My Magnum Opus on Star Trek: The Cage

I'm updated my Pages section.  Part of that process involves taking down content that people rarely look at.  I thought I'd share my old Star Trek page with you, in case you never noticed it before.  

This list of links will take you to a long series of posts I wrote on the "The Cage," the pilot episode of the original Star Trek series.  If you're a die-hard fan of Captain Christopher Pike (and have vast amounts of free time), you might enjoy perusing them.  

My magnum opus on the pilot episode "The Cage"
Star Trek: The Cage 
Overwhelmed By Life
The Yeoman and Number One
Captured by the Talosians 
Deliberations and Decisions
The Reluctant Warrior
Together But Alone
True Vision 
The Well-Trodden Path
The Power of Punishment
The Allure of the Ordinary Life
Dangerous Reappraisals 
The Women!
We are what our deeds make us: The Talosians
We are what our deeds make us: Vena
We are what our deeds make us: Pike’s Yeoman
We are what our deeds make us: Number One 
Spock Must Fear
How to Bring Out the Worst in Another
The Phantom Menace
The Hidden Escape Route
“Your Destiny Lies Upon a Different Path from Mine”
Discretion and Valor on Talos 4
A Pleasant and Benevolent Slavery
Does Truth Matter?
Spock on the Sidelines
The Illusion of Another’s Ability to Change
Dr. Phil’s Prescription for Captain Pike
The Curiosity Factor 

Live long and prosper!

Dragon Dave

Kirk’s Sexuality in Star Trek

My intention for this blog has always been to provide a positive thought for the day.  To use Fiction to inspire you, to help you look on the world around you, and imagine the limitless possibilities each day represents.  Yet today I find my thoughts in confusion, and my spirits depressed.  Why?  Four words: “Star Trek Into Darkness.”

I know what you’re thinking: David, how can you let two hours of light entertainment get you down?  That’s the problem.  Star Trek is supposed to be more than light entertainment.  Generally speaking, each episode of the TV series was designed to make viewers think, particularly in regard to social issues of the day.  Gene Roddenberry’s first story, "The Cage," proved so thought-provoking that I dedicated over thirty posts to it, and I still didn’t cover one underlying concept of the pilot: the enduring popularity of the Adam and Eve story in Science Fiction.  Sadly, "Star Trek Into Darkness" likewise provided much food for thought, but probably not in the way J. J. Abrams and company intended.

Vena in "The Cage"

One thought was how attitudes toward sex have changed since the 1960s, and how those affect our characters.  In “The Cage,” Captain Pike works hard to resist Vena in all her guises.  Chief among those was when she transforms into a “Green Animal Slave Woman,” as his chief medical officer, Dr. Phil, calls them.  These women represent sex in its most basic and powerful form, when one’s basic urges become an obsession, driving out all thought and reason.  The fact that Pike resists Vena in her Woman-Plus mode helps us respect his dedication to his own moral code, as well as his commitment to the U.S.S. Enterprise and her crew. 

In the TV series, Kirk seems a little looser.  Perhaps he might not have a woman in every port, but he certainly has a lot of previous girlfriends who still think rather highly of him.  Yet in the episodes, we rarely see him in lovemaking mode, and usually when this occurs, he is shown resisting a woman who seeks to control him through sex and his feelings for her.  For him, sex may not be inextricably linked with marriage, as his first and primary commitment is to the Enterprise, but he generally leaves women with a positive impression of his character, and the unspoken suggestion that if he was “on the market,” and he asked for their hand in marriage, they would gladly become Mrs. Kirk. 

In “Star Trek,” J. J. Abrams first movie, we meet Kirk when he’s trying to pick up Uhura for a one-night stand.  We next see him a couple years later, when he is sleeping with (Who else?) a green-skinned woman.  When she tells him that she loves him, he responds: “That’s weird.”  

In the sequel, “Into Darkness,” we again see him in a bedroom, where this time he is having a threesome with two ladies who have long, cat-like tails.  Later, Carol Marcus asks him if he remembers Christine Chapel, who apparently became a nurse after Kirk had a fling with her.  The name fails to ring a bell.

Strangely, a storm of controversy has erupted over a scene in which Kirk sees Carol Marcus in her black bra and panties, significant enough to prompt apologies from the filmmakers.  According to Wikipedia, critics have called it “wholly unnecessary,” “gratuitous,” and “misogynistic.”  But no one seems bothered by seeing Kirk having sex with women in the new movies, even women belonging to a different species.  J. J. Abrams and company have changed Kirk from someone who respects women to someone who doesn’t, and leaves them thinking less of him than the moment they met.  As our society seems to have uncoupled one’s sex life from one’s morality, Kirk’s spurious flings just serve to make him more enduring.  But then, Star Fleet Headquarters is located in San Francisco, the town synonymous with the 1960s Sexual Revolution.  

Dragon Dave

Related Dragon Cache entries

Dangerous Reappraisals

Defined by Fear

“The place to begin is at the bottom of the trough.  How long I had gone through the motions, living days as alike as beads on a konchu wire, I don’t know.”

With these words, Dr. Gregory Benford begins his novel The Stars in Shroud.   Ling works in his apartment, managing machinery via remote control.  Once he was something more, a starship captain.  But the colonists he rescued from Regeln have infected him, his family, and most of Earth’s inhabitants with a mysterious psychological condition.  Like so many, he and his family fear to leave their apartment.  Once each day, Ling and his wife Angela force themselves out of their apartment to walk the hallways.  But they cannot face going outside.

His wife Angela has resigned herself to this unreasoning fear, yet she hopes for a better life for her children.  The government can perform frontal lobe taps.  Through this procedure, Chark and Romana could be programmed to focus upon specific tasks.  This would ensure that they became productive members of society.  But Ling resists putting them through this irreversible procedure.  He hopes that they can all battle through this condition.  If they can, he wants his children to be fully balanced, not drones controlled by government programming.

In “The Cage,” Captain Christopher Pike battles fear, doubt, and guilt.  He even contemplates retirement to free himself of such overwhelming responsibility.  Dr. Phil rebukes him: a man must face his life head-on, not be cowered by his fear or hide from his destiny.  In “Star Trek V,” Spock’s half-brother Sybok offers to cleanse Kirk of his pain.  Kirk’s response: Don’t you dare: I need my pain!  

Fear, insecurities, and regret are part of the human condition.  Like Angela, I sometimes yearn for a frontal lobe tap.  I think: if only all my fears and insecurities could be taken away, I could focus unimpeded upon life’s great tasks.  But then I remember Ling’s refusal to accept the easy fix.  I remember how Pike resisted the Talosians because he cared so much for the Enterprise crew.  I remember Captain Kirk’s great speech, in which he asserts that pain and guilt can’t be taken away; nor should they be.  For our unique fears and insecurities define us.  “If we lose them,” Kirk says, “we lose ourselves.”  (And indeed, most of Sybok’s followers, when cleansed of their pain, resemble the unquestioning drones Ling fears Chark and Romana might become if they undergo these government-sponsored operations).

While I don’t want my pain, Captain Kirk has told me that I need it.  (And I don’t want to get thrown in the brig for insubordination).  Like Ling in The Stars in Shroud, it appears that I must struggle on with my fears, my insecurities, and my regrets.  Perhaps they are just as important to me as my strengths.  Could it be that, lacking my unique fears, insecurities, and regrets, I might not strive so hard to accomplish my goals?  That I might not dare to dream of greatness?

Related Dragon Cache Links

The Cage: Overwhelmed By Life

Our Need for Interdependence

The Curiosity Factor

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.

Dr. Phil’s Prescription for Captain Christopher Pike

In the Star Trek pilot episode The Cage, Captain Christopher Pike has escaped from Talos 4 and returned to the bridge of the Enterprise.  But as he strides toward the command chair, Dr. Phil says, “Hold on a minute.”

Before they traveled to Talos 4, Pike had called the doctor to his quarters, where the captain had asked him to confirm the rightness of his decision on the bridge to continue onward to the Vega Colony.  When Dr. Phil asked Pike to consider a rest leave, the captain confessed that he was contemplating retirement.  Pike claimed he was tired of command: he wished for a life of few responsibilities.  He mused about returning home, or becoming a simple trader.  As Chief Medical Officer, it is Dr. Phil’s duty to periodically assess his captain’s fitness to command.  So when Pike returns, Dr. Phil asks himself: Is Pike ready to command the Enterprise? Has he recovered mentally and emotionally from the losses suffered back on Rigel 7? 

Pike assures the doctor he feels fine, and Dr. Phil is forced to admit that the captain looks one hundred percent better.  Pike says, “You recommended a rest, a change of pace, didn’t you?  I’ve even been home.  Does that make you happy?”  While imprisonment wasn’t what Dr. Phil had in mind, he understands how the Talosians could use their power of illusion to make Pike believe he had returned to Earth.  Dr. Phil is not yet convinced that Pike is ready to command, but he lets Pike retake his chair, while the doctor finds an inconspicuous place on the bridge to observe him further. 

When the yeoman asks, “Who would have been Eve?” Pike allows Number One to handle the situation.  A mere glance from Pike is sufficient to refocus a curious bridge officer on his duties.  But the mention of Eve suggests that Pike faced more than simple confinement.  Does such a weighty Biblical symbol represent the tip of an emotional iceberg against which Pike may later run aground?  Dr. Phil approaches and asks, “Eve as in Adam?”  Pike’s response is a rebuff: “As in all ship’s doctors are dirty old men.”  Dr. Phil smiles and squeezes Pike’s shoulder.  This is not the same man who earlier felt the need to explain his decisions to his bridge officers, who sought the ship’s doctor for confirmation of his orders, and who shrunk from the everyday challenges of life aboard a starship.  Pike sits in his command chair, facing the forward viewscreen, cajoling Number One for the bridge crew’s slack discipline.  Dr. Phil is content to leave the bridge, knowing Pike is ready to chart his (and the ship’s) course into the future.

When our friends’ lives are in turmoil, we naturally want to help them through their difficulties.  This is as it should be: we may not be in authority over them, as Dr. Phil is, but we are nonetheless duty-bound to assist in any way we can.  Often, a simple suggestion as to how to get their lives back on track is all a friend needs from us.  Then we must stand aside and watch, and hope that they either follow our advise or find their own solution.  Biting back all the accumulated wisdom one would love to offer is never easy.  But it is necessary, not only to preserve the relationship, but for our friends’ mental and emotional health. 

At least, that’s Dr. Phil’s Prescription for Captain Christopher Pike.

The Illusion of Another’s Ability to Change

In the Star Trek pilot episode The Cage, Captain Christopher Pike has escaped the Talosians.  In the transporter room, his yeoman and Number One are surprised not to see Vena.  Number One might guess at her advanced age, but neither have reason to suspect how badly she was injured in the crash, nor how the Talosians’ well-intentioned efforts at reconstructive surgery have left her handicapped and disfigured.  When Number One asks if Vena will beam up, Pike simply tells her “No.”  His refusal to explain leaves both women mystified as to why the person who attracted Pike most has remained on Talos 4.  Number One puts on her game face and follows the Captain out, but the yeoman lingers, wondering what transpired after she beamed up.

On the bridge, while Number One retakes the position of responsibility that she has earned, the yeoman chooses to linger nearby, despite the captain’s dislike of such unnecessary crew (particularly women!) on the bridge.  At one point, he nearly runs into her, and when he starts to reprimand her, she hands him the report he periodically requests.  She uses this justification for her proximity to ask, “Captain, I was just wondering...who would have been Eve?”  Number One’s head whips around.  With steel in her eyes, she snaps, “You’ve delivered your report.”  The yeoman hurries away; she will still attend to Pike’s personal needs.  Number One remains unrivaled on the bridge, where she can best demonstrate to Pike how essential she is. 

Despite their many differences, both women stake out their territory with regard to Pike.  Vena may have left the field of battle, but each hopes that if she just keeps on fighting, one day Captain Pike will return her love.

Whether we look to another for romance or simple friendship, it’s likely that, at some point in our lives, we will delude ourselves into thinking that another who ignores or spurns us may one day reverse course and return our obvious affection.  We are the sum of our experiences and choices.  We can no more change ourselves into someone another will respect or love than we can change the weather.  Why then do we hope that another will change to suit our desires?  Anyone who views us as having little value for their lives at present is unlikely to value us more in the future.  While endurance is always admirable, enduring does not necessarily equate with succeeding, winning, or obtaining.  It is our illusion of another’s ability to change that we forget this. 

Thus sustained on false hope, we fail to perceive those around us who are willing and capable of respecting and/or loving us.  The one we wish to change feels put upon; our hope for their imminent transformation stresses what little relationship we currently have with them.  We lose too, suffering each day with disappointment that the change we desire has not yet occurred.  And then there are those who might crave our love or friendship, whom we cannot currently perceive  Their lives are impoverished by our absence.

This is not a dilemma created by an alien race with superior mental powers.  This is the all-too-human tragedy of unrequited love.

Spock on the Sidelines

In the Star Trek pilot episode The Cage, the Enterprise suddenly returns to full power.  We find Mr. Spock in the Transporter room, where the chief claims he could not shut down his system if he wanted to.  Mr. Spock prepares for the unanticipated arrival.  He watches as Number One and Pike’s yeoman materialize.  Then, a little later, the system comes on again, and Captain Pike materializes.

When the group reaches the bridge, others pause to talk with their captain, but Mr. Spock quietly resumes his duties.  No longer must he worry about the dangers posed by the Talosians.  No longer must he grapple with conundrums.  No longer does the responsibility for two hundred lives rest upon his shoulders.  His captain is back.  Number One is back.  He stands at attention beside Number One’s console.  He stares at the viewscreen.  He is content.

So often we are told that we must seize the initiative, that we must abandon our comfort zones, that we must take command of a given situation in order to prove our worth.  But not all are meant to be leaders.  Without followers, those willing to work without being noticed, there would be no government, organizations, charitable institutions, churches, clubs, or businesses.  Individually, we can accomplish much, but by happily lending our skills and abilities to others, we can achieve so much more. 

It is not essential to your development that you always seek the spotlight.  If you wish to, or if you feel you must, then by all means vie for leadership.  But if you feel your gifts and abilities are better suited to standing back and playing a supporting role in a given situation, then be content, knowing you have made a wise decision.

Perhaps, even a logical one.

Does Truth Matter?

In the Star Trek pilot episode The Cage, Captain Christopher Pike has escaped his cell, and the Talosians have allowed him to leave their planet.  But Vena refuses to return with him to the Enterprise, and after Number One and Pike’s yeoman beam up, she shows him why.  Slowly, her body begins to change, until she is revealed to be a scarred, misshapen woman.  “This is the female’s true appearance,” the Talosian says.  Pike is shocked, perhaps even repulsed.

“They found me in the wreckage, dying,” Vena tells him.  “They rebuilt me.  Everything works.  But they had never seen a human before.  They had no guide for putting me back together.”  Then, despite this strange affirmation of fitness, she turns from him to slowly hobble toward the underground elevator.  Her real body does not possess the vitality, strength, and ease of movement that her illusory appearance led him to believe.  She might run, dance, or do anything she wished in the Talosian-generated dream, or even within an underground cell, but clearly she could not survive the demands of the planet’s harsh, barren surface.  She is too old and feeble to have children, or to farm. 

“It was necessary to convince you her desire to stay was a genuine one,” The Talosian tells Pike.”

“You’ll give her back her illusion of beauty?” he asks.

The Talosian leader, smiling wide, says, “And more.”

Then Vena’s youthful appearance returns, and she holds hands with an illusion of Pike.  Youthful-Vena and illusory-Pike hurry off toward the elevator in the blasted-apart rocky knoll.  Never has the Talosian leader’s smile been so wide.  “She has her illusion, and you have reality,” he tells Pike.  “May you both find your way as pleasant.” 

At last we can understand the Talosians.  Their leader is not acting as if he has seen his fondest dreams crumble before his eyes.  He is not devastated that a new Talosian race will not return life to their barren world.  Instead, he is overjoyed that Vena, the woman they saved from death and have cared for these past eighteen years, is no longer lonely.  Nor is Vena’s spirit crushed.  She smiles at him and the Talosian before pulling her image of Pike back to her underground home.  The Talosians have enough knowledge of Pike’s psyche and experience to sustain this illusion of a real, vibrant Pike.  Her “wisdom” or willingness to accept illusion as fact will enable her to live out her final years happy, content, and fulfilled. 

We’ve been taught that when facts disprove belief, that belief must give way.  Perhaps it is not shattered, but it must reshape itself, rebuild itself so it does not diametrically oppose our current understanding of reality.  Why then does belief so often seem more important to us than fact?  Creationists refuse to believe in evolution, despite the latter’s better grounding in scientists’ findings.  Widows and widowers pen letters to their deceased spouses, and find themselves talking with them during quiet moments, telling them of their current lives, and pledging their continuing love.  Fiction seems to fill a similar need.  People look to great stories to help them better understand their role in society.  They model themselves upon their beloved protagonists.  They might ask themselves: “If Captain Pike (or Mister Spock, or Number One) were here, how would he (or she) handle this situation?

Belief versus Reality.  Fictional role models versus present-day or historical heroes.  Does it matter which we identify with?  Or, as the Talosian leader suggests, might both be equally valid, provided they help us navigate the pitfalls of daily life?

A Pleasant and Benevolent Slavery

In the Star Trek pilot episode The Cage, the Talosians want Pike to mate with their human captive Vena, and to produce a human community that can return life to their barren world.  Pike knows the aliens’ mental powers are too strong, so he offers to remain behind if the rest of the Enterprise crew are allowed to leave orbit.  Number One dislikes this bargain, however, and sets her phaser on overload.  Then two more Talosians arrive.  They have scanned the ship’s records, which their leader now accesses.  He is shocked by the humans’ hatred of captivity.  “Even when it is pleasant and benevolent, you prefer death,” he says.

Human history is replete with slave rebellions and freedom movements.  Yet the Talosian leader’s assessment seems a skewed version of our history and customs.  While most of the nations in the world have condemned slavery, some still impose harsh restrictions upon their citizens’ liberty.  In poorer countries, individuals may even opt for slavery in order to secure a better future for themselves and their families.  Nor does Captain Pike, living in an enlightened future, seem completely against slavery.  Earlier, in his quarters aboard the enterprise, he confessed to the ship’s doctor that he was considering retirement.  One potential new career choice: he could become a trader in Green Animal Women Slaves!

In our individual lives, we often trade bondage for security and stability.  For a regular and acceptable level of income, we sign away a large portion of our lives to another, pledging to fulfill our employer’s wishes if they clash with our own.  We join political, social, charitable and religious institutions, pledging to live by their codes of conduct and affirm their beliefs, even if these clash with ones we have previously held dear.  In my own life, I’ve worked hard to free my body from the bondage of excess weight.  Now, everyday, I willingly enslave myself to my regimen, knowing that if I rebel, I will gain back those unwanted pounds.

At first glance, our ideal of “slavery is wrong” clashes with our willingness to pledge our lives to various causes in order to repeat the desired rewards.  The secret to this seeming incongruity resides in the individual’s ability to choose.  After all, children resent rules imposed on them by their parents.  Adults forced into nursing homes or sanitariums not only resent the relatives who placed them there, but perpetuate acts of rebellion against the staff entrusted with their care.  Pike, tricked by Vena and the Talosians, resents living in his cell and experiencing the dreams imposed on him.  But if we are allowed to choose a flavor of slavery to our liking, does this not make us more content with our lives?

What constitutes slavery in your life?  Has your slavery evolved over time into an overly-oppressive regime?  Or do you find that you have grown “too free”, and in need of a new form of slavery that is both pleasant and benevolent? 

Discretion and Valor on Talos 4

In the Star Trek pilot episode The Cage, Captain Christopher Pike has escaped his cell.  With the Talosian leader as his hostage, he returns to the surface, accompanied by Number One, his yeoman, and Vena.  Yet, even with a phaser pointed at his head, the alien refuses to back down.  Pike must remain on Talos 4 as mate to Vena and to bring life to this dead world.  So Pike offers him a deal: assure me that the Enterprise is all right, send these two women back...and I’ll stay with Vena.

Of the three women (all of whom have strong feelings for him), Number One knows Pike best.  She cannot allow him to make this sacrifice.  Pike’s calling is to be a starship commander, not a farmer.  And there is a moral principle at stake too.  So, to win Pike’s freedom, she sets her phaser on overload.  “It’s wrong to create a whole race to live as slaves,” she announces.

Her declaration is straight-forward.  Her action shakes the Talosian leader’s confidence (which is more than Pike has previously accomplished).  But is she leaving a deeper truth unsaid?  If Number One shared her fellow bridge officer’s fear of what the aliens were doing to Pike, she never voiced it.  She didn’t complain when Pike excluded her from his landing party.  She didn’t rebuke Dr. Phil for saying “I told you so” when her attempt to blast away the rocky knoll housing the Talosians’ underground elevator appeared to fail.  In all the time she has served with Pike, she’s never revealed to Pike how she feels for him.  So one may wonder: Is she saying everything she could say, or only what she needs to say to achieve the result she desires?

When the Talosians whisked her and the yeoman into Pike’s cell, she learned the explanation for his capture.  Of all the Enterprise crew, she realizes how unlikely this scenario is.  The Vena on the survey ship that crashed here eighteen years ago was an adult.  While Number One never reveals how old Vena would be now, she would certainly be older than the young, vibrant woman she appears to be.  Could the real Vena give birth to a child, let alone raise a brood of “intelligent offspring?”  Would she possess the vitality and energy necessary to help her husband run a successful farm, manage a household, and raise her children to adulthood?

While the Talosians built an underground biosphere, the current generation--so addicted to vicariously living-out the dreams of their captives--lack the knowledge and skills to repair the machines created by their ancestors.  They may be adept at deception, but do they know how to extend the years of fertility in their sole human specimen?  Number One’s discretion and valorous act preserves Pike’s dignity, while shielding him from how he ignored such obvious clues.  In so doing, she allows him to believe that he acted appropriately on Talos 4, and thus return to the Enterprise with confidence in himself. 

It can tear at your heart to see your friend going through a difficult situation.  Oh, for the discretion of Number One, to know just what to what to say, and no more. 

"Your Destiny Lies Upon a Different Path from Mine"

In the Star Trek pilot episode The Cage, Captain Christopher Pike has broken free from his cell.  With Vena, Number One, and his yeoman, he has taken the Talosian leader captive and journeyed to the surface via the underground elevator.  But either the Talosian is creating the illusion that Number One’s communicator has malfunctioned, or the Talosians have made good on their leader’s threat and destroyed the Enterprise.  With his phaser pointed at the alien, Pike says “I want to contact my ship.”

The Talosian Leader points out that they are on the surface as he wished them to be.  Now, with the female of his choice (and with plants from their underground gardens), Pike can start the work of returning life to this dead world.  As the Talosians live much longer than humans, they will be able to guide Pike’s descendants, and evolve a thriving human society on Talos 4.  Pike sees the nobility of their cause, but his first concern is the Enterprise and her crew.  So, knowing that even with a phaser to their leader’s head, the Talosians are still in control of the situation, Pike makes this offer.  “You give me proof that my ship is all right, and send these two back...”

Here he pauses.  Then, ultimately:

“And I’ll stay with Vena.”

There are all types of worthy causes in which others would love to enlist us.  Sometimes we allow others to talk us into devoting our energies into roles for which we are ill-suited.  These end up sapping the joy that should come from service to others.  As a result, we may get so burned out that we cast off these unwanted obligations and recuperate by concentrating on our own pleasures.

Each of us, if we take the time to think about it, know what we are best suited for.  It cannot be that hard to figure out a way to utilize the gifts and abilities that elevate our spirits into tasks that will benefit those around us.  Despite the deaths and casualties his crew suffered on their previous mission, Pike is best-suited for running a starship.  His gift to others is the advancement of human learning, and bringing humanity into contact with others from which both civilizations will benefit.  Pike may be willing to sacrifice his life for his crew, but he doesn’t need another noble calling.  He already has one, which he is pursuing to the best of his abilities.  Can each of us say the same?

The Hidden Escape Route

In the Star Trek pilot episode The Cage, Captain Christopher Pike has been kidnapped by the Talosians.  In the illusions forced upon him, he protects Vena from a Kaylar warrior, picnics with her back home on Earth, and experiences the carefree life of a trader in Green Animal Women Slaves.  Yet no matter how compelling the illusions, Pike never forgets that his body is trapped in a cell.  And when Number One organizes a team to rescue him, the aliens take command of the Enterprise transporter and beam Number One and Pike’s yeoman into his cell to join him in his imprisonment.

When the Talosian leader opens a secreted panel and reaches into the cell to remove the women’s discarded phasers, Pike discards his facade of sleep and hauls the alien into his cell.  After seeming to transform into two ferocious creatures, the Talosian threatens to destroy the Enterprise.  Vena warns Pike that, through their power of illusion, the aliens can make the crew unwittingly destroy their own vessel.  Pike shoots each phaser at the viewing window of the cell, seemingly to no effect.  Then he points one at the Talosian’s head and offers to test his belief that the weapons really work on the leader’s head.  To Pike’s satisfaction, a hole appears in the viewing window.

At the beginning of the story, Pike is so weary of responsibility that he is contemplating retirement.  But when he awakens in his cell, the walls surrounding him (and the Talosians watching him through the viewing window) fill him with an anger that never begins to dissipate until the alien allows him to see the escape route his phaser has created.  Those trapped in the cell with Pike are also transformed.  Number One subsumes her emotions even more than normal, and shifts into situation-assessment mode.  Like Vena, his Yeoman dares to hope the unthinkable: that a trapped Pike might look to her for love and support.  And the leader of a seemingly-peaceful race threatens to murder two hundred members of another intelligent species. 

The sight of the damaged viewing window likewise effects them.  Order and hierarchy return.  Pike hauls his prisoner from the cell.  Number One, Pike’s second-in-command, assumes her position of primacy, followed by his yeoman.  Vena, who holds no rank in the Enterprise crew, walks out last, knowing the odds that Pike will choose to make a life with her on Talos 4 have decreased dramatically.

We want to believe that we determine our own destinies, yet we are told that our capabilities and life-choices are influenced by our environment (in addition to our genetic make-up).  We may not be trapped in a cage, but our futures seem to be perpetually limited by such factors as job and family commitments, peer pressure and cultural expectations, our incomes and expenses, the homes and neighborhoods we live in, as well as the significant choices we have made up until this moment.

What bonds currently trap you?  What walls seem to surround you?  What might you achieve, if only you could perceive a hidden escape route?  And, most important of all, do such questions amount to little more than pointless speculation, or might attempting to answer them benefit your life in some tangible way?

Star Trek: The Phantom Menace

In the Star Trek pilot episode The Cage, Captain Christopher Pike has been kidnapped.  When the Talosians find him uncooperative, they kidnap Number One as well.  This leaves Mr. Spock in command of the Enterprise.  Due to the aliens’ immense mental powers, he believes that once they have no more use for the ship, they will swat it like a fly.  Therefore, he opts to flee, hoping to escape their grasp and thus save the hundreds of lives aboard.

Instead, the Talosians drain all power from the ship.  Spock and the crew tear into the ship’s circuitry, but can find no way of restoring power.  “If not for the batteries, we’d lose gravitation, oxygen--”  His assessment is interrupted by the lights coming on, followed swiftly by the computers.  The crew race to the controls, only to realize that the Talosians are running through the ship’s library, and they cannot block the aliens’ access.  “They’re collecting all the information we can supply,” he concludes.  “They’ve decided to swat us.”

Despite how the Talosians deceived the crew and kidnapped Pike, Mr. Spock previously suggested in the briefing room that the Talosians might only wish to study them.  Although he feared that any attempt to rescue Pike might prompt a violent response, the Talosians harmed no one when Number One set up a laser cannon on the surface and blasted the disguised elevator with all the ship’s power.  Yet when the Talosians snatch the women from the transporter room, prevent the Enterprise from leaving orbit, and begin reading their records, Spock concludes that the Talosians intend mass murder.  He overlooks the fact that the Talosians have left them sufficient battery power to keep them alive and comfortable.  Instead of being buoyed by this knowledge, he assumes the worst of this alien race whom he does not understand.

Caught up in their own problems, others sometimes fail to realize how they are imposing on us.  When inconvenienced, it is natural to believe that your self-respect (or more) is on the line.  But even friends will injury us occasionally.  To see malice in a stranger is easy, but not always accurate.

How to Bring Out the Worst in Another

In the Star Trek pilot episode The Cage, Captain Christopher Pike has been kidnapped.  In an effort to get him to stay willingly, the Talosians capture Number One and his yeoman.  He must now choose a mate: either Vena, or one of his two crewmembers.  But the Talosians make one mistake: each of the women they plucked from the Enterprise wears a phaser on her utility belt.

When a Talosian opens a hidden panel and reaches for the discarded phasers, Pike, only feigning rest, hauls the alien into the cell.  The Talosians are a sedentary people; the Enterprise crew are hardened by the dangers of space travel and away missions.  The Talosian uses illusion to transform into one fearsome beast after another.  But Pike has grown tired of such trickery, so the alien must use the remaining arrow in his quiver.  “Your ship,” he gasps.  “Release me, or I will destroy it.”

With their starships and the discovery of warp drive, more star systems can be visited than humanity can ever explore.  The Talosians have accomplished this and more, including mental powers such as telepathy, telekinesis, and their ability to generate convincing illusions.  A meeting between two such accomplished races should have been harmonious and constructive.  Instead, these two end up on the floor of a cell, one threatening murder, the other to a ship with a crew of two hundred. 

The Talosians believe their cause is noble, yet assume that Pike would never willingly give up Starfleet for Vena.  So they never scan the Enterprise records to better understand humanity.  (At least not until this point).  Instead, they imprison Pike, and employ illusion, punishment, and manipulation to shape him into the person they wish him to be. 

At the beginning of The Cage, Pike confided in Dr. Phil that he was tired of commanding a starship.  He wondered if he might be destined for another type of life.  Perhaps, had the Talosians tried to get to know him, dealt with him honestly and fairly, and given him the freedom to make his own choice, he would have willingly pledged his life to them (and to Vena).  Sadly, we will never know.

Can great good be accomplished through deception and manipulation?  Machiavelli might have said yes.  Events in The Cage suggest otherwise.

Spock Must Fear!

In the Star Trek pilot episode The Cage, Captain Pike was kidnapped on Talos 4, and the aliens have just reached out across space and snatched-away Number One.  This confirms Mr. Spock’s suspicions that the Talosians’ tremendous mental powers are not planet-bound.  Worse, their action places him in effective command of the ship. 

At least he is not alone.  Before deciding how to proceed, he apparently visits Sick Bay to ask Dr. Phil’s advice.  Both are men of science, and have consistently warned Number One that any attempt to rescue Pike could provoke significant Talosian retaliation.  While we are not privy to their conversation, we see the result.  Mr. Spock walks stiffly onto the bridge and takes the command chair.  Dr. Phil follows him from the lift and stands directly behind as Spock, with clipped diction, switches on the ship-wide channel and announces: “This is the acting captain speaking.” 

The manner in which he sits, as if the seat of the captain’s chair has been strewn with broken glass, makes clear that he has no wish to abandon Captain Pike or Number One.  Yet, presented with unwanted responsibilities, Mr. Spock utters these painful words.  “We have no choice now but to consider the safety of this vessel and the remainder of her crew.  We’re leaving.”

We may not be responsible for the lives of hundreds of people, but events in our lives often call into question our long-term goals.  The old adage “Quitters never win and winners never quit,” reflects the understandable desire to never surrender, but we must temper its application with the knowledge that we cannot expect to win every battle we undertake.  To pursue goals we have no reasonable hope of achieving is to sacrifice the accomplishment of other worthwhile tasks more suited to our abilities. 

Giving into fear, or opting for the easy path, is no more laudable than blind loyalty to a hopeless cause.  Periodic reassessment demonstrates wisdom, and persistence is a necessary component of winning long and difficult struggles.  But once you realize that a given situation has deteriorated beyond your ability to save, an immediate escape is advisable.  Or, like Mr. Spock, you may find the lights fading around you, your power systems draining away, and that you have become trapped in a situation from which extracting yourself is no longer possible. 

We Are What Our Deeds Make Us: Number One

In the Star Trek pilot episode The Cage, Number One serves as second-in-command aboard the Enterprise.  After Captain Pike is kidnapped by the Talosians, she finds herself responsible for the safety of the Enterprise and her crew.  When the sensors detect the location of an underground community, she knows the landing party runs the risk of materializing inside solid rock.  But she could hardly expect that the coordinates were actually for Pike’s cell, or that the Talosians would only allow herself and the yeoman to beam down.  Most surprising of all had to be the revelation that the Talosians planned to breed a community of humans with Pike playing the role of Adam, and that if she played her cards right, she might be Eve.

While surprised, she is not deeply shaken by this development.  Remember how, in the ship’s briefing room, when one bridge officer insisted that Pike was in danger and must be rescued immediately, she did not rebuke him for making such an unsubstantiated assertion?  Nor was she swayed by Dr. Phil and Mr. Spock’s fears of how the Talosians might use their superior mental powers against the ship, should a rescue be attempted.  She merely assessed her options, then ordered they pursue the most feasible course.  Later, when the laser cannon failed to grant them access to the Talosian underground, she ignored Dr. Phil’s “I told you so” advice, and continued looking for ways to rescue Pike.  Unlike her captain, she does not react with anger at this new manipulation of the Talosians.  Neither does she worry that command of the Enterprise has passed onto Mr. Spock, an officer who, despite how he strives to live his life accordingly to logic, still fears to act against the Talosians.  Instead, she immerses herself in the present situation, and acts in the dependable manner which Pike has grown to rely upon.

The Talosian leader’s offer to Pike, that he might choose her as his life-mate, is not worth her contemplation.  While Pike values her as his “most experienced officer”, his comments earlier on the bridge could only affirm what experience has taught her: that he does not see her as desirable.  She might fantasize about a life with him, but just like Pike’s erotic dreams of green animal slave women, a driven, experienced officer know the fallacy of mistaking dreams for reality.  Furthermore, Number One possesses an elevated position in the bridge crew.  Pike’s earlier comments about women on the bridge, and the relative lack of female crew of high rank aboard the Enterprise, suggests that she has had to work hard to achieve her present position.  Even if the Talosians could somehow “make” Pike love her, why should she desire a life with a man “made” to love her by their alien captors?  So unlike Vena and Pike’s yeoman, Number One remains focused upon her goal of rescuing Pike.

“Shall we do a little time computation?” she asks Vena.  “There was a Vena listed on that flight as an adult crew-member,” she says in reference to the ship that crash-landed on Talos 4.  “Now adding eighteen years to your age then....”  Finishing that thought could have been a mistake, but the Talosian leader’s entrance saves her from committing it.  Number One recognizes this, and guards her future thoughts and words accordingly.  She alone in the cell is capable of seeing the situation as it is, rather than how she would like it to be.  Thus, she alone in the cage remains centered, holds her cards to her chest, and calmly waits for the appropriate opportunity to act.

We Are What Our Deeds Make Us: Pike’s Yeoman

In the Star Trek pilot episode The Cage, the Enterprise crew have suffered tragedy.  Captain Christopher Pike blames himself, believing he somehow should have prevented an attack which resulted in injuries and deaths, and cost his previous yeoman her life.  He arrives at Talos 4 with an eager new yeoman from whom he constantly attempts to distance himself.

After the Talosians capture Pike, his crew strive to free him.  The ship’s sensors detect readings suggestive of an underground generator.  But when the landing party assembles in the transporter room, only Number One and Pike’s new yeoman dematerialize.  The women arrive neither near the generator they had believed they had located, nor do they materialize in the aliens’ underground community.  Instead, they find themselves trapped in Pike’s cell, along with Vena, the sole survivor of a scientific survey team who crashed on Talos 4 eighteen years ago.

Pike, angered by their capture, vows to fill his mind with such murderous hatred as to forever sour the Talosians’ hopes of his submitting to their control of his mind.  When Vena counsels him against this course, Pike’s new yeoman grabs her arm and commands her to leave Pike alone.  The yeoman doesn’t know what the aliens have planned for Pike, but she knows what Pike has suffered and is intent upon protecting him against this woman who aided the Talosians in his capture.  She quickly assesses the situation, both from Vena’s references to offspring and the Talosian leader’s declaration that Pike may choose either herself or Number One instead of Vena.  By the time the alien mentions the factors in her favor (namely youth and unusually strong female drives), she understands that the Talosians intend to mate Pike with someone in order to breed a human community, and dares to hope that someone might be her.

The new yeoman is young, and her lowly rank suggests this is her first tour aboard a starship.  To have such unimpeded access to her captain must have come as a surprise; to suddenly be responsible for meeting his personal needs must have intimidated her.  But to see him so depressed, so plagued with self-blame, must have aroused the maternal aspects of her “strong, female drives,” making her figuratively (if not literally) wish to hug him tight, assure him that everything would be all right, and protect him from all pain and disappointment.  It is easy to see how she could have deluded herself into believing that Pike needed her, and that this new role might even evolve into a deeper, more meaningful relationship.  What she fails to understand, due to her inexperience both in Starfleet and as a human being, is that deep depression and forging long-term relationships do not go together.  Just as Pike must battle the Talosians for control of his mind, so must he take the time, on his own, to resolve the issues and feelings that bind him.

Ironically, in her desire to protect and care for him, she reveals how little she understands him, and thus demonstrates her inability to meet his current needs.  In time she will no doubt learn the delicate balancing act of caring for others while still allowing them to retain their independence.  Perhaps, by this time, she will be as experienced and capable as Number One, the woman whom Pike trusts and esteems so highly.  She will certainly find someone to love and who will return that love.  But right now, she is incapable of understanding her incapability of meeting Pike’s needs.  She may be smart and a quick-learner, but she nonetheless lacks the necessary wisdom that only experience and maturity can instill in her.

We Are What Our Deeds Make Us: The Talosians

In the Star Trek pilot episode The Cage, Captain Christopher Pike is captured by the Talosians, who impose upon him a series of dreams either drawn from his recent experience or his repressed desires.  He returns from his latest dream to find not only Vena in his cell, but also his personal yeoman and Number One, his second-in-command.  As Pike discovers that their communicators and phasers don’t work, the aliens’ gift of two more potential mates makes no meaningful impact upon him: rather, their presence just gives him another reason to resist the Talosians’ mind control.  But their action reveals noteworthy aspects of the Talosian species.

Pike continually fights his attraction to Vena, apparently even resisting her seduction during the erotic dream of her as a green animal woman slave.  So the Talosians pluck two females from the Enterprise with whom he works closely.  The aliens suggest that either could serve Pike as an alternative, life-long mate.

Once the Talosians traveled between the stars, and captured representatives of the various species they found on habitable planets.  When war made their surface uninhabitable, they built a fabulous city to live in.  They concentrated on developing their minds, and perfected such fantastic powers as telepathy, creating convincing illusions, and the ability to force their subjects to live out specific dream-scenarios. 

In its proper place, entertainment can relieve stress, lighten our spirits, and inspire us.  But overexposure to its delights can dull us to reality.  No doubt, when the Talosians traveled among the stars and built their underground city, the ability to vicariously experience the dreams of their captives served some benefit to their society.  Yet, at some point, the easy access to the thrills such dreams offered proved too alluring.  As a species, they stopped traveling, ceased to build and create, and contented themselves with the vicarious experiences they imposed upon their specimens.  In the process, they no longer enriched themselves through travel or experience, and thus lost both the will and the ability to create a better future for themselves. 

One day, some small awareness of their decline awoke in their leaders’ minds.  But it came too late.  Their species was dying: they lacked sufficient numbers and the requisite abilities to survive.  Then one of them hit upon a plan.  If they could use their captives to breed a servile race who could rebuild their world for them, perhaps the Talosian species could survive.  Through a process of selection, they determined humans as the race that could serve them best.  But they only possessed Vena, and would need to capture a mate for her.  Unforeseen in their desperate plan was the unsuitability of the kind of man whom Vena would feel most attracted to.  Their dulled sensibilities could not conceive that a human capable of interstellar travel would not accede their purposes.  Nor could they envision that Vena’s choice of a man such as Pike, one who had dedicated his life to completing tasks of great importance to his race, might resist their plans with every fiber of his being.

Through our technological creations, we have instant access to information and communication that can enhance our understanding of how to more readily accomplish our daily tasks, as well as how to achieve our long-term goals.  These devices also offer us an infinite variety of entertainments and diversions, which, when used to excess, can dull us to the present and blind us to the potential futures we might create.  To what purposes we marshal the varied riches available to us determine not only our individual worth, but also the future of humanity. 

The Women!

In the Star Trek pilot episode The Cage, Captain Christopher Pike has been captured by the Talosians.  In a subsequent conference aboard the Enterprise, the officers realize how thoroughly they have been duped.  The Talosians not only lured the Enterprise to their planet with a faked distress signal, but used their powers of illusion to make the landing party interact with crash survivors who weren’t really there.  While one crewman argues that they should mount a rescue effort immediately, Mr. Spock warns against attempting to outsmart the Talosians.  Using a drawing of a Talosian head, he points out that their brains are three-times larger than the human norm.  He warns: If we start buzzing about down there, they could swat our ship as if it were a fly.

After their first attempt to break into the Talosian underground fails, a second landing party gathers in the Transporter room.  They’ve located a magnetic field that may come from an underground generator, Mr. Spock says.  However, if their measurements and readings are just illusions, they could find themselves materialized inside solid rock.

The team members take their places.  The transporter hums into operation.  Dematerialization takes place.  Then Mr. Spock realizes that only Pike’s yeoman and Number One are gone: once again, the Talosians have outsmarted them.  This time, they opted to pluck the two females members of the landing party.  Worse, in his superiors absence, the Talosians have made Mr. Spock responsible for the safety of Pike’s ship and the two hundred who crew her.

As a Vulcan, Mr. Spock has striven to let logic be the sole determinate of his choices and actions.  Yet he is half-human, and so must constantly battle the emotions that would influence him.  When he realizes the Talosians have used their mental powers to capture Pike’s yeoman and Number One, Mr. Spock takes no time to logically assess or discuss what has just occurred.  Instead, in what may rank as one of the most dramatic moments in television history, this half-Vulcan/half-Human throws up his arms (including the hand holding his irrelevant phaser) and shouts, “The women!”

What is new, what strikes Mr. Spock so forcefully, is that the aliens have invaded their ship, their fragile home among the stars, and plucked from it any additional captives they desired.  Clearly, if they can do that, the Talosians can do with the Enterprise as they wish, and the crew are powerless to defend themselves.

All of us occasionally face situations beyond our control.  No matter how hard you try to ignore your emotions and assess the situation logically, it is natural to feel fear when blind-sided by an overwhelming event.  Yet fear can be beneficial.  After all, like a lighthouse, fear alerts us to potential dangers that lay in our path.  So the next time you feel fear, pause to acknowledge it as a welcome warning, and use all your resources to chart a safe path through the dangers. 

Then resume your journey.

Dangerous Reappraisals

In the Star Trek pilot episode The Cage, Captain Christopher Pike has been captured by the Talosians.  With the aid of their other human captive, the beautiful Vena, they have forced him to relive the recent fight on Rigel 7, as well as explored a dream of his, to retire from Starfleet and return home.  As they sit on their picnic blanket in a small park outside the metropolis of Mojave, Vena ponders why this new dream isn’t working for Pike.  She wonders: perhaps one’s strongest dreams are about what he can’t do.

Earlier, in his quarters, Pike confessed to the ship’s doctor that the deaths and injuries incurred back on Rigel 7 still plagued him.  Perhaps he was not cut out for the life and responsibilities of a starship captain.  When pressed on what he might do if he retired, Pike mused that he could return home, ride his horses and enjoy the quiet life.  Or he could go into business on Regulus or in the Orion colony.  Dr. Phil derides these notions: to the latter, he asks: You, an Orion trader in Green Animal-Women Slaves?

Having failed to capture Pike’s interest by making him live out his first notion of a quiet life, the Talosians now present him with the second.  Two men sit with Pike in an opulent palace.  As he watches Green Vena dance, one suggests to him that these green women actually enjoy being taken advantage of.  In fact, this is almost like the secret dream a bored ship captain might have.  The other asks him: If you could have anything, and this was just a sample, wouldn’t it’d be worth a man’s soul?  Pike grows tense, and his palms sweat as he watches Vena’s sensual display.  Then, abruptly, he flees the room, only to find himself trapped in a cave with this green animal-woman slave named Vena.  Her triumphant expression and posture suggests that she believes she’s finally hooked Pike, and is looking forward to reeling him in.  Yet, later, when the dream ends and they are returned to the cell, Vena’s reaction suggests that, once more, Pike has rebuffed her.

How could Vena fail so incredibly with Pike?  She has spent decades living with the Talosians, a race adept at delving into the minds of their subjects.  And how could the Talosians fail to captivate Pike?  Don’t they give him everything he has wished for?

When we are struggling with failure or loss, it is tempting to think: I must be on the wrong track.  If only I’d done something different with my life, I wouldn’t be here now.  Yet, when the Talosians let him explore these alternative life paths, Pike rejects them, seeing them as fallacies.  Perhaps, the next time you’re feeling down, a better question might be: How wise is it to ponder a major life change when I’m at my weakest?  Weren’t there good, sound reasons why I made the major life-decisions that I did? 

Perhaps the definition of a successful life includes the necessity of navigating your way through the occasional failure.