The Cage

Shot in 1964, ‘The Cage’ was Star Trek’s pilot episode. While the format of the show is the same as the series that it spawned, it features an almost entirely different cast, led by Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike. Spock is the only character carried over. In Trek lore, the events of this episode took place thirteen years before the famous five-year mission commanded by Captain Kirk. Although this pilot was not enough to sell the show, it inspired executives at the NBC network to commission a second pilot for further consideration.

Premise

After beaming down to planet Talos IV, Captain Pike is captured by telepathic aliens who can project perfectly life-like illusions into the minds of other beings. Pike is imprisoned with a woman, Vina, who had survived a spacecraft crash on the planet eighteen years previously. Later, the Talosians also capture Pike’s first officer (never named, but simply referred to as ‘Number One’) and his yeoman, Colt.

Themes

Right here at the beginning, ‘The Cage’ already depicts some of Star Trek’s most frequently visited themes. During the story, Pike and the other human captives seek to escape from the Talosian zoo. When they succeed, they discover that in doing so, they have passed the test that is the whole reason for their imprisonment. Escape demonstrates that a species is resourceful and adaptable, and therefore suitable as a slave race to rebuild the Talosians’ ravaged planet.

Ethos: Self-sacrifice

Upon learning of the Talosians’ end-game, Number One sets her hand laser (the term phaser had not yet been coined) to build up to an explosion that will kill all the human escapees. None of the other humans attempt to prevent this course of action. In fact, Vina refuses to go with the Talosians when Pike warns them to get to safety, pointing out that ‘if they have one human being, they might try again’. The humans’ stoic wait for their deaths provides tacit endorsement of Number One’s position and her decision. Pike eventually orders her to abort the overload when it is clear that the Talosians are reconsidering their part in the standoff.

What it means to be human: Freedom

As Number One sets the laser pistol to explode, she tells the Talosians ‘It’s wrong to create a whole race of humans to live as slaves.’ The Talosians confirm this for themselves with historical information from the Enterprise’s computers. They conclude:

‘We had not believed this possible. The customs and history of your race show a unique hatred of captivity. Even when it’s pleasant and benevolent, you prefer death.’

What it means to be human: Work

‘The Cage’ also provides the first of Star Trek’s dis-endorsements of paradise. The Talosians’ mental powers give them access to what we would now call virtual realities. They can live and re-live other Talosian lives ‘left behind in the thought record’, or they can plant illusions in the minds of the zoo specimens and experience their reactions and feelings. Vina describes the result as:

‘a trap, like a narcotic, because when dreams become more important than reality, you give up travel, building, creating. You even forget how to repair the machines left behind by your ancestors.’

At the episode’s conclusion, the Talosian ‘Keeper’ agrees with this assessment, saying that humans should stay away from Talos IV because:

‘Your race would learn our power of illusion and destroy itself, too.’

Note that there’s very little[1] indication that there’s anything particularly unsatisfying or unhappy about the Talosians’ ultimate-couch-potato lifestyle—the story just treats it as axiomatic that a life of being productive and creative is better than a life of passivity.

The mind: Mental power

Throughout ‘The Cage’, the Talosians are presented as older, more sophisticated, and more highly evolved than humanity. Certainly, they were capable of warfare that could devastate their planet ‘thousands of centuries ago’ and leave it barren for all the intervening time. The specimens in their zoo are the ‘descendants of life brought back long ago from all over this part of the galaxy’, so the Talosians have been galactic explorers in their distant past. After being forced underground, they ‘concentrated on developing their mental power’. Here, Star Trek correlates the more advanced, more evolved species with the species that has the greater mental abilities.

The mind: Mind vs body

At the time of the Enterprise’s visit, the Talosians are depicted as having hugely enlarged heads (Spock says their brains are ‘three times the size of ours’) and diminutive, slender bodies. To emphasise the split between mind and body, Roddenberry cast ‘slim, fragile’ women to portray the Talosians,[2] had their breasts bound to hide their female forms, and had them fitted them with enormous prosthetic heads, complete with pulsing veins. The Talosian voices were overdubbed by men. The suggestion is that the Talosians developed their mental powers at the expense of allowing their bodies to atrophy. Already, Star Trek’s treatment of the mind–body problem is strongly dualistic. 

The mind: Intellect vs emotion

The theme of intellect opposed to emotion is played out right through Star Trek, most famously in the character of Spock himself as a personification of intellect, surrounded by emotional humans. In this first pilot, the dispassionate intellect was part of the character of Number One.

The opposition of intellect and emotion is highlighted even more in ‘The Cage’. Indeed, it is a major plot point. The Talosians, despite—or because of—their highly advanced mental abilities, cannot read or manipulate ‘primitive’ emotions. The specific examples depicted are Pike’s deduction that the Talosians can’t make him feel hungry, and his discovery that they can’t read his mind when it’s full of hate. And, although never stated directly, they do not seem to be able to place sexual desire in his mind either. The Talosians want Pike to mate with Vina, but have to rely on indirect approaches like putting the two of them in illusory situations where Pike will find Vina attractive:

PIKE: [...] You seem to be going out of your way to make her attractive, to make me feel protective.

[...]

KEEPER: We wish our specimens to be happy in their new life.

PIKE: Assuming that's a lie, why would you want me attracted to her? So I'll feel love in a husband-wife relationship?

The Talosians have achieved their formidable intellects at the expense not only of their bodies, but their connection with their basic emotions too.

What it means to be human: Irrationality

A fundamental paradox in Star Trek is that although intellect tends to be portrayed as more advanced than emotion, it is a reliance on emotion or irrationality that frequently saves the day. ‘The Cage’ contains two reversals on this count:

• The humans’ ‘primitive’ emotional states allow them to defeat a prison constructed by aliens who literally cannot comprehend these feelings.  But:
• The expectation that escape constitutes success is subverted when it is revealed that escape from the cage is part of the Talosians’ experimental design. But:
• The humans’ irrational desire to destroy themselves rather than live a life of servitude to benevolent masters finally secures their freedom.

 

Benevolence

Star Trek frequently equates the advancement of a civilization with its benevolence. When the Keeper threatens to destroy the Enterprise, Pike replies, ‘I'm going to gamble you're too intelligent to kill for no reason at all’ and is proven correct.

Ethos: Mercy

Despite everything that the Talosians put him through and threaten him with, Pike extends mercy to them at the end, suggesting a relationship of ‘trade and mutual co-operation’ with Earth. The Talosians’ response is merciful too, declining the offer because of the disastrous effect that they know that ongoing contact will have on humanity.

More: the Talosians show great mercy towards Vina. When they realise that humans will not be suitable for their purposes and allow Pike and his crew to leave, Vina decides to stay. Although she has always appeared to Pike as young, beautiful, and able-bodied, her true form is old and disfigured from the injuries sustained in the crash eighteen years ago. Not only do the Talosians restore her own illusion of youth and beauty, they also give her the added illusion that Pike has decided to stay with her.

De-escalation

What began with an assault and deprivation of liberty finishes with the Keeper wishing Pike well. As Vina returns underground to her illusory life, the Keeper says to Pike: ‘She has an illusion and you have reality. May you find your way as pleasant.’

Career captain

Being a ship’s captain is a special vocation in Star Trek. We get a first taste of it when Pike, blaming himself for a recent mission that went catastrophically wrong, intimates to the ship’s doctor that he is considering resigning:

PIKE: The point is this isn't the only life available. There's a whole galaxy of things to choose from.

BOYCE: Not for you.

As the series developed, we would see Kirk just as married to his career. Star Trek also attributes some very specific traits to its captains: they
are generally expected to be moral exemplars. Vina comments on this as she is working out how to tempt Pike:

‘I’m beginning to see why none of this has worked for you. You’ve been home, and fighting as on Rigel. That’s not new to you, either. A person’s strongest dreams are about what he can’t do. Yes, a ship’s captain, always having to be so formal, so decent and honest and proper. You must wonder what it would be like to forget all that.’

As science fiction

‘The Cage’ has a strong science-fiction plot that is not easily relocatable to a mundane setting. The basic premise is itself portable: the protagonist must reason their way out of an elaborate prison. This could be the basis of a thriller, and indeed the Saw films share this set-up. However, the motivation for the test is not simply sadistic amusement, but for a purely science-fictional motivation: to select a species to breed as a slave race. The Talosians are depicted as doing science here.

Pike also applies scientific reasoning to his situation: making an observation (the Keeper appeared startled by a sudden act of aggression), forming a hypothesis (wondering if primitive emotions block the Talosians’ thoughts), and testing that hypothesis to establish the limits of the Talosians’ power (threatening the Keeper with a laser pistol that Pike reasons must be fully charged even when it appears empty to him).

‘Dangerous, savage, child-race’

This section is inspired by a friend who is a fan of science-fiction but not of Star Trek (that’s you, D). Having seen the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode ‘Encounter at Farpoint’, he observed that he agreed with Q’s assessment of humanity as depicted in Star Trek as a ‘dangerous, savage, child-race’ that relied far too often on violence as a solution to its problems.

Part of the difficulty of assessing this charge is in the format of episodic television itself. Telling a self-contained story in an hour generally demands that the dramatic unity of time must be disregarded and the story told in a kind of short-hand. Events that would realistically take hours, days, or weeks must be presented in a highly compressed timeframe.

As an example of the difficulty of this assessment, Pike’s first enounter with the Talosians in ‘The Cage’ goes like this (emphasis mine, in bold):

PIKE: Can you hear me? My name is Christopher Pike, commander of the space vehicle Enterprise from a stellar group at the other end of this galaxy. Our intentions are peaceful. Can you understand me?
TALOSIAN: It appears, Magistrate, that the intelligence of the specimen is shockingly limited.
KEEPER: This is no surprise since his vessel was baited here so easily with a simulated message. As you can read in its thoughts, it is only now beginning to suspect that the survivors and encampment were a simple illusion we placed in their minds.
PIKE: You're not speaking, yet I can hear you.
KEEPER: You will note the confusion as it reads our thought transmissions.
PIKE: All right then, telepathy. You can read my mind. I can read yours. Now, unless you want my ship to consider capturing me an unfriendly act...
KEEPER: You now see the primitive fear–threat reaction. The specimen is about to boast of his strength, the weaponry of his vessel, and so on. Next, frustrated into a need to display physical prowess, the creature will throw himself against the transparency.

(Which he does). In this extract, Pike has gone from assuring the Talosians of the Enterprise’s peaceful intentions to beginning to make a veiled threat and physically throwing himself at the wall of his cage within the space of a few lines. Pike is either the galaxy’s very worst negotiator, or we have to understand this conversation as a summary of conversations carried out over a much longer space of time. Nevertheless, I will constrain myself to assessing the evidence exactly as it is presented. Supporting a charge of ‘dangerous, savage, child-race’ I see:

• Pike threatens the Talosians with violence within minutes of meeting them.
• When Pike is captured, the landing party’s first response is to open fire on the entrance to the Talosian city with their sidearms.
• We get a view of a recent fight in which the Enterprise crew had been involved, when the Talosians re-create it for Pike to re-live. Pike attests to the fidelity of the re-creation: ‘This is Rigel VII [...] It’s starting just as it happened two weeks ago.’ Earlier in the episode, Pike had summarised his part in the skirmish as: ‘I let myself get trapped in that deserted fortress and attacked by one of their warriors.’ In the re-enactment, we see Pike fight the warrior with various mediaeval-style weapons, and eventually kill him.
• After being tortured by the Keeper, Pike throws himself at the wall of his cage that separates him from his tormentor. He admits, ‘All I wanted for that moment was to get my hands around your neck.’
• After the initial attack on the entrance to the Talosians’ city fails, Number One’s next response is to repeat the attack with heavier firepower. She has a laser cannon beamed down and carries out her plan.
• Once Pike learns that strong emotion blocks his mind from the Talosians, he is able to ambush the Keeper, physically assault him, then threaten him with a pistol against his head. 
• After observing human behaviour for a while, and with access to the data in the Enterprise’s computers, the Talosians themselves conclude that humanity is ‘too violent and dangerous a species for our needs.’

Against that:

• Although Number One judges that the landing party’s only option is to destroy themselves to keep themselves out of the Talosians’ hands, Pike is careful to warn the Talosians to get to safety, out of range of the explosion that she is about to create. He has no intention of taking his adversaries with him, even after they have tortured him.
• When the stand-off is resolved, Pike still extends the hand of friendship, suggesting ‘trade and mutual co-operation’ between their civilisations.

Conclusion

Pike and his officers begin with peaceful intentions, escalate swiftly to violence when they feel that the situation demands it, but de-escalate just as quickly and thoroughly when they no longer feel threatened. This ‘quick to anger, quick to forgive’ is the pattern that I am expecting to find throughout the series.

I suggest that characters de-escalating a conflict in this way is highly unusual in an adventure series. Pike’s telling the Talosians to get to safety is particularly striking, where protagonists might more routinely have threatened ‘we’ll blow ourselves up and take you with us.’

Literary and mythic references

Adam and Eve as the progenitors of the human race depicted in the Biblical Genesis are referenced throughout this episode. Additionally, the Keeper punishes Pike by making him experience burning in a lake of fire that he describes as being ‘From a fable you once heard in childhood.’ and which resembles the Christian idea of Hell described in the Book of Revelation.

Other notes

This episode features Star Trek’s first conference. Number One gathers the senior officers around a conference table to hear their expert opinions on how to recover Captain Pike. Only once she is briefed does she commit to a course of action. Such conferences will be a staple of the show.

Unfortunately, this episode gives Pike a really ugly line of sexist dialogue. He says of Yeoman Colt, ‘I can’t get used to having a woman on the bridge.’ when Number One reacts, he makes things worse by saying, ‘No offence, Lieutenant. You’re different, of course.’ In the context of the series pilot, I think I understand why this line is here: to show a 1960s TV audience that yes indeed women are present on the bridge of a starship, by deliberately drawing attention to them. Whatever the intention though, it comes across as offensive and horribly dated now. This is a pity when, in the character of Number One, the pilot also had a woman in a position of far greater authority than the franchise would depict until The Voyage Home: Star Trek IV, over twenty years later, and then only in a bit part.

Mission objectives

Finally, I thought it might be fun to track how the Enterprise’s KPIs look from episode to episode, evaluated against the famous opening narration from the series proper (that was not actually used in the pilot episodes). I count Talos IV and the Talosians as ‘new’ because the Enterprise crew had no prior knowledge of the world or its inhabitants on arrival. Of course, it later transpires that they are not the first humans there.

Objective	This episode	Series so far
To explore strange, new worlds	1	1 (100%)
To seek out new life and new civilizations	1	1 (100%)
To boldly go where none has gone before	0	0 (0%)

Next episode: ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’

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Footnotes

[1] The Keeper does tell Pike that without the help of a slave race to reclaim the surface of their planet, their race is ultimately doomed. But there’s no indication that this is any kind of pressing problem or that they’re anticipating this any time soon.

[2] Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry. (1968). The Making of Star Trek. Del Rey, New York, p.349