TOS · THE PILOTPILOT

The Cage

NOMADIC PICK · ESSENTIAL VIEWINGStar Trek before Kirk.

FIRST SHOWN (US): 4 October 1988
ON: NBC
STARDATE: None given
DIRECTED BY: Robert Butler
PRODUCTION NO.: 01

WRITTEN BYWritten by Gene Roddenberry

IN BRIEF

SPOILER-FREE

In Star Trek's original pilot, Captain Christopher Pike answers a distress call from Talos IV and becomes the prize exhibit of beings who can make him see anything.

SYNOPSIS

SPOILERS

Red alert: the full plot, ending included. Haven't watched yet?REVEAL SYNOPSIS

Captain Christopher Pike, weary of command, leads the Enterprise to Talos IV after picking up a distress call. The landing party finds survivors of the SS Columbia, missing for 18 years, among them a young woman named Vina. It is a trap. The survivors are illusions, and Pike is captured by the Talosians, big-brained telepaths who live underground. They want him to mate with Vina and found a race of human servants. They tempt him with fantasies: a battle on Rigel, a picnic at home on Earth, Vina as a green Orion dancer. Pike resists, discovering that fierce, primitive emotions such as hatred block their telepathy. When Number One threatens to destroy the whole group rather than submit, the Talosians accept that humans will never make willing captives. They free the crew. Vina, the true sole survivor of the crash, reveals that her beauty is an illusion and chooses to stay, with an illusory Pike as her companion.

DID YOU KNOW?

01Filmed in late 1964. In February 1965 NBC rejected it as “too cerebral” but ordered a second pilot instead of dropping the series.
02Most of its footage was reused in the first-season two-parter “The Menagerie” (1966), with a new story built around it.
03First released on VHS in 1986, partly in black and white. A restored all-colour version premiered on TV on 4 October 1988, in a syndicated special hosted by Patrick Stewart.

SOURCES WE CHECKED