Prelude

Before we touch on the 40 years,
Before we do honor to what we’ve loved…I have to go back a bit further.

To 1964.

Forty *two* years ago. When I was two going on three and couldn't have told a phaser from a popsicle and four years away from peering up at "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," from beneath my mother's ironing board. [Yes, the hamhanded anti-bigotry piece of wet towel was my very first exposure to Star Trek. And Frank Gorshin Wasn't even FUNNY, ***it!]

Roddenberry taking a meeting and promising those with the cash “of *course* you’ll get something familiar. Recognizable even. A space “Western.” High Noon with ray guns.

And then he went home and wrote, and…as happens often…when you are finished writing, it doesn’t come out as anything like what you started off to write.

Looking back and watching “The Cage,” well, of *course* it was Trek!
That amazing matte shot of Pike’s memory of Rigel 7, one of the best TOS ever created.
“A man’ll tell his bartender things he’ll never tell his doctor.”
“Rig to transmit ships power.”
“Is this a deception? Do you actually intend to destroy yourselves?”
“If we go buzzing about down there…”

And equally…what the hell is this? Certainly not the “Star Trek” we know.

“I’m *tired* of being responsible for 203 lives; who goes on the away team and who doesn’t; and who lives and who dies….to the point of considering resigning.” What a whiner!

If Kirk didn’t resign after losing Edith Keeler, then well *Mister Pike*
Suck it up and deal.

“…”I’m just not used to having a woman on the bridge.” (green and sensual in my fantasies hell yes! But NEVER on the bridge!)

[followed by an annoyed, pained look of Number One, his female First Officer, played by a gorgeous Majel Barret!]

An unfettered sweet Spock smile, pure Joy in the Unknown as he takes in some new flora.


But I’m just playin.’

I don’t really dismiss “The Cage.” As a matter of fact, it used one particular shot, that I believe had it been kept in, would have made the rest of TOS a bit more reverent and beautiful….Roddenberry did in 1964 what Robert Wise would overdo and fumble *badly* in Star Trek: The Motion(less) Picture.

There’s a “beauty pass” up over the ship’s bow in the opening credits, after the hinky music has subsided to a few constant belltones…you are given a sweep over the saucer section’s expanse, a sense of how big, and awesome the Enterprise is….and then the camera swings to the small bubble of the bridge atop the ship, and slowly hones in on the minuscule beings that move her…and we slip past the shields and through the hull….to a view of a starker bridge…but just as active…the hub of activity that we know well, just minus most of her happy coloring (in more than one way, since the crew is pretty Caucasian except for Spock)….and the story begins.

I love Pike. All the bravado…and all the pain, right out front, dragged there kicking and screaming by the Talosian’s powers of illusion. He’s terrified when he awakens that this will end up Just Like Rigel, and more of those he’s responsible for will lose their lives.

His soul is begging for that “rest at home,” while his mind realizes he’s got to work his way out of this box soon.

A snark about the “Orion Slave Girl” sequence: Vina has the tumbling dark curls, but she’s a deep forest/hunter green, the rich color of her skin being one more ‘attribute’ meant to titillate the senses, no doubt…She’s hot!

But then we get to “Enterprise” forty years later, and the Orion chicks have the lithe movement and the tumbling dark hair…but they’re painted with pea soup…that dark chartreuse that says nothing but “YUCK!” to me.

“There’s a way out of any cage and I’ll find it.” It’s Pike’s resolve speaking, but the line is pure James Tiberius Kirk.

TOS is branded as too sexist all the time, but I find the forced “catfight” between Vina, Colt and Number One stayed remarkably civilized, even with the Talosians vocalizing the hidden thoughts of Colt and Number One. For discussion of this pilot, and the TOS that comes after, people aren’t allowing it to spring up out of the ground as the product of its era.

Any First Contact team would know that the way to best understand a new planet’s culture is to record and report with as little bias as possible, and yet fans of the series (particularly those that never took to the original show, it seems) will not allow the pieces of this puzzle, conceived and built in different decades by differing creative teams, the influences it cannot avoid.)

And, the end of the Cage is now profoundly uncomfortable, if you really watch it.

Pike, Colt, Number One with the agreement of Vina, decide they will not live as amusing pets/ terraforming drones for the much more powerful Talosians and rig one of the away team’s phasers to explode. They’ll use the IED rather than submit.

“Your race has a unique hatred of captivity, even when it’s pleasant and benevolent… This makes you too violent and dangerous a species for our needs.”

…but that’s what Trek, real Trek is supposed to do….make you *think!*

And of course the suits said to Roddenberry….This isn’t our space opera! Come on now….Action/adventure!

And “Where No Man…” was the answer to that.

In early September we’ll talk about TOS….But since the Cage is unique….we give it it’s due separately.