“Spock hijacks the Enterprise to take his crippled former captain, Christopher Pike, to the forbidden world of Talos IV. He then demands a court martial where he uses the events of "The Cage" to tell the tale of Pike's captivity on the planet years earlier"
For most of us The Menagerie is just another one of those lazy “clip” episodes. But we forget that The Cage had never aired in the 1960’s. They had already made this pilot episode, so instead of just forgetting about it, they actually did something very creative and worked it into two episodes. If we had watched The Menagerie back in 1966 I’m sure we would have though it to be a very good episode. Sadly I’ve seen The Cage, so having to basically rewatch it was rough. But, the writers worked together these two plots rather flawlessly.In fact it was taking them so long to produce these shows that Gene had to come up with a way to give them some more production time. So he put together these two scripts, both episodes could be filmed in one week. This gave them a two episode lead in production, previously they had been sending the episodes in three days before airing. That's just insane.
That being said, the non recycled scenes are awesome. In this particular episode we have Spock going against all protocol in order to return his former Captain Christopher Pike to Talos IV. Certainly his acts are incredibly treacherous and mutinous and I don’t see how he doesn’t get imprisoned for this. He literally steals the Enterprise and abandons Kirk. No matter how many times I’ve seen these, I always forget the ending! Which is good because now it makes me want to watch part 2.
Spock lies in order to get the Enterprise to the hospital that his holding Pike. Kirk, McCoy and Spock beam down … leaving Lt. Bailey in charge of the ship??? They see Cpt. Pike and he is messed up. His face is burned and he is sitting in a giant roomba. He can only communicate with beeping lights. I mean really? This is the best that they can do in the future. Think everything that we had seen in Enterprise. Now, the best they can do for Pike is put him in a bumper-car. They couldn’t even simulate a voice?
 |
| Chris Pike riding the bumper cars on Coney Island |
The episode ends with Kirk catching up the Enterprise in a shuttlecraft. Spock has taken Enterprise along with Pike and is heading for Talos IV. Once caught, Spock sentences himself to a court martial. Once at his trial Spock shows his evidence proving his actions are just. Spock has a TV or something and starts playing the episode of The Cage. So I’m thinking, who is filming this and how would they possibly do it? Well, Cmd. Mendez asks the same question. And there is an explanation, it is from the Talosians. This is what makes Star Trek so great, they always paid attention to the details. How many other sci-fi shows/movies from back then would have bothered to explain this? Basically none.
ST TOS COUNTDOWN: 12 down 68 to go
3 comments:
I've never really understood a lot of the conceits of this episode. Wasn't there some rule that said you couldn't go to this planet under penalty of death, or something? Would the Federation really do that? Aren't there, like, a billion planets in Star Trek that are off limits or too dangerous to visit?
you'd really think in the future we would have better medical advancements than this
Yes, it did say that going to Talos IV is an automatic death penalty. First off all, seems pretty barbaric by Federation standards. Plus this planet doesn't seem so bad compared to the tons of other wacked out places that have been visited.
Post a Comment