in “The Cage” looking down at the bridge crew from above the ship was uberkewl!
Well, I think the clear bridge dome was just a story telling device myself – I don’t think we were supposed to believe it was really see-through. I think it was just a quick way to show where the bridge was located. Just mho.
And I agree with you, really. I’m one of the ones who prefers “The Cage” over WNMHGB, even though I do agree that Barrett’s acting is a bit shaky in some scenes, but no worse that Peter Duryea’s or Laurel Goodwin’s.
As for the inevitable “why did Shatner replace Hunter” question, there are three possible answers - take your pick.
a) After the first pilot was rejected, Hunter decided he’d focus on movies.
b) Hunter would have taken the role, but he was shooting a movie and was unavailable for the second pilot
c) For whatever reason (money/clash of egos/trouble on the set) Roddenberry or Desilu or NBC didn’t want Hunter back. Since most of the cast was being replaced anyway, replacing the Captain was no big deal.
As for making the dome opaque, it was a production decision. Star Trek was already a hellishly expensive show for its era, and a scene looking through the dome would have required yet another special effect (an optical insert to be exact.) Eliminating the effect saved a few bucks and some production time.
Requiem for Methuselah showed the bridge has a transparent viewscreen, though, in a moment where the semi-immortal Flint uses advanced tech to teleport and shrink the Enterprise into a two-foot model resting on a desk. Kirk closely examines it and his (relatively giant) face can be seen through the viewscreen.
That’s the viewscreen, not the dome; it works, presumably, through TV cameras mounted on the hull. It can also be used for videoconferencing with other ships.
Well, set phasers to “duh”. I know the difference between the viewscreen and the dome, I only mention RfM to illustrate that the bridge had (rather impractical) windows of some kind.
No, if it did, Kirk would have been able to see into the bridge from outside. The viewscreen is not a window. The Enterprise has windows/portholes, but not on the bridge.
Then I suggest you review that episode at first opportunity, because Kirk seeing into the bridge from outside is exactly what happens in that brief scene.
It was my understanding (assumption) that the viewscreen just showed a composite of what several different sensor systems were reading, filtered through the ships computer.
But yes, that scene does seem to indicate that Kirk thought he could pick up the ship and peer inside to see if his crew was ok…
I really don’t see how the one episode is any less cerebral or any more action-packed than the other. And why the change of cast?