TOS-0001 The Cage (Pilot Episode)

Image Credits: IMDB 🖖 The Original Series-1966 Season:00 Episode:01

Overall Score:       36.00 / 100
Star Trek Values:    3.00 / 5
Inspiring:           5.00 / 5
Story Development:   3.00 / 5

View Episode (Imbd)

This is the pilot episode, where Roddenberry convinced the channel to broadcast Star Trek, and he received feedbacks. So we see some things changed after the pilot.

The crew, was on a mission when they receive some signals from Rigel 7 to rescue the human group. And altered their path for emergency, landed to the planet, and caught on a trap. Captain is being held by Talosians, which their civilization has been destroyed by nuclear wars. Remaining few individuals started a life of underground and used their ancestors’ technology of illusion creating. These mentally evolved Talosians, are capturing different species and build a kind of zoo.

Clearly, the first episode delivers a message from a mentally evolved but destroyed-by-nuclear civilization. We didn’t have the opportunities to feel the values of the federation here. At the closing scenes of the episode, Talosians saw Captain Pike and First Officer’s action to self-destroy themselves by overloading the weapons. And by fetching data from starship’s computer, they became convinced that, humans can behave in this way rather than to be captive or caged.

So, humanity’s willing to be free, saved themselves from the captivity of highly intelligent traps, In a way.

Talosians also summarizes their approach on illusions, by describing the situation of the women at the end;

She has illusion, you have the reality. May you find your way as pleasant.

I guess, this is both a point to the story to be told in the following episodes, and a point to understand their perspective; they’re escaping from the situation like a defense strategy. Because civilizations might not find power to fight against the streams, and they need to gather power. But still, their ways can form habits which will prevent them to proceed. So they seem caught by their habits, like a flywheel.

Some of the observations on what didn’t continue after the pilot;

• The beaming sound is more like a beaming sound in this pilot. Later, they changed the sound. But I liked this version.
• “Not used to have women onboard” by Captain Pike, is not a sentence we used to hear from any other series. It seems like Roddenberry noticed some points on raising the diversity of the crew.
• The term of “hyperdrive”, seems slower than the “warp drive”.
• Screens with snake like cables seems less tasty than no-screen idea. It’s good to not see it in the series and spinoffs.