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Edited on Sun Sep-13-09 04:08 PM by pokerfan
:bounce:
TOS, Episode 0x01
Production number: 6149-01
First aired: 4 October 1988
Remastered version aired: 2 May 2009
* This was the first episode of Star Trek ever produced. NBC rejected the pilot but made the extraordinary (and at the time, rare) move to order a second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Almost all footage of this episode was later reused in "The Menagerie, Part I" and "The Menagerie, Part II".
* The first filmed scene from "The Cage" (and of Star Trek) – the cut with Dr. Boyce and Captain Pike sharing a martini – was filmed on Friday, 27 November 1964.
* The captain's name was changed constantly throughout the writing of the story and script. First it was Robert M. April, then it was Christopher Pike, then as late as 20 November 1964, in the Second Revised Final Script, it was James Winter. Seven days later, when filming began, it had been changed back to Christopher Pike.
* Reportedly the episode title was changed in production from "The Cage" to "The Menagerie," however when the two-part episode went into production with that title, the title of the actual pilot episode reverted to "The Cage."
* The ape creature seen in the Talos zoo originally appeared in The Outer Limits episode "Fun and Games", without the facial hair, and was created by Janos Prohaska. The owl-like bird creature seen down the corridor also appears in an episode of that series. Several of Prohaska's creations would be modified and make appearances in episodic Star Trek.
* One imprisoned species is seen only by its shadow – the last cage in the zoo contains a large crab-like creature with huge claws (rendered by several fingers silhouetted against a lit backdrop). In Gene Roddenberry's original conception, the Talosians were crab-like aliens. This would have been prohibitively expensive and probably unconvincing, so they became humanoids instead.
* The Talosian seen down the corridor as Pike looks at all the imprisoned creatures was a dwarf. This gave the appearance of great length to what was actually a short, forced-perspective hallway.
* The episode is difficult to reconcile with canon in many instances. For example, Spock smiles and uses several Human expressions such as "buzzing about down there", which he seldom did in subsequent episodes and films. A few novels have theorized as to the cause for this. Examples of this include Spock possibly not having complete control of his emotions at that point, as he was still quite young and that he achieved full control of his emotions by observing Captain Pike. (On the Mind Meld DVD, Leonard Nimoy commented that because Jeffrey Hunter was playing a very controlled, internalized character that he felt the need to bring in some energy and animation onto the set and then when William Shatner came on and had his own energy, animation and exuberance, Nimoy was able to be more reserved and internalized). Another more recent explanation was that Spock was simply emulating Human behaviors such as smiles, and that there was truly no emotion behind that smile.
* The real-world explanation for that is that Gene Roddenberry hadn't given Spock the emotional control and the super-intellect as that was all still embedded in the Number One character and when she was removed from the show, Roddenberry simply transferred those characteristics over from Number One to Spock.
* On Inside Star Trek with Gene Roddenberry, Roddenberry commented on how the network wanted him to get rid of the woman character and "the guy with the ears," joking about how he kept the alien character and later married the woman, noting that "I couldn't have legally done it the other way around."
* In addition, Pike tells the Talosians that he's from a stellar group "at the other end of this galaxy," which, in modern Trek parlance, infers that Talos IV is deep in the Beta, Gamma or Delta Quadrants. This does not seem likely, especially because the SS Columbia was only lost for eighteen years and, having traveled at less than light speed (see next), must be relatively close to Earth. In fact, Harvey P. Lynn, who served as Gene Roddenberry's unofficial technical adviser on the pilot, told him that traveling from one end of the galaxy to the other would take an impossibly long time.
* Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson make the only contemporary presidential appearances in an original series episode, as images in the Talosian download of the ship's computer.
* When doing makeup tests for Vina as an Orion slave girl, with Majel Barrett as a willing test subject, the film kept coming back without the green skin being visible. Puzzled by this, the makeup crew kept painting the actress again and again with other shades of green, hoping it would be visible on film. Afterward, they discovered that the film processing lab was "de-coloring" her because they didn't know she was supposed to be green.
* The matte painting of the Rigel VII fortress is one of the most-recognized and celebrated in Star Trek history. It was reused (unaltered) in the third season as Flint's home in "Requiem for Methuselah". In addition, the large moon in the background of the painting was the inspiration for a song called "Moon over Rigel VII," which Captain James T. Kirk recommended as a campfire song decades later in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.
* "The Cage" was initially released on home video in late 1986 in celebration of Trek's 20th anniversary. The release was a collection of color footage taken from "The Menagerie" and black and white footage taken from a print of the pilot episode owned by Gene Roddenberry. Roddenberry had shown the black and white print at various Trek conventions throughout the '70s and early '80s. A full color version was aired 4 October 1988 with a two-hour special called The Star Trek Saga: From One Generation To The Next wrapped around it. The special was hosted by Patrick Stewart and traced the history of Trek from "The Cage" throughout the first season of TNG and beginnings of production for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. The opportunity to broadcast "The Cage" in its original form came when production of Star Trek: The Next Generation was interrupted due to a Writers' Guild strike. The broadcast filled in for two of the four hours missing from TNG's truncated second season. In some markets, the special (and this episode) did not air until 15 October 1988.
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