The Cage.
Right?
Do I win valuable prizes?
Is that the title? The two-parter, with Christopher Pike and the aliens with the throbbing veins in their foreheads?
What do I win? That’s the important question.
It isn’t a two parter. The original was “The Cage” with Christopher Pike, Spock, the female first officer, etc.
The two parter was “The Menagerie”, which had the normal cast looking back on the pilot episode as part of Spocks trial.
Is that the title? The two-parter, with Christopher Pike and the aliens with the throbbing veins in their foreheads?
What do I win? That’s the important question.
Which pilot episode? Star Trek had two:
The Cage (with Jeffrey Hunter)
and
Where No Man Has Gone Before (with William Shatner)
NBC didn’t like the Hunter version but asked Roddenberry to try again.
Further, the premiere episode of the show was The Man Trap. “Where No Man” was broadcast third and “The Cage” turned into “The Menagerie.”
Reality Chuck wins.
All I have to say about it is that Sally Kellerman sure was a hottie back then.
–Cliffy
Apparently she had a problem with the tightness of her pants and how much they revealed her… ahemm unmentionables.
If you watcher her she tends to keep her hands placed in the same location when she hasn’t got anything to do with them.
Okay, now I have to watch that episode again…
Anyone have the video with the black and white scenes spliced in? I’ve just seen it in 100% color.
I would have liked Jeff Hunter to continue as captain. He was a babe.
Where No Man… was a much better episode and, I thought, one of the best episodes of the original series overall. In any event, both it and The Cage were thankfully free of the sanctimony that would infect NextGen’s pilot.
The DVD of “The Cage” comes with both the original full color version, and the patchwork reconstruction mixing black and white and color footage. Why anybody would want to see the mongrel second version when the original has now been found puzzles me.
Maybe they are crazy Wizard of Oz fans that claim that the Talosian planet was really Oz and that is why they kept going from Black and White to Color…
Stupid hamsters ate my OP. I was trying to ask what you all thought of the pilot and if you thought it would have remained successful if Pike had stayed Captain? I personally liked him better than Kirk; he seemed a lot harder.
As for prizes, I had not intended to award any, but I shall anyway. You each get a “Smilin’ Spock” cookie and your very own electronic “Pulsating Forehead Vein” with which to amaze your friends and neighbors.
Leonard Nimoy, in his book I Am Spock, said that there was not enough contrast between the brooding Pike and the taciturn Spock as there was between Kirk and Spock. I agree, although I like Jeffrey Hunter as an actor.
Too bad Majel Barrett’s Number One character was dropped after the first pilot. For all the ribbing she gets in “The Cage” about being sexually frigid, she was a lot more interesting – and sexy – than Majel Barrett’s Nurse Chapel on the series.
More about “The Cage”:
http://www.testermanscifi.org/JeffreyHunterPart1.html
In 1999, I briefly came into possession of the excursion jacket Captain Pike wears in “The Cage”, as seen here:
http://www.jeffreyhuntermovies.com/images/ST4bluehi.jpg
Just to add another little tidbit:
Jeffrey Hunter did not play the crippled Capt. Pike in The Menagerie.
Pike is lame. Kirk Rules, Picard Rules, Sisko Rules, Janeway Drools, and Archer seems to be on the path to ruledom. He just needs to be bald or score with a green chick to push him over the edge.
Janeway was my favorite captain. I’ve thought she was a bad-ass ever since she was Mrs. Ironside. Actually, I guess that’s more to the point; I dunno if the character was as cool as Kate Mulgrew seems to be.
One thing that impressed me in every interview I’ve seen with her; she seems to have taken the part and run with it instead of looking on it as just a job or making fun of it. You’d probably never see her doing that “Get a Life” sketches on SNL.
And I thought Pike was pretty cool, too. But yes, Kirk was more interesting. Walloon had the right idea – combine Kirk with Number One and you’ve got a series.
Sol: If Kate Mulgrew is your idea of “cool” then I won’t be visiting your house in the summer because your air conditioning will probably be set at 84 degrees.
I would have greatly preferred Lyndsey Wagner or Genevieve Bujold in that role.