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| The Talosians use their mental powers to trap the captain of the Enterprise! |
Original Air Date: Oct. 4, 1988. Written by: Gene Roddenberry. Directed by: Robert Butler.
Captain Christopher Pike (Jeffrey Hunter) meets a nice girl but has trouble with her family.
PLOT
Capt. Christopher Pike (Jeffrey Hunter) of the U. S. S. Enterprise is thinking of resigning. The ship is returning from a particularly bloody mission that ended in the deaths of crew members, and Pike feels depressed and weary. Then the Enterprise receives a distress call from a ship crashing on the planet Talos IV.
Though the message is approximately twenty years old, the Enterprise crew find survivors, ones who are in remarkably good health. Among these is Vina (Susan Oliver), a lovely young woman who takes an instant liking to Pike. She insists on showing him the reason for the survivors' good fortune - and then springs a trap, ensnaring the captain even as all that the crew have seen is revealed to be illusion. No survivors, no encampment - just tricks of the mind, played by an alien intelligence.
Pike finds himself in a cage, unable to escape, his every thought read by the telepathic Talosians. Oddly, Vina is still there, insisting that she is as real as he is. The Talosians proceed to use their mental powers to put Pike into a series of illusory settings: the combat Pike recently experienced, a pastoral scene at Pike's childhood home, and finally a smuggler's den, with Pike in the role of Pirate King. In each new scene, Vina is there - to be protected, or cherished, or even owned as his property, should he choose to claim her. Pike resists... but as the experiences grow more and more tantalizing, he finds that resistance weakening...
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| Capt. Christopher Pike (Jeffrey Hunter) is briefed by his officers. |
CHARACTERS
Captain One-Shot: Jeffrey Hunter brings a more naturalistic acting style to Pike than his successor would to Kirk. Pike is a bit world-weary (universe-weary?) as the episode begins, clearly an experienced leader who is starting to cross that blurry line between "seasoned" and simply "burned-out." This had the potential to be developed in interesting ways, had Hunter elected to stay on for the second pilot. However, Pike isn't a very warm character, and the one thing this pilot doesn't do is provide him much interaction with the other would-be regulars. Based on what's here, I'm not sure audiences would have taken to him. I half-suspect a Jeffrey Hunter Star Trek might have lasted only one season, instead of three. Still, he's good in this episode, and the series is a richer place for having had Pike, if only for a very short while.
Spock: Early Spock is surprisingly emotional, grinning openly at a strange alien flower. He also reacts to the captain's kidnapping with a brashness that seems unusual, given where the character would be taken. Leonard Nimoy's performance is adequate, but nothing special here, and he has a regrettable tendency to shout half his lines. It's a good thing he improved so quickly. Certainly, one sees little evidence here of a character or performance who would become the stuff of science-fiction legend.
The Enterprise Crew: A bland bunch, really. I respect Gene Roddenberry's desire to break barriers with a female first officer. Unfortunately, I can't help but agree with the network's assertion that Majel Barrett wasn't the best actress, at least not here. The young yeoman is obviously the prototype for Janice Rand, only dimmer (and not actually very attractive, at least not to my tastes). The doctor has a tendency to strike poses when on-camera, and I am very grateful that this proved to be his only episode. For characters who were clearly intended as regulars, none of them are very well-served by a plot that focuses all its attention on the lead's interaction with a guest actress.
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| Vina (Susan Oliver) tries to tempt Pike into accepting his captivity. |
THOUGHTS
Though that last paragraph points to one of The Cage's deficiencies as a pilot, in its failure to lay much groundwork for the regular cast's interactions, taken on its own the story holds up remarkably well. In fact, I suspect it plays better today than it did to test audiences in the 1960's. The script is both clever and thoughtful, with a resolution that defies expectations. The aliens are not simply evil monsters; they have motivations that are well-explained and even moderately sympathetic. It is also well-structured, with revelations doled out to Pike and the audience at the same time, at a gradual enough pace for an audience unfamiliar with science fiction to absorb, but not so gradually as to make the audience restless. Plus, there's at least one whopping big (and moderately well-staged) action scene thrown in for the plebs.
Susan Oliver does a strong job in the primary guest role. She has considerable chemistry with Jeffrey Hunter, and manages to create a character who is reasonably consistent, while at the same time changing her from one scenario to the next (mysterious wild child; pleading victim; lovely housewife; exotic slave girl; and fellow captive). The episode's content is surprisingly sexually overt for archive television... which was apparently one of the factors in its rejection, though it also makes it more interesting and less dated than most archive television of the era.
I have no idea which effects were changed for the remastered version of this episode, which indicates that the remastering team did their job well in this instance. The episode as a whole looks very good, and I suspect enjoyed a far higher budget than would be allowed for the rest of the series.
Rating: 8/10. An intriguing look at the series that might have been. I'm just as happy that what might have been, wasn't... but it is startling how little this particular slice of 45 (or more) year old television has dated.
Next Episode: Where No Man Has Gone Before
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Paul, thanks for collecting your reviews in one place.
ReplyDeleteDan Dassow