The first pilot for Star Trek: The Original Series, The Cage, didn’t appeal to NBC. The execs thought it was too cerebral, intellectual and did not have enough action. Fortunately, most of the film became part of The Menagerie.
Copyrighted in 1964 and completed in 1965, the full episode was released in 1986 on VHS. As one of my colleagues put it, the Original Series is cheesy. Maybe so, in the 1960s they didn’t have CGI. If that is all you watch shows for, then maybe the Original Series isn’t for you. Yet, I find a lot to learn from these shows.
Plot Highlights
Original Series takes place in the 23rd Century, just a couple hundred years from now. In the Cage, the USS Enterprise is returning home from a mission that has Captain Pike expressing symptoms of burn out to Dr. Theodore Haskins. The ship receives a distress call from Talos IV. Captain Pike decides to continue home to care for their own sick and wounded unless there is proof of life on the planet. Lo’ and behold, the printout arrives with proof and they change course to assist.
On the planet, the landing party discovers a camp of survivors, all men except for one lovely young lady, Vina. Vina lures Pike to the top of a hill where the Talosians capture him. The Talosians use their power of illusion in an attempt to make Pike want to mate with Vina. His resistance leads them to bring down Number One, the first officer, and Yoeman J.M. Colt.
Pike discovered if he held angry, violent thoughts in his mind the Talosians could not read them. When Number One and the Yoeman beamed into Pike’s cage, they had their hand phasers. Eventually, Pike and the three women were resting and one of the Talosians, The Keeper, reaches in through a trap door to get the phasers. Pike wakes up and captures him, threatening to use the phaser on him.
The Keeper allows Pike and the three women to take him to the surface where the Keeper tells the group the Talosians want them on the surface. The Talosians’ plan for the group to create a society “trained to serve as artisians and technicians.” Number One has a phaser and sets it to overload. They explain to the Keeper they would rather die than live as slaves. Vina says she will go with Pike and crew to keep the Talosians from luring another human group there.
Two more Talosians arrive at the surface and Number One turns off the overload. The new arrivals have read the Enterprises’ history and transfer the knowledge via telapathy to the Keeper. The Keeper then tells the group they are unsuitable. Humans have a unique hatred of captivity even when it is pleasant. Humans are too violent for the Talosian’s needs. They are free to go.
Number One and the Yoeman beam back up to the ship. Pike stays behind to have the true appearance of Vina revealed so he understood why she would remain behind. The final seen of Vina, we see her with her illusion of beauty and her perfect mate, Captain Pike going back underground.
Historical Context
The 1960s began as a decade of change. John F. Kennedy became President of the United States. During his campaign he promised the “New Frontier”, a package of laws and reforms to eliminate injustice and inequality in the United States. JFK’s inaugural address in 1961 called for Americans to work together to eliminate poverty and win the Cold War battle against communism. His closing words were “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
Fueled by the cold war, the “Space Race” lead to JFK’s goal that the US should commit to landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth within a decade. In 1961, Project Mercury launched Alan Shepard on a suborbital flight. In 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. The Gemini program, beginning in 1962, launched it’s first manned flight in 1965 with Gus Grissom and John Young.
As the space race took flight, the civil rights movement was still fighting on the home front. In 1960, four African American college students, inspired by the non-violent protest of Gandhi, refused to leave a whites only lunch counted in North Carolina. Their action became the first sit-in. Freedom Rides began in 1961, where black and white activists took bus trips through the American south to protest segregated bus terminals and whites only restrooms and lunch counters. In 1963, Martin Luther King gave his historic “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’
— Martin Luther King, 1963
The early 1960’s must have had a profound influence on Gene Roddenberry. He was 40 years old and already a screen writer and producer. The space race and civil rights play prominent themes in the later episodes.
Lessons Learned
As I re-watch The Cage on Sept 8, 2020, I see influences of the 1960s, just the costumes. I notice where we may not have made as much progress as one would have hoped for 60 years later.
As I mentioned earlier, the episode begins with Captain Pike describes what we call today “Burn out”. Burn out is a physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion, normally attributed to stress in the workplace. It was first diagnosed by Herbert Freudenberger in 1974, a decade after Captain Pike contemplates leaving Star Fleet so he doesn’t have to decide who lives and who dies. Isn’t it amazing that in 2020, there is still debate on if burn out is a real thing? Even more amazing that people have been describing the symptoms for at least a decade before we had a name for it? Why do we continue to push ourselves to the point of burn out?
In the scene were we see Captain Pike on the bridge with Yoeman J.M. Colt the first time, he snaps at her about the reports. She bravely shows her Captain that she is following his orders. Pike says afterwards, “I can’t get used to a woman on the bridge.” The comment elicits a pointed side-ways glance from Number One. Pike back pedals saying she is different. We could say women have come a long way since the 1960’s. However only about a quarter of STEM workers are female. According to catalyst.org, women are under represented in the STEM professions and are more likely to hold lower-paying STEM jobs. We haven’t achieved equality yet.
A little off the scientific, sociology path, we also see a theme about mistrust of telepathy. Is there such a thing as telepathy? I don’t know. But we see the 1960’s idea of an alien race with the large heads and telepathic minds who do not need to use language to communicate. They have advanced mental powers and can place illusions in the minds of mere humans. They can control our thoughts. It’s a scary thing to have a being greater than you control your thoughts, take away your free will.
After Captain Pike has been captured, the bridge crew is debriefing. They realize the power these beings have. They know the risk they are facing. Yet, they brave the danger to rescue the Captain. Number One takes a landing party to the surface to attempt the rescue. Now that’s loyalty and friendship!
The Talosians tell Pike, as they let them go, humans would learn their power of illusion. It would destroy us as it destroyed them. The Talosians mental powers were described as “a trap”, “a narcotic”, and led them to ruin and they could no longer repair their machines. Thus they needed to find a race they could enslave to serve them. Is this the beginning of a cautionary theme to not loose our independence? Or is it a commentary on class, where the upper class can no longer do the normal work?
These are a few of the themes I saw re-watching the Cage. What do you think?