For a Pilot, this episode is extraordinary. It looks good, the “effects” are surprisingly well done and the acting I really enjoy. While it’s not Shatner, I think Jeffrey Hunter makes a great captain as Christopher Pike … and the doctor is John Hoyt who was the grandfather on Gimme A Break! The doctor is a decent character, certainly McCoy is better, but I like how his solution to Pike’s personal problems was to make him drink martinis. It’s interesting to note that this pilot seems to have more women in key roles than the rest of TOS, in fact the first officer is a woman (Majel Barrett). Although in typical fashion, Pike says that he hates having women on the bridge.
The plot begins with the Enterprise picking up a distress call from planet Talos. A research ship had crashed there a few years earlier. Pike and crew beam done and find the survivors; they are a bunch of gross old guys and one insanely beautiful woman. Thus begins a long run of sexy woman guest star in Star Trek TOS. Come to find out this is all an illusion set up by the Talosians. They plan to have Pike mate with this woman in order to create slave labor children. They are probing Pike’s mind and using this to turn this girl (Vina) into different hot chicks. But, he resists all of them. Now if this was Kirk – a) the Talosians would be disgusted by probing his mind and b) he would have had sex with this woman within 10 minutes.
Pike begins to resist the mind probes. He finds out that Vina is actually real; she survived the original crash but is really horribly disfigured. The Talosians eventually give up and let Pike go, because they say that humans are to violent ... take that! He offers to take Vina away, but she would rather stay there and be beautiful. Haha so sexist. In the end the Talosians give Vina a fake Pike to live with... The best seen is when Pike rips the Talosian out of the wall and tries to choke the shit out of him.
I love this episode, as I do many TOS eps. It looks good, colorful sets, the ship is cool and the aliens look realistic. Sure some parts are just ridiculous, like some weird pig creature that looks like Jodi the Pig from Amenityvile Horror and a weird caveman with jacked up teeth (actually looks exactly like the Thrall from Gamesters of Triskallion). They also have numerous references to the Orion Slave trade in this one. Anyway, an interesting fact is that the first time this episode was ever seen on TV was in 1988. Sadly Jeffrey Hunter died only a few years later in 1969 after suffering a stroke and cerebral hemorrhage. Susan Oliver, the woman that played Vina, ended up becoming a rather renowned airplane pilot.ST TOS COUNTDOWN: 1 down 79 to go
7 comments:
beep beep
According to Star Trek lore (which is probably true), the network executives watched this pilot and then told Gene Roddenberry "We love it!! It's Great!! Now just dumb it down!!"
That's why the retooled it, recast it, and started out the next pilot with a space vampire. It all worked out, however, since even dumbed down the show was still pretty smart.
But, yeah, this is a great pilot. This episode was way better as The Cage than as the redited The Menagerie, but you'll talk about that later.
That is true, they said it was too intellectual and not enough action. Which I guess I could see
Also, they were like, "Gene, why is your mistress in a lead role? She sucks. Give her a small role as the nurse or something if you absolutely have to have her on set so you can fuck her while you're at work."
Ha ha so true. The irony is that she acted more like a Vulcan than Spock... who was way to animated!
I'm really liking your blog so I thought I'd comment along with you. The Cage is an interesting enough episode, with solid performances. Hunter was great as Pike but I can see why they went with the less passive and more youthful Shatner... and I'm sure glad they did. It was interesting that we saw a clever and resourceful woman (Vina) and a useless and dumb one (Colt) in the same episode. In conclusion: THE WOMEN!!!!
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