In life, there are the curiosities and the mainstays. The restaurants we occasionally visit versus our favorites, the friends we check in with every few months versus those we regularly hang out with, even the websites or blogs that are clicked on now and then versus those we read daily. Often, we may not understand why one remains a mere curiosity while another ascends to become a favorite. We just know that the latter somehow bonds more fully with us, adds more value to our lives, and as a result helps us better connect with the world around us.
In the case of Star Trek, we know why The Cage is a curiosity: we never had a chance to make it a mainstay. Passed over by network executives, and given a mandate to make key crew changes, the revised Star Trek that Gene Roddenberry gave us, and with which we subsequently fell in love, concerned an Enterprise captained by James T. Kirk, and with the exception of Mr. Spock, an entirely different crew. We may have seen excerpts from The Cage in the two episodes of The Menagerie, but most of us never saw The Cage until a decade or more after it was made. Would we have fallen in love with Pike and company the way we did with his successors? Sadly, we will never know, as we were never fed a steady diet of stories about them. We never got to see the crew visit other worlds. We never watched how Pike dealt with other crises. We never saw Number One, Dr. Phil, and Pike’s yeoman develop as the series progressed.
Plot is character, and character is plot, as I believe the great author Stephen King once said. While we can never know what other trials Pike and his crew would have faced, we do know that this original crew had great characters. Captain Christopher Pike, having rediscovered his love of command, surely would have faced future dangers with dogged determination, and perhaps even good humor. Number One would have kept the Enterprise running smoothly for Pike, and not weighed him (and us) down with tiresome complaints or unnecessarily dialogue. Dr. Phil would have continued to dispense moral insights with his medicine, but probably without McCoy’s constant need to needle Mr. Spock for attempting to honor his Vulcan values. And as for Mr. Spock...well, thankfully, at least we got to see how he developed.
Jews and Christians have their Apocrypha, investors have the commodities market, politicians even have their consciences (We hope!). In fiction, we all have our curiosities, stories we may not fully understand nor utilize every day of our lives, but nonetheless influence us on an occasional basis. Given its single-story status, The Cage can never be anything more than a curiosity. Yet, after reflecting upon the story in so many (perhaps too many?) blog entries, I know I will walk more boldly into my own future, bolstered by how Captain Christopher Pike, the various members of his crew, and the Talosians have rubbed off on me. I have come to realize what a wonderful curiosity I have found in the Star Trek pilot episode The Cage.
Thank you, Gene Roddenberry, for creating such a fascinating story.
In the case of Star Trek, we know why The Cage is a curiosity: we never had a chance to make it a mainstay. Passed over by network executives, and given a mandate to make key crew changes, the revised Star Trek that Gene Roddenberry gave us, and with which we subsequently fell in love, concerned an Enterprise captained by James T. Kirk, and with the exception of Mr. Spock, an entirely different crew. We may have seen excerpts from The Cage in the two episodes of The Menagerie, but most of us never saw The Cage until a decade or more after it was made. Would we have fallen in love with Pike and company the way we did with his successors? Sadly, we will never know, as we were never fed a steady diet of stories about them. We never got to see the crew visit other worlds. We never watched how Pike dealt with other crises. We never saw Number One, Dr. Phil, and Pike’s yeoman develop as the series progressed.
Plot is character, and character is plot, as I believe the great author Stephen King once said. While we can never know what other trials Pike and his crew would have faced, we do know that this original crew had great characters. Captain Christopher Pike, having rediscovered his love of command, surely would have faced future dangers with dogged determination, and perhaps even good humor. Number One would have kept the Enterprise running smoothly for Pike, and not weighed him (and us) down with tiresome complaints or unnecessarily dialogue. Dr. Phil would have continued to dispense moral insights with his medicine, but probably without McCoy’s constant need to needle Mr. Spock for attempting to honor his Vulcan values. And as for Mr. Spock...well, thankfully, at least we got to see how he developed.
Jews and Christians have their Apocrypha, investors have the commodities market, politicians even have their consciences (We hope!). In fiction, we all have our curiosities, stories we may not fully understand nor utilize every day of our lives, but nonetheless influence us on an occasional basis. Given its single-story status, The Cage can never be anything more than a curiosity. Yet, after reflecting upon the story in so many (perhaps too many?) blog entries, I know I will walk more boldly into my own future, bolstered by how Captain Christopher Pike, the various members of his crew, and the Talosians have rubbed off on me. I have come to realize what a wonderful curiosity I have found in the Star Trek pilot episode The Cage.
Thank you, Gene Roddenberry, for creating such a fascinating story.
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