The Cage (Episode 01)

Paramount Video in 1986 released “The Cage” on VHS. The episode began and ended with these bumpers narrated by Gene Roddenberry. Video source: News from the Past YouTube channel.

THE NEXT CAGE. The desperation of our series lead, caged and on exhibition like an animal, then offered a mate.

— “Star Trek Is,” First Draft, March 11, 1964

As discussed in our last article, Gene Roddenberry wrote (with the help of D.C. Fontana) a sixteen-page outline to describe for potential studios and networks his proposed television series. The document was titled, “Star Trek Is …”. The outline had 24 one-paragraph ideas for potential stories.

The first story, on page one, was “The Next Cage.”

Many books have been written about this seminal time. Different accounts suggest the pilot was to be one hour, 90 minutes, even two hours. According to one account, Roddenberry suggested that, if an extended version flopped, it could air as a TV movie. The final version was one hour.

Studio executive Herb Solow, Roddenberry's patron saint at Desilu, wrote in Inside Star Trek: The Real Story that meetings were held in the spring of 1964 between Gene, Desilu, and NBC to hear a number of story ideas “before one of them was chosen as the basis for the pilot script.” The final choice, alternately titled “The Cage” or “The Menagerie,” went through “many hours straightening out the twists, turns, and bends in the plot” before Roddenberry began to write the script.

It appears that Roddenberry may have melded “The Next Cage” with another story idea from his sixteen-page outline:

A MATTER OF CHOICE. Another entrapment story, i.e., a planet in which the intelligent life has achieved no great material success but instead, has learned the power to live and relieve over and over again in different ways, any portion of their past life they choose. This is a starring vehicle for Captain Robert M. April as he is presented with the chance to do those certain things all over again.

Both “The Cage” and the second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” relied on mental powers as a plot device. In “The Cage,” a race called the Talosians use their telepathic powers to create illusions that manipulate life forms imprisoned in their menagerie. Mental or psychic powers would become a staple of Star Trek plots and character traits. Spock and the Vulcan race in future episodes are telepaths. In The Next Generation, Betazoids are telepathic, although Deanna Troi is only empathic because her father was human (just as Spock's mother was human).

Several early first season episodes featured plots involving mental powers. “The Day Charlie Became God” was the second story idea listed in Roddenberry's 1964 outline, right after “The Next Cage.” It became “Charlie X” about an immature young man who uses his telepathic powers to manipulate crew members. Another early episode, “Dagger of the Mind,” explored the altering of memories using futuristic technologies. In “Shore Leave,” the crew encounters a pleasure planet where fantasies become reality. This bears some resemblance to another 1964 outline pitch, named “The Man Trap,” which has nothing in common with the episode that did air with that name; in the original pitch, crew members encounter apparitions that are “wish-fulfillment traps.”

Did Roddenberry genuinely believe in psychic phenomena? Reviewing the available literature, the answer appears to be no, although we know that Gene certainly believed in the human mind's potential. Mental powers have long been one tool in the speculative fiction writer's toolbox. By the early 1960s, telepathy was a staple of SF writing.

Roddenberry did have a mid-1970s dalliance with the paranormal. It's not discussed in his authorized biography, Star Trek Creator, but the unauthorized biography, Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and the Man Behind Star Trek by Joel Engel, dedicates part of a chapter to Gene's involvement with a group calling itself “Lab 9” based in Ossining, New York. Their leader claimed to be in telepathic communication with extraterrestrials known as “The Nine.” Several self-proclaimed psychics and parapsychologists lived on the property. The group offered Roddenberry $25,000 to write a screenplay about The Nine's arrival.

Engel writes that he believes Roddenberry was a skeptic, but was open to the project because he needed the money. In the end, Gene produced a screenplay, which was rejected by the group.

In any case, it remains an unexplained historical curiosity as to why, for his first foray into science fiction, Roddenberry chose psychic phenomena as a common theme. Perhaps he (or the network) thought that was what would sell. Roddenberry was unfamiliar with the science fiction current for his time, so he turned to his friend Sam Peeples, best known for writing Westerns, but who was also a science fiction enthusiast. Peeples would go on to write the script for the second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” in which certain crewmembers with heightened ESP ratings suddenly become godlike. Perhaps Sam was the Jiminy Cricket on Gene's shoulder; he introduced Roddenberry to several science fiction writers, such as Harlan Ellison.

Peeples loaned Roddenberry a book by Olaf Stapledon, a science fiction writer who had passed in 1950. According to Star Trek Creator, Peeples told author David Alexander that Stapledon's 1930 novel Last and First Men was “instrumental in the development of the Star Trek format.” In a passage that could describe the Talosians, Stapledon wrote that his “Second Men … conceived that the ideal community should be knit into one mind by each unique individual's direct telepathic apprehension of the experience of all his fellows.” Stapledon described the Second Men as having a “more roomy cranium.”

The Talosians share some traits with the Second Men described in Olaf Stapledon's “Last and First Men.”

But the comparison is superficial at best. The Second Men are much larger and athletic in stature, and capable of maintaining an idyllic paradise, whereas the Talosians went underground and withered. They have lost the ability to maintain their infrastructure. The Second Men went into decline as their brains became “overgrown” eventually devolving into imbecility.

Roddenberry borrowed from other resources to design the USS Enterprise. The original 16-page outline offered no clue. Neither does the first draft of the script. The first page describes the Enterprise as, “Obviously not a primitive 'rocket ship' but rather a true space vessel, suggesting unique arrangements and exciting capabilities.” The script has very few exterior shots of the starship, so what it looks like remains a mystery. Few exterior shots also meant few expensive visual effects. Along with Sam Peeples, Gene went through hundreds of old “pulp” science fiction and fantasy magazine covers, some dating back to the 1930s, looking for inspiration. At the time, many space shows depicted a spaceship as a rocket or a flying saucer. Roddenberry wanted his starship to be unique.

The October 1953 issue of “Science Fiction Plus” magazine. Solow and Justman published this cover in “Inside Star Trek” as one example of the magazines that Roddenberry reviewed for starship design ideas.

Another unknown was the look of the alien science officer, Mister Spock.

In his March 1964 outline, Roddenberry described Spock as the ship's “First Lieutenant.” Roddenberry wrote, “… the first view of him can be almost frightening — a face so heavy-lidded and satanic you might almost expect him to have a forked tail. Probably half Martian, he has a slightly reddish complexion and semi-pointed ears.”

The October 1964 first draft of “The Cage” didn't change Spock much:

The only exception to the familiar types represented by the crew, Mister Spock is of partly alien extraction, his reddish skin, heavy-lidded eyes and slightly-pointed ears give him an almost satanic look. But in complete contrast is his unusual gentle manner and tone. He speaks with the almost British accent of one who has learned the language in textbooks.

This explains Spock's odd speech pattern in the first two pilots and early episodes. The accent eventually was ditched.

The reddish complexion posed a more difficult problem. In 1964, most US households still had black-and-white television sets. NBC blazed the trail for color programs; Star Trek, if it made the schedule, would be telecast in color. But as of January 1, 1965, only 2.8 million US households had color TVs. Although the show would be filmed in color, most households would see it in black-and-white. How would it appear?

Makeup tests were conducted to see how a reddish Spock would appear in black-and-white. Leonard Nimoy wrote in his 1995 autobiography, I Am Spock, that the red makeup “simply turned Spock's face jet-black” on a black-and-white TV. As is well known, the final skin tone was a yellowish-green, which looked better on the typical TV set of the day.

Leonard Nimoy and Majel Barrett in early makeup tests. Barrett modeled the Orion makeup later worn by Susan Oliver. Image source: Larry Nemecek's Trekland Facebook page.

Majel Barrett, cast as Number One, was used by Roddenberry to test the green Orion makeup that would later be worn by Susan Oliver. Roddenberry originally envisioned the Orion version of Vina having “strawberry roan” hair, which explains why Majel's hair is that color seen in the above image. The film lab didn't understand that Vina was supposed to be green, so they kept color-correcting the image. That was soon fixed.

In the above image, Nimoy's ears are barely pointed. He and makeup artist Fred Phillips eventually came up with the version we all know, but still the network was nervous about Spock's satanic look. More about that in a future blog article.

Many blanks remained on the Spock résumé. The script no longer referred to Spock as being from Mars, apparently because it was thought the Enterprise might one day visit Mars and the production team didn't want to be locked into what a Martian might look like. (Besides, by 1964 we had a pretty good idea that no sentient life existed on Mars.) But there was no mention of Vulcan, or any other planet of origin. Nor was Spock the cool emotion suppressor that we came to know; in fact, he smiles when he discovers the singing plants. That smile is in the script — Spock “grins in relief as he points out the source.” (In the final cut, Captain Pike finds the plants.)

Fun fact … In his autobiography, Nimoy wrote that he was the one who came up with the idea of pointed sideburns. In “The Cage,” only Spock has them, to indicate his alien nature. The look eventually was adapted for all male crew members.

Logical or not, Spock is delighted that Talosian plants can sing.

In any case, the basic format had been established. The captain, as central character, must resolve a problem with the able assistance of his crew. After the problem is resolved, the captain extends a gesture of reconciliation, trying to make friends of enemies. After his release, Pike offers to assist the Talosians in repopulating their surface by establishing trade relations; the Talosians decline, but nonetheless reconciliation becomes a recurring theme for Star Trek story-telling.

Much is already familiar. It's the starship we know, and the bridge we know, although not as colorful as we'll see later. The crew uniforms come in three colors — gold, blue, and tan. The delta insignias already have the different symbols for the three divisions — command, sciences, and engineering and support services. Number One, the first officer, sits at the helm, per the script. “First Lieutenant”Spock, described in the script as the science officer, seems to have no fixed position, roaming the bridge to observe readings and report to the captain. We see the bridge, we see the transporter room, we see a conference room, and we see the captain's quarters, but we don't see engineering or meet a chief engineer.

The script and casting very much reflect the sexism and prejudice of American culture at the time. Number One is the only female officer on the bridge. No African-American or Hispanic actors are in the cast; an Asian who may be Japanese assists the transporter chief. (The Asian briefly wears glasses, then takes them off; perhaps the director told him there are no spectacles in the future!) Roddenberry may have intended to test the boundaries of cultural intolerance, but he also needed to sell the show first, which meant not offending potential sponsors.

Nor is there any mention of Starfleet or a Federation. "USS" stands for United Space Ship. Pike tells the Talosians he's from “a stellar group at the other end of this galaxy.” The illusory stranded scientists ask how Earth is, but no other planet or political entity is mentioned.

“The Cage” was shown to Desilu executives, to network suits, to test audiences. The mythology we're told today is that NBC rejected the pilot because it was “too cerebral,” but that's not true. Both David Alexander's authorized biography and the Solow & Justman book confirm that NBC liked the pilot. The problem was that NBC needed to sell ad time; the network executives thought “The Cage” was fine for a regular weekly episode, but not as a sample for potential sponsors. The pilot did serve to demonstrate that Desilu, primarily known for half-hour sitcoms, could produce a high-quality effects-driven one-hour drama; perhaps as good as ABC's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea produced by Irwin Allen at 20th Century Fox.

The “too cerebral” excuse was a cover, according to Alexander, for NBC to save face while a second pilot was produced. According to Solow & Justman, “NBC was very concerned with the 'eroticism' of the pilot and what it foreshadowed for the ensuing series.” The network was also concerned that Spock's satanic appearance might offend Bible Belt advertisers.

But the studio and the network concurred that Star Trek had potential, so their executives agreed to fund a second pilot.

To be continued …

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Sources:

David Alexander, Star Trek Creator: The Authorized Biography of Gene Roddenberry (New York: ROC Books, 1994)

Joel Engel, Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and Man Behind Star Trek (New York: Hyperion, 1994)

Franz Joseph, Star Fleet Technical Manual (New York: Ballantine Books, 1975)

Leonard Nimoy, I Am Spock (New York: Hyperion, 1995)

Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman, Inside Star Trek: The Real Story (New York: Pocket Books, 1996)