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Once again I accidentally stumbled onto a remastered Star Trek episode. So now I get to check out the original pilot and crew without the the second TOS crew being intercut.

Thoughts and observations:

-Giant communicators again. In clear this time.

-What?! Extra gear, utility belts and protective jackets for an away mission! NONSENSE!

-Time Warp Factor 7

-Holy... A SPACE FAX!!

-Captain Pike got stuck and ambushed in a castle on Rigel 7 by people with swords and then got attacked by their warrior. I guess silly missions like that didn't just happen to Kirk. Oh and a Yeoman was killed, the OG Redshirt.

-"Space vehicle Enterprise from a stellar group on the other side of the galaxy"

-Was there a cultural fascination with ESP and telepathy at the time that anyone was aware of? Both pilots feature them heavily.

-Damn... is Captain Pike dreamier than Captain Kirk?

-It's interesting that the "moral" is that illusions can lead to the downfall of a civilization in the pilot for TOS and the holodeck was one of the "cool new" technologies in TNG.

-The portable phaser canon. Probably phased out due to it being more believable and less noticeable to the viewer to reuse footage of phaser blasts from the Enterprise in orbit than them trying to reuse the footage from the pilot and make it look fresh and new. Plus it would be one less set piece to keep around. That or just a lack of stories that called for it.

-Mr Spock calls the engines the Hyperdrive and says to "initiate warp". The Enterprise also apparently has emergency backup rockets that can be used to blast it out of orbit.

-Still using lasers at this point? Pike refers to the side arm he gets from #1 as a laser.

-Man, the Doctor had U.S.S. Enterprise on his scrubs/uniform and above it an emblem of Earth and something written around it, but I couldn't make out what the hell it said.

-Apparently the Telosians, while super advanced and possesing great power, are retarded. Instead of rebuilding the girl Vena, so that she, y'know, had the same looking body that they do, they put a giant mound of flesh and whatever on her shoulder.

-Damn, that red headed Yeoman would have been my Eve for sure!

-Whoa! They really kicked the theme song into high gear for the end of this episode. It's also a way groovier version that the series proper got.

Overall, highly enjoyable. Probably in my top five of TOS episodes. I also must say, the new effects kill a level of cheesiness that has always been there for me and I don't miss it a bit.
Highly recommend this episode if you get the chance to catch it.

I saw The Cage last week because the other thread you started got me nostalgic. I haven't seen any of the remastered versions of TOS, but that doesn't matter. Vanilla TOS works for me just fine, but eventually I'll want to check out what they've done.

I think the problem with Vina wasn't that the Talosians didn't just know how to put her back together again, but also that her injuries were very severe. They found her in the wreckage, a lump of flesh barely alive, and had nothing else to work with. Note that in The Menagerie, Captain Pike suffers horrendous injuries and Federation medical science can't restore to him his appearance or his mobility. For the Talosians, who are a shattered civilisation at best, they may not have the resources they once did. Indeed, it is directly implied that they don't - the whole moral of the story as you pointed out, that their use of illusion became akin to that of a narcotic, lead to a breakdown in their society. Probably after the war that devastated the surface of the planet, which likely lead to many Talosians to escape into casting illusions to escape the dreariness of day-to-day reality, and its bleakness. Don't forget, the Talosians aren't exactly nice people - their motive for abducting Pike were essentially self-serving, and they regularly punish non-complying 'specimens' with telepathic torture.

I like this episode a great deal, and especially liked the character of Pike. Both Pike and Kirk are clean cut characters on the outside, but deep down they have darker sides to them which adds a different dimension to their characters. This makes their nobility more impressive IMO. I also like Vina, she is a pretty tragic character.

I was a huge fan of the Cage, although I can't watch it anymore without remembering Stewie's Christmas time address on Family guy

Stewie Griffin: Good evening. I am playing the role of Jesus, a man once portrayed on the big screen by Jeffrey Hunter. You may remember him as the actor who was replaced by William Shatner on Star Trek. Apparently Mr. Hunter was good enough to die for our sins, but not quite up to the task of seducing green women.

The hyperdrive comment from mr. Spock was the centerpiece for a hysterically irrational argument that Warp drive was better than hyperdrive in a vs argument.

The spinny settings on the lasers were funny because they reminded me of a garden hose.

Spock unleashes a grin when he sees wierd shiny plant things.

Havok has gotten me into the habit of making discconnected lists instead of chesive paragraphs

I thought captain Pike's quarters were pretty well designed

The Entire Episode reminded me of Forbidden Planet, I was waiting for Robbie to toddle on by at some point, perhaps followed by the little boy and the pedophiole doctor from lost In Space. Star Trek once it evolved a little had a refreshingly unique feel.

Which later turned into a distressingly formulaic feel.

Themightytom wrote:Spock unleashes a grin when he sees wierd shiny plant things.

Spock's actually smiling and laughing all over the place in this episode. Of course this was because the "logical", "serious" character was originally going to be Number One (Majel Barret, perhaps best known as Nurse Chapel in TOS, as well as the voice of Federation computers from mid TOS-on). In-universe it would be safe to assume that Spock had not yet fully decided to devote himself to perfecting the Vulcan emotionless way (though perhaps, again, Vulcans were not originally going to be stoic, humorless snores.)

Havok wrote: -Was there a cultural fascination with ESP and telepathy at the time that anyone was aware of? Both pilots feature them heavily.

Besides the whole new-age hippie movement?

-Apparently the Telosians, while super advanced and possesing great power, are retarded. Instead of rebuilding the girl Vena, so that she, y'know, had the same looking body that they do, they put a giant mound of flesh and whatever on her shoulder.

Turns out rebuilding a species whose body you've never seen before isn't that easy? Like how scientists always get dinosaur skeletons perfect and. . .oh.

Havok wrote:Once again I accidentally stumbled onto a remastered Star Trek episode. So now I get to check out the original pilot and crew without the the second TOS crew being intercut.

Thoughts and observations:

-Giant communicators again. In clear this time.

Wah Chang's original communicator prop. Actually a bit of clever design with the perspex main body to the device.

-Time Warp Factor 7

I've always liked that bit of terminology —reinforced when Tyler is telling the shipwreck survivors how they wouldn't believe how fast they'd get back to Earth now that "the time barrier's been broken. Our new ships can—" Suggests a slightly different mechanism to the FTL drive.

-Holy... A SPACE FAX!!

Actually just a printer, but it could be used as such. Yes, they still used hardcopy on Pike's Enterprise —you also notice his yeomen handing him ringbound notebooks with the reports for him to sign off on at a couple points in the episode.

-"Space vehicle Enterprise from a stellar group on the other side of the galaxy"

In early Star Trek there's the clear implication that the missions of the Enterprise are actually galaxy-spanning. The original cut for "Where No Man Has Gone Before" puts this forward in Kirk's original extended log entry (and of course has the ship probing out beyond the periphery of the galaxy proper as a plot-point).

-Was there a cultural fascination with ESP and telepathy at the time that anyone was aware of? Both pilots feature them heavily.

There had already been a few B-grade SF movies from the late 50s which featured aliens using telepathy on humans for both communication and mind-control. But yes, there was actually quite a bit of public fascination with ESP in that time and some degree of scientific investigation into the alleged phenomenon.

-It's interesting that the "moral" is that illusions can lead to the downfall of a civilization in the pilot for TOS and the holodeck was one of the "cool new" technologies in TNG.

"But they found that it's a trap. Like a narcotic. Because when dreams become more important that reality, you give up travel, building. You even forget how to repair the machines left behind by your ancestors. You just sit, living and reliving other lives left behind in the thought-records."

One of my favourite lines in the whole episode.

It is a very pretty point, the difference in attitude toward illusions in the two series and how much they reflect the cultures that produced them. The actual moral of the story was encapsulated in Dr. Boyce's statement that "a man either lives life as it comes, meets it head-on, or he starts to wither away", but the dilemma of the Talosians is of course that whole point writ large, as the Talosians were indeed withering away. Whereas today, in our own world, we seem to be living in a culture which the writer Neil Postman would argue is steadily amusing itself to death.

-The portable phaser canon. Probably phased out due to it being more believable and less noticeable to the viewer to reuse footage of phaser blasts from the Enterprise in orbit than them trying to reuse the footage from the pilot and make it look fresh and new. Plus it would be one less set piece to keep around. That or just a lack of stories that called for it.

The laser cannon is actually a rather bulksome prop to keep around. It's not surprising that it was never used again in an episode, as it's cheaper to do an orbital bombardment, effects-wise. ("A Piece Of The Action")

-Mr Spock calls the engines the Hyperdrive and says to "initiate warp". The Enterprise also apparently has emergency backup rockets that can be used to blast it out of orbit.

Keep in mind that in the 60s, the terminology was quite fluid regarding FTL propulsion. All Gene Roddenberry had to go by as a description for the ship's propulsion was a vague reference to "a space warp". The backup rockets, of course, would be the ship's impulse engines as referred to later in the series proper.

-Still using lasers at this point? Pike refers to the side arm he gets from #1 as a laser.

This was of course before the beam weapon became a sort of swiss-army knife device. You also notice that it's a brute-force weapon used to burn or blast, not disintegrate a target in a funky physics-defying manner.

-Man, the Doctor had U.S.S. Enterprise on his scrubs/uniform and above it an emblem of Earth and something written around it, but I couldn't make out what the hell it said.

The insignia on the scrubs was based upon the UN sigil, with Earth surrounded by clusters of oak leaves (interestingly though, the globe depicts only the western hemisphere). Below it was the legend "USS Enterprise". I think this was going to be depicted as the insignia for the United Earth Space Probe Agency before it was dropped.

-Apparently the Telosians, while super advanced and possesing great power, are retarded. Instead of rebuilding the girl Vena, so that she, y'know, had the same looking body that they do, they put a giant mound of flesh and whatever on her shoulder.

This was covered, the plot-point of how the Talosians had lost their technology and did the best they could with what they had left. Also, Vina was apparently horribly injured in the crash, far beyond the point of normal reconstructive surgery.

-Damn, that red headed Yeoman would have been my Eve for sure!

Yeoman Colt was decidedly yummy, alright.

Patrick Degan wrote:

-Still using lasers at this point? Pike refers to the side arm he gets from #1 as a laser.

This was of course before the beam weapon became a sort of swiss-army knife device. You also notice that it's a brute-force weapon used to burn or blast, not disintegrate a target in a funky physics-defying manner.

This is one of thing things I liked about The Cage when I first saw it:



That wall looks like it's been hit my a weapon, not just handwaved away.

I saw this one last night and had to explain why Kirk wasn't captain to my girlfriend. Its always fun to see pilots of shows that ended up going in another direction to see what might have been.

I love the remastered episodes. The new effects shots are great but it is the cleaner look of all the footage that I enjoy the most.

General Zod wrote:

Havok wrote: -Was there a cultural fascination with ESP and telepathy at the time that anyone was aware of? Both pilots feature them heavily.

Besides the whole new-age hippie movement?

Hippies were more into "expanding their minds" and altering their perceptions through drugs than actual ESP. I was wondering if there was something a little more specific than that.

-Apparently the Telosians, while super advanced and possesing great power, are retarded. Instead of rebuilding the girl Vena, so that she, y'know, had the same looking body that they do, they put a giant mound of flesh and whatever on her shoulder.

Turns out rebuilding a species whose body you've never seen before isn't that easy? Like how scientists always get dinosaur skeletons perfect and. . .oh.

Oh c'mon, besides the big cranium, they are built almost exactly the same. There is no species in existence that has a huge giant mount of flesh on it's shoulder that obscures it's vision and doesn't allow movement of the head and neck. They could have at least been... "lets make her look like us" and she would have looked 100% better.

And dinosaurs look nothing like us. We have no problem recreating simian or early human skeletons, which would be a far better example.

Havok wrote: Hippies were more into "expanding their minds" and altering their perceptions through drugs than actual ESP. I was wondering if there was something a little more specific than that.

I do remember ESP/psychics being a huge fad in that era but I don't remember anything much more specific about it.

Oh c'mon, besides the big cranium, they are built almost exactly the same. There is no species in existence that has a huge giant mount of flesh on it's shoulder that obscures it's vision and doesn't allow movement of the head and neck. They could have at least been... "lets make her look like us" and she would have looked 100% better.

And dinosaurs look nothing like us. We have no problem recreating simian or early human skeletons, which would be a far better example.

Well, if they didn't even know how to repair their own machinery, what makes you think they'd be able to puzzle out an alien that was suffering from massive tissue damage?

General Zod wrote:

Oh c'mon, besides the big cranium, they are built almost exactly the same. There is no species in existence that has a huge giant mount of flesh on it's shoulder that obscures it's vision and doesn't allow movement of the head and neck. They could have at least been... "lets make her look like us" and she would have looked 100% better.

And dinosaurs look nothing like us. We have no problem recreating simian or early human skeletons, which would be a far better example.

Well, if they didn't even know how to repair their own machinery, what makes you think they'd be able to puzzle out an alien that was suffering from massive tissue damage?

Well obviously they were able to. She worked just fine. She even said that. They got the internals working properly, but they had no idea what a human looked like. Uncommon sense to me, would dictate that if would be infinitely harder to fix the internals which they did, than it would be to do the externals. Yet they got the extremely complicated one essentially perfect, but completely fucked up the seemingly easy one where they could simply copy their own outer structure. And as we know, they have relatively the same body structure that we do.

"Hey do we have huge scars across our faces? Big huge humps of tissue and whatever else on our shoulders? Hunchbacks? Nope. Well this creature probably does, so lets give it to them." What?

And the idea that they don't know what humans look like is obviously bullshit, since they can project and recreate their images perfectly. They even know what an attractive female looks like. And if Vena was the lone survivor of the crash and was an infant, then she wouldn't have the images in her own mind for them to draw from. So they obviously had to have some reference material to go off.