"The Menagerie" - Season 1, Episodes 11 & 12
Star Trek salvages its original vision with a simple frame story.
Star Trek’s first episode was called “The Cage”. It starred Jeffrey Hunter as the surefooted Captain Christopher Pike, consciously modeled after Captain Horatio Hornblower from old adventure dime novels. Also starring were Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock, who was familiar with showrunner Gene Roddenberry from the man’s work on another NBC show (The Lieutenant) and Majel Barrett as the ironically second-in-command Number One. It never aired.
Instead, Star Trek’s first episode was called “The Man Trap.” Starring were William Shatner as the surefooted Captain James Kirk, consciously modeled after Captain Horatio Hornblower from old adventure dime novels, and Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock. Majel Barrett didn’t star, but she appeared as Nurse Christine Chapel and the voice of all the ship’s computers. It aired on September 8, 1966.
“The Cage” impressed NBC executives enough that they ordered a second pilot (which eventually became “Where No Man Has Gone Before”) but also raised enough issues to not stand on its own. NBC found the episode too erotic1, or “too cerebral” if you ask Gene Roddenberry, and had issues with Barrett’s performance. But it also cost $425,000.2 That wasn’t going to just go to waste. Plus, by the time Star Trek really got rolling off of the back of that second pilot, special effect and scripting delays made meeting the rigorous deadlines of network television extremely difficult.3
Thus, “The Menagerie” was born. As Star Trek production delays mounted, the decision was made to film a quick “envelope” story with the established cast around the original footage from “The Cage” to give the crew and writers time to catch up.4 This two part episode was filmed in only a week.
The “envelope” isn’t a half bad story, and pairs well with what they had from “The Cage.” The Enterprise docks with Starbase 11 (pictured above) after Spock claims to receive a call from the ship’s previous captain, Christopher Pike. The opening segment, beyond featuring some lovely set design and matte paint work, is also the first time we’ve gotten a hint of Starfleet outside of the Enterprise. After ten episodes, it’s fun to see Kirk and crew not be at the top of the totem poll, and Shatner in particular is affable with his superior officer: Commander Jose Mendez. Mendez tells Kirk that Spock’s story makes no sense and shows them why: Captain Pike is a shell of what he was, unable to communicate beyond simple yeses and noes and kept alive solely by machines after a terrible accident.
Captain Christopher Pike, played by Sean Kenney. While Jeffrey Hunter played Pike in “The Cage",” he was unavailable to reprise the role. He may not have wanted to either, as he reportedly disliked “The Cage” after his wife found it embarrassing.
In what is a great twist, the envelope lets Spock play the villain for a bit. He’s got an agenda and sneaks his way onto the Enterprise with Pike, claiming top secret orders to visit Talos IV, “the one forbidden world in all the galaxy.” Kirk and Mendez quickly catch up with him, but Spock gives himself up for court martial, which has ludicrously high stakes: death. He has evidence he must present in his defense.
That evidence, it turns out, is “The Cage.” Thirteen years ago, Pike and the Enterprise crew, including a significantly more emotional and energetic Spock, had flown to Talos IV too. Spock begs his jury (Pike, Kirk, and Mendez) to watch what happened before judging him. And so we sit down to watch Star Trek with the cast of Star Trek.
The Enterprise headed to Talos IV initially in response to a distress signal from the ship Columbia. Once on the (seemingly) uninhabited planet the crew find the survivors, including a young attractive woman named Vina who was born on the planet, to be in peak physical condition. Vina promises to show Pike why, but she abducts him underground. The rest of the “survivors” disappear. Their presence was solely an illusion. There are Talosians after all.
The Keeper (Meg Mylie) and two other Talosians portrayed by Georgia Schmidt and Serena Sande. All of the Talosians were portrayed by women, with the Keeper’s dialogue being dubbed over by Malachi Throne, who played Commander Mendez in the frame story.
The Talosians have a simple goal: Get Captain Pike hot and bothered. They’ve collected quite a collection of living things in their menagerie and are eager to breed their zoo animals. Pike particularly interests them because they believe humans will make a perfect slave race with which to repair their broken, war ravaged planet. They hope Vina will prove a perfect match, even though her appearance is irrelevant. The Talosians have spent centuries training their minds (hence the heads, I guess) and can now read and project thoughts, including illusions, to anyone around them. Vina can be whoever Pike wants, and they show him several options.
Eventually, the crew of the Enterprise help Pike escape to the surface, where they are all confronted by the Keeper. He’s had a change of heart. Pike’s escape has shown that humans will never be slaves. Instead, they decide to abandon their plans, even though it will doom their species. Pike offers to take Vina home but she elects to stay, her appearance having been revealed as a sham: she’s horribly disfigured from the original crash and Talos IV is all she’s known. Pike and the crew returned to the Enterprise, later telling Starfleet to forbid future travel to the planet.
Having seen this, we return to the present, where Mendez fades away. The Talosians were in control the whole time, and have a rather simple motivation. They want to help their good friend Christopher Pike enjoy life a little more. His broken body can be irrelevant among them, with their power over the mind and illusion. Spock was just helping a friend the whole time. The Enterprise sends Pike down, where he is shown standing tall and hand-in-hand with Vina as they return underground.
As a pilot, “The Cage” would have had a few things going for it. Much like “The Corbomite Manuever,” it cleanly introduces the entire cast and gives them each a distinct personality. Pike is not as unflappable as Kirk, he’s got a real confliction and weariness to him, aided by Hunter looking somewhat older than Shatner. His conversation with the Enterprise’s patriarchal Dr. Boyce is all about his potential retirement to a horse ranch after the ship recently lost some crew members in an expedition. The Wagon Train references were much more pointed the first go around it seems. Boyce himself contrasts with Bones through a significantly more nurturing and calm demeanor; you can’t really see him getting snippy with the Captain in the same way McCoy does with Kirk. In contrast, Spock is characterized as much more outspoken here. Nimoy’s perfromance had not quite settled on the quiet curiosity that he figured out while filming “The Corbomite Manuever.”
Dr. Boyce gives Captain Pike some necessary "medicine.” DeForest Kelley had been considered for the part but it took until the show was ordered for a full series for him to be cast.
The most positive comparison to that great episode though is the ending. As “The Cage” originally ended, the Enterprise made ultimately peaceful contact with alien species, who agreed to give up clearly evil plans after engaging in scientific research and cultural exchange. Star Trek as it aired took ten episodes to arrive at its thesis statement, but “The Cage” gets to the point much quicker. “The Menagerie” keeps that ending and organically adds to it in a way that enhances its meaning.
Much is made throughout the episode of how “trapped” Captain Pike is in his destroyed body. His mind is fully intact without a way to express itself. The Talosians are characterized similarly. Long after they destroyed their own planet through war, they have abandoned physical pursuits and let their bodies wither while their minds have grown. The metaphor is literalized: their heads are engorged with veins that literally pulse. The heart and mind and body are one in the species.
Not only that, but the Talosian mind has complete control over the body. It can cause the body to feel anything it desires. Illusions of entire personalities from lightyears away are possible. The Talosian body is practically irrelevant. This lends them a subjective sort of godhood - anything is possible that relies solely on perception. But as Pike points out upon learning this, the Talosians are being awfully regressive with this power. All they have created are cages, a whole menagerie in fact, of other lives. They sit underground and live and relive the lives of others, seeking a high from memory and hoping that one day a species will come along that can do the work for them. Further, a subjective godhood only goes so far. Food and heat can be faked only until the body won’t tolerate the lies anymore.
Vina leads Pike back underground to live out the rest of his in a more pleasant illusion. Vina was played by Susan Oliver, who spent the 60s and 70s in steady guest appearances on television before turning to directing. She directed episodes of M*A*S*H, Trapper John, M.D., Magnum, P.I., and Murder She Wrote before an untimely death to cancer in 1990.
The Talosians accept that their plan will not work with surprising grace. Whether out of morality or impossibility, they accept their extinction as inevitable by the end of the episode and are content with their illusions until its their time to go. The physical will catch up with them just as it eventually did Pike.
And that’s what makes the ending here so oddly touching. As The Keeper tells Kirk, “Captain Pike has an illusion, and you have reality. May you find your way as pleasant.” For Pike and the Talosians, the body has become a prison. They cannot escape that prison; none of us can. But they can make the time inside as pleasant as possible. There’s a melancholy in their fate that the episode is explicit about, yes. There’s also a hope in it that it celebrates though. Spock breaks the rules and ignores his duties simply to help a friend find some peace through illusion. It is a peace that others may find false or manufactured. But it is real to those that need it. Perhaps that is not so bad when it is all you can do.
Stray Thoughts
For a “throwaway” character, Christopher Pike has no shortage of appearances in later Star Trek media. He was played by Bruce Greenwood in the J.J. Abrams films and is currently played by Anson Mount as the lead on Strange New Worlds. Indeed, the entire crew from “The Cage” are the main characters of Strange New Worlds, a more classic style Trek show currently airing on Paramount Plus.
There’s a beautiful moment when Spock and Pike head down to Talos IV where they find a species of plants that make music when touched (pictured below). I know stuff like this is expensive, but I hope future episode of the show lean into the beauty and strangeness of alien life.
When Pike leaves the ship he explicitly leaves Number One in command. One has to wonder if NBC was uncomfortable with having a female captain, even temporarily, as a recurring element of the series.
Photo Credits
Starbase 11: https://www.flickr.com/photos/birdofthegalaxy/3547014119
Pike: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0394904/
Talosians: https://tvdatabase.fandom.com/wiki/Talosians
Pike and Boyle: https://trekmovie.com/2020/05/17/actor-jeffrey-combs-responds-to-fan-clamor-for-him-to-play-dr-boyce-on-star-trek-strange-new-worlds/
Vina and Pike: https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/vina-star-trek-discovery-melissa-george-interview-if-memory-serves
Spock and Pike: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/star-trek-unexpected-afterlife-doomed-754166/
Herbert Solow and Robert Justman, “Inside Star Trek: The Real Story,” p. 59.
David Alexander, “The Autobiography of Gene Roddenberry,” p. 197.
Solow and Justman, p. 250.
Id. at p. 253.
Like I already told you, I really genuinely enjoyed this set. It may be my favorite plot so far. There's a lot of discourse surrounding how disability should be properly represented in media - should we normalize it and show all the ways disabled people are capable? Or should we allow viewers to live in the fantasy of an undisabled life? Obviously this episode chose the latter and did so in a way that likely resonated with many viewers who wished they could leave behind their bodies and live in a beautiful utopian illusion.
I actually found Spock to be a little out of character in this episode. Would he really think of this on his own and violate the rules, risking the death penalty, for something that wasn't even asked of him? I'm not to sure of it. But I enjoyed it a lot. Would he do the same thing for Jim? Oh for sure but for totally different reasons. ;)
Of the pilot characters, Number One is the one I feel saddest about missing out on. Uhura and Rand are pretty distinct, interesting women, but N1 gives us that awkward, nerdy female representation that is just so delicious. I'm not sure how they could have had both her and Spock on the cast, but I feel like they could have made it work. Do they explore her on Strange New Worlds? I'm just such a fan. My second place for fave pilot character is Pike but only because he's so crazy hot.
Love the blog as always, makes Tuesdays worthwhile.