Star Trek: Pilot Episode “The Cage” (1965)

Original Air Date: February 1965/October 14, 1986
Star Date: 2254 (unknown in-universe date)
Writer: Gene Roddenberry
Director: Robert Butler

“There’s a way out of any cage and I’ll find it.”

Once notoriously rejected by NBC for being too “too cerebral,” this now legendary pilot episode of Star Trek offers a panoply of rich, complex ideas worthy of consideration. Rather than easily hooking its audience with flashy effects or explosive gun fights, “The Cage” is a slow-burn prison mystery which forces us to examine the nature of evil. Are the Talosians truly an evil alien species? According to the Talosians, the answer is emphatically “no.” The Talosians believe they are mere scientific investigators and conjurers of innocent but deceptive imagery in order to offer a better world, and test humanity’s limits in the hopes of securing the future of their own decaying planet, Talos IV. The Talosians are anthropologists and breeders who decide to entrap humans in a “cage” or “menagerie” for further study, they are observant scientists.

However, the Talosians maintain a cold and distant affect beneath their apparently neutral guise of scientific examination. Captain Pike and his crew view the Talosians as lacking honesty, empathy, and any semblance of true emotional experience. They are like dispassionate academics. To what extent might the Talosians mirror our own modern scientific conundrum? And in what ways might the Enterprise bear a strangely similar faith in the goodness of human inquiry? Following from our own modern theological injunction to “seek and ye shall find” we carry with us an overly optimistic, utopian promise in the future of human life. Like the Talosians, our first reaction upon experiencing a new species is to isolate it, study it, test its limits, and thereby inquire into its nature. In search of a god-like comprehensive perspective, we magnify what is small (such as atomic or sub-atomic particles) and adjust our telescopic focus to things that are large (such as distant planets). However, all things are nevertheless viewed via our limited perspective. Therefore, the human condition is fundamentally an aesthetic experience which is nevertheless striving toward something true. We are unsatisfied with mere dreams because they lack suffering and overcoming. The Talosians repress two things natural to the human spirit: they restrict human freedom and force humanity into an untrue dream-like world. Like Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the Talosians are cleverly deceptive illusionists who do not yet understand the human spirit.

It might well be said that humanity requires organic growth, evolution, and ceaseless self-overcoming for survival yet the Talosians do not seem to grasp this fact. Enslavement and deception inhibit the conditions necessary for human flourishing. This brings to mind a little story Vladimir Nabokov once told in relation to his controversial novel Lolita –he got the idea for the book when reading a news article about an ape who was the first to scribble down written communication on paper. And what was the first thing the ape drew? The cold bars of his own cage.

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This inaugural episode of Star Trek, which is slightly different in tone and significantly different in casting from the regular show, opens with a beautiful sweeping scene of the Enterprise as it coasts through space. The frame then impressively pans directly into the bridge where we are given our first glimpse of the crew.

The Enterprise intercepts a strange signal from the outer reaches of space that causes an odd blurring effect on the screen. Can we assume it is a system malfunction? Or perhaps a mere screen error? Or could it be meteoroids? The ship’s meteorite beam is not able to deflect the signal. It is soon revealed to be an old-style distress signal (a radio wave) that originated from a long-lost craft called the S.S. Columbia. The Columbia was on a survey expedition when it disappeared in the “Talos Star Group” some eighteen years ago –the Talos Star Group is an unexplored solar system with a total of 11 planets. Spock identifies the fourth planet as a somewhat hospitable place with a breathable atmosphere (or a “class M” planet). If the S.S. Columbia were to have crash-landed here, Talos IV would be the best bet for any remaining survivors of the crash. However, Captain Pike says it is not worth investigating the distress call without proof of possible survivors. He orders the Enterprise to proceed onward to the Vega colony.

Captain Pike (Jeffrey Hunter) retires to his room and confesses his weariness of serving as captain to Dr. Philip Boyce (John Hoyt), who memorably pours him a martini –a man will reveal more to his bar tender than his doctor. Pike misses his hometown, riding horses, and now finds himself longing for another life, perhaps as a businessman or an Orion trader alongside hoards of attractive green women (the likes of which will later appear as a Talosian-generated dream sequence in the episode). Note: I picked up on a theme of escapism here as Pike dreams of greener pastures, however he will soon be quite literally imprisoned by his own fantasies on a foreign planet. Another point of note is that Pike somewhat recently lost his yeoman and other crew members during a skirmish on Rigel VII two weeks prior. During the scuffle, he was trapped inside a fortress and forced to fight an enemy in hand-to-hand combat.

“A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on and licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away” -Dr. Boyce

Meanwhile, new information emerges about the S.S. Columbia: it did, in fact, crash-land on Talos IV with 11 survivors, and so the Enterprise makes haste for Talos IV to investigate. While maintaining orbit, Spock, Pike and several crewmen beam down to the planet’s surface where they find a somewhat barren landscape filled with strange blue motion-sensitive plants that “sing,” and a small outpost for the remaining survivors of the Columbia crash. One of the survivors exclaims, “they’re human… they’re men.” Another survivor is a beautiful woman named Vina (Susan Oliver) whose parents died; she was born at almost the moment the Columbia crashed. She oddly comments that Pike is a “prime specimen” and a “perfect choice.” She wants to reveal a “secret” to him. Meanwhile, as the Enterprise crew prepares to help rescue the Columbia survivors, Dr. Boyce tells Pike that the survivors’ health is unusual, shockingly near-perfect. At this point, Vina leads Pike away to show him how she managed to survive for so long.

Pike seems to quickly fall for Vina’s charms as she leads him toward a doorway, but Vina suddenly disappears and a pair of large-brained Talosians mysteriously appear before they shoot and kidnap Pike. He awakens in an underground glass-encased prison cell. We soon learn that the Talosians are an alien race whose ancestors destroyed much of their planet in a nuclear war thousands of centuries prior, and so the Talosians hid underground where they evolved the capacity to use telepathy. They began to prefer dreams and illusions to reality, even forgetting how to use the machines of their ancestors. The Talosians now have large pulsating brains three times the size of standard humans, and they intend to study humans like lab rats. The distress signal which was sent to the Enterprise has actually been an elaborate illusion –it was merely a ploy to lure and entrap the Enterprise on Talos IV. But what do the Talosians want? As it turns out Vina was the only survivor of the Columbia years ago, but the crash severely mangled her skin. She has since been transformed into a beautiful woman by the Talosians. They hoped to use her in order to lure a man like Captain Pike to live with her on Talos IV and repopulate the planet (like Adam and Eve). To Pike, the Talosians offer a fleeting and empty life of illusions (they conjure several dream-like scenes wherein Pike and Vina enjoy a peaceful picnic in the city of Mojave, where Pike was born, as well as a medieval battle scene recalling Pike’s recent struggle on Rigel VII [he battles a Kalar warrior], and then they are transported on Orion where Vina dances seductively as a green woman –all of which were mentioned as fantasies by Pike in his earlier confession to Dr. Boyce just prior to arriving). But without freedom of thought, freedom itself is illusory for Captain Pike. He remarks that Vina’s life, which has been 18 years of imprisonment by the Talosians, is merely a menagerie or a cage. However, he learns the one weakness among the Talosians is that they cannot use telepathy against primitive human emotions so Pike attempts to exploit this weakness.

Meanwhile, the Enterprise crew tries to blow open the door leading down to the Talosians’ underground lair but it fails. Next, they attempt to beam down inside the Talosian community, but the transporter is immediately commandeered by the Talosians and the Talosians unilaterally beam down only women for Pike (Number One and Yeoman Colt), exposing their fragile inner thoughts and sexual fantasies about the captain (this sexualized plotline struck me as a bit par for the course for Gene Roddenberry). Captain Pike stages a rebellion by unleashing his primitive emotions and nearly kills one of them by strangling. Shortly thereafter, Number One attempts a suicidal ploy so the Talosians decide the humans are simply not worth their trouble; humanity, they say, has a unique hatred of captivity. In the end, Vina prefers to remain behind on Talos IV to live out her own fantasy devised by the Talosians while Pike and the crew solemnly depart from this nightmare.

I found this to be a rather dark conclusion, with Vina being abandoned, relegated to live in a false reality. If it were Captain Kirk in charge he likely would have rescued Vina and the other creatures imprisoned inside the menagerie (though this is not always the case, see “Mudd’s Women” for example). Pike and the crew return to the Enterprise where they will presumably continue onward to the Vega colony. I suppose one man’s freedom is another man’s prison. In an amusing coda, Yeoman J. M. Colt asks Pike on the bridge which woman he would have chosen as his Eve –but Pike simply dismisses the question and orders the ship to move out.

“She has an illusion, and you have reality. May you find your way as pleasant.”

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My Thoughts on “The Cage”

Whereas “The Cage” bears echoes of the Biblical Adam and Eve story, complete with a befuddled godlike species and all, “The Cage” also lacks a certain joie de vivre that is rife throughout Star Trek. It is a serious and somber episode. Captain Pike comes across as a tired and jaded leader while in contrast Captain Kirk comes across as vivacious and bemused –Captain Pike ponders his own retirement and the chance to retreat into a fantasy world, while Kirk seems rarely trapped in his own lugubrious thoughts. For Captain Pike, paradise is indeed lost. But as Dr. Boyce reminds him, humans were never really meant to live an easy and empty life of illusion in edenic bliss. Instead, humanity by nature continues to reach upward and outward, ever striving, ceaselessly overcoming, always learning and growing and conquering new horizons. We should therefore be wary and distrustful of our fantasies –especially those that promise an easier life.

The dawn of Star Trek came at a pivotal moment in American history. This was when Lyndon B. Johnson was serving his full term as President of the United States following JFK’s assassination in 1963, The Beatles had just released their fourth studio album The Beatles For Sale, Bob Dylan had controversially changed his sound with the release of Highway 61 Revisited, the Vietnam War was raging with many thousands of young men drafted, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. were both assassinated, and it was also the height of the Cold War and the space race. The future was fearsome, exciting, and still an “undiscovered country.” Today, we have our own illusions about living through the “end of history” but Star Trek was very much released on the cusp of a new age.

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Credits:

• Director: Robert Butler
  • Robert Butler (1927-2023) was chosen by Gene Roddenberry to work on the pilot for Star Trek after he had directed some episodes of Roddenberry’s previous series, The Lieutenant which featured Gary Lockwood who would appear in the “second pilot” episode of Star Trek entitled “Where No Man Has Gone Before” as Lt. Commander Gary Mitchell. Notably, Robert Butler disagreed with Gene Roddenberry’s vision for the show. He viewed as excessively pretentious, and so he declined to return to Star Trek. He is, however, given credit for the re-used footage borrowed for the two-part episode for “The Menagerie.” Apparently, Gene Roddenberry and Robert Butler fought over this episode. Butler wanted things to look a little dirty and gritty, while Roddenberry wanted the ship to appear clean and shiny. These types of aesthetic disagreements likely also led to Butler’s decision not to return to Star Trek. Throughout his career, Robert Butler directed numerous television episodes for shows like Star Trek, Shane, Hogan’s Heroes, Batman, and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman among others. He also directed two Twilight Zone episodes including the controversial episode “The Encounter” which starred George Takei. Robert Butler died in Los Angeles in 2023, missing his 96th birthday by thirteen days. With Butler’s death, Ralph Senensky became the last living director of a TOS episode until his own death almost exactly 2 years later on November 1, 2025.
• Written by: Gene Roddenberry
  • This was one of twenty-five stories for Star Trek written by Gene Roddenberry.
• Music by: Alexander “Sandy” Courage (uncredited) was the composer who created the original theme song. He was apparently inspired by old songs like “Beyond the Blue Horizon” (first performed by Jeanette MacDonald in the 1930 film Monte Carlo and composed by Leo Robin, Richard A. Whiting, and W. Franke Harling) as well as other songs that allowed him to capture the sounds of deep space. Modern edits of the show feature a re-recorded introductory theme song by Greg Smith based upon Courage’s original composition.
• Enterprise Crew:
  • Jeffrey Hunter…..Captain Christopher Pike
    • Born Henry Herman McKinnies Jr., Jeffrey Hunter (1926-1969) was known for appearing in such films as John Ford’s The Searchers (beside John Wayne) and also as Jesus in the Biblical epic King of Kings. Because in Star Trek Jeffrey Hunter was playing a stoic, internally-conflicted character, Leonard Nimoy felt the need to portray a more humorous, light-hearted character in this episode. It is distinct from the character we have come to know as Spock. Spock would change into the more rational character as the show was given another chance, it was restructured, and William Shatner was hired to play Captain Kirk. Jeffrey Hunter later expressed mixed views about Star Trek. He was not a fan of science fiction and thought Star Trek was somewhat beneath his talents, or at least that is what his wife strongly believed. He declined to participate in the show going forward. He tragically died in 1969 at the age of 42. He had been filming a movie in Spain in which an onset car bomb accidentally exploded causing a severe concussion and brain hemorrhage, eventually leading to his death.
  • Majel Barrett…..Number One (the ship’s most experienced officer)
    • Majel Barrett (1932-2008) was Gene Roddenberry’s mistress and later his wife (post-1969). She has often been called “the First Lady of Star Trek.” There is apparently some controversy over whether NBC executives fired her after “The Cage” out of pure sexist bias against a high-ranking female officer on the Enterprise or if they simply felt she was not the right person for the job (along with almost all the remaining cast from “The Cage” except for Leonard Nimoy). Apparently, Gene Roddenberry was the one who spread the story that NBC executives were sexist against her, whereas numerous other accounts suggest the network was focused on simply being family-friendly and did not want his mistress portrayed onscreen in order to avoid scandal. She would later return as Nurse Chapel when the Original Series was given the green light.
  • Leonard Nimoy…..Mr. Spock
    • Leonard Nimoy needs no introduction!
  • John Hoyt…..Dr. Philip Boyce
    • Born John McArthur Hoysradt, John Hoyt (1905-1991) was a Yale alumnus, a Broadway actor, and he even worked with Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre. He appeared in films like Julius Caesar, Spartacus, and Cleopatra, and in television shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Virginian, Planet of the Apes (the show), Hogan’s Heroes, Perry Mason, two episodes of The Twilight Zone (“Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?” and “The Lateness of the Hour“) and three episodes of The Outer Limits. He was married twice, had one child, and died of lung cancer in Santa Cruz in 1991 at the age of 85.
  • Peter Duryea…..Lieutenant José Tyler
    • Peter Duryea pronounced “Dur-ee-ay” (1939-2013) was the son of Dan Duryea (1907-1968) an actor who appeared in many television and film roles throughout his career, including in The Twilight Zone episode “Mr. Denton on Doomsday.” Peter Duryea was perhaps best known for his performance in “The Cage” (and the subsequent footage that was used for “The Menagerie” two-part episode of the series). When he was then dropped from the series, he later claimed he cried for two weeks over the loss. He appeared in other television shows like The Fugitive, The Outer Limits, Dr. Kildare, Daniel Boone, Bewitched, Dragnet 1967, Adam-12, I Spy, and Family Affair. He and his longtime partner had one daughter. Following his father’s death in 1968, Duryea moved to Kootenay Lake, British Columbia, Canada where he and his longtime partner Jan Bryan developed a documentary production company specializing in ecological and social awareness, as well as the Guiding Hands Recreation Society, a non-profit society with the aim of promoting the value of nature. Duryea also worked as the guide for the Kootenay Lake Heritage Boat Tours. Peter Duryea died in 2013 at the age of 73 of undisclosed causes.
  • Laurel Goodwin…..Yeoman J. M. Colt
    • Laurel Goodwin (1942-2022) was a child model and later actor who appeared in a variety of television shows, from Star Trek to Get Smart to The Beverly Hillbillies. In “The Cage,” her character Yeoman J. M. Colt is described as replacing Captain Pike’s other yeoman who recently died on Rigel VII. Pike rather infamously treats Yeoman J. M. Colt with disdain as he is unaccustomed to having a woman on the bridge, aside from Number One. She retired from acting in 1971 and went into the healthcare business. She attended her first Star Trek convention in 2005 along with Peter Duryea. She produced several films with her husband and later moved to Palm Springs where she worked as a home nurse. In 2009, her husband fell seriously ill and she nursed him until his death. Goodwin passed away on February 22, 2022 at the age of 79 in Cathedral City, California. She was the last surviving credited performer from “The Cage.”
  • Clegg Hoyt…..Transporter Chief Pitcairn
    • Clegg Hoyt (1910-1967) appeared in a variety of television shows throughout his career, often uncredited, in shows like Gunsmoke, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Monkees and others. He died in 1967 of a stroke at the age of 56.
  • Adam Roarke…..Communications Officer, C.P.O. Garrison
    • Born Richard Jordan Gerler, Adam Roarke (1937-1996) appeared in other popular television shows like The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. among others. He was married twice, had two children, and died of a heart attack in in 1996 at the age of 58.
  • Ed Madden…..Enterprise Geologist (“Fisher”)
    • Edward “Ed” Madden (1940-2004) plays “Fisher” a geologist in “The Cage” (and consequently in “The Menagerie” two-parter) as well as in “The Enemy Within“). He died in 2004 at the age of 64.
  • Robert Phillips…..Orion Space Officer
    • Robert Phillips (1925-2018) Phillips was a former Illinois State Police officer turned actor. He died in 2018 at the age of 93.
• Other Characters:
  • Susan Oliver…..Vina
    • Susan Oliver (1932-1990) was known for appearing in shows like Playhouse 90, Wagon Train, The Fugitive, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Andy Griffith Show, and The Twilight Zone (“People Are Alike All Over“). Just before being cast as Vina in the Star Trek pilot, she had taken on an acting assignment which exhausted her. She was looking forward to a holiday in Hawaii when Studio Executive Oscar Katz talked her into accepting the part of Vina. However, the role proved to be more intense requiring extensive make-up and even training with a choreographer (she was not a dancer) which led Susan Oliver to become quite upset with Katz; it got to the point that Katz avoided appearing on the set and Susan Oliver had a sign reading: “OSCAR Where are You?” It became a running gag on the set, with many cast and crew members taking pictures with the sign. Years later, Oliver expressed an interest in directing an episode of TNG but she never got the chance, the response being that she didn’t know enough about visual effects (even though this was never a previous requirement). In later life, she became a passionate pilot, winning the 1970 Powder Puff Derby air race and becoming the fourth woman to fly a single-engine aircraft solo across the Atlantic. Susan Oliver died in Woodland Hills, California of lung cancer in 1990 at the age of 58. A documentary about her life entitled “The Green Girl” was released in 2014.
  • Meg Wyllie…..The Keeper (Talosian) (uncredited)
    • Margaret Gillespie Wyllie (1917-2002) was known for portraying Mrs. Kissel in the series The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (1963–1964) based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. Wyllie “appeared on nearly every popular TV series of the late 1950s and much of the 1960s” with shows like Wagon Train, Batman, Perry Mason, and later The Golden Girls. She portrayed Granny Gordon in the film The Last Starfighter (1984) and she appeared in The Twilight Zone episode “The Night of the Meek.” Wyllie died in 2002 at the age of 84 in Glendale, California from heart failure.
    • Malachi Throne (1928-2013) performed the voice of The Keeper. He was a Korean War veteran. He also had guest-starring roles on multiple television series, including Star Trek, Batman, The Wild Wild West, Ben Casey, The Untouchables, Hogan’s Heroes, Babylon 5, Perry Mason, Lost In Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants, Mission: Impossible, The Outer Limits, and in the TNG two-part episode “Unification.” In 2004, he appeared in the second episode of the Star Trek New Voyages series titled “In Harm’s Way.” Throne was a national television spokesman for Ziebart in several advertising campaigns throughout the 1970s. He also narrated the 1976 trailer for the film Star Wars (1977). In addition to his early role as “False-Face” in Batman, he also appeared in the animated Batman programs The New Batman Adventures (1998) and Fingers in Batman Beyond (2000). Throne and his wife had two children. He died of lung cancer at his home in Brentwood, California on March 13, 2013, at the age of 84.
  • Michael Dugan…..The Kaylar warrior (a.k.a. “The Neanderthal Man”) (uncredited)
    • Mike Dugan (1912-2002) was an actor and stuntman who appeared in a string of television shows. He was known for appearances in the films She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Thunder Alley (1967) and The Destructors (1968). Dugan passed away on November 6, 2002 at age of 90, in Palm Desert, California.
  • Georgia Schmidt…..First Talosian (uncredited)
    • Georgia Schmidt (1904-1997) appeared in shows like The Monkees, The Wild Wild West, The Odd Couple, Bewitched, Night Gallery, Little House on the Prairie, and others. She also appeared in The Twilight Zone episode from the 1985 series “Night of the Meek.”
    • Robert C. Johnson performed the voice of the First Talosian. He famously performed “The Voice” who gave Special Agents Dan Briggs and Jim Phelps their recorded mission briefings in both incarnations of the Mission: Impossible television series. He also voiced numerous alien creatures on The Outer Limits. He was uncredited for all, except for his work as the alien “Senator” in the episode “Fun And Games.” He died at the age of 73 in Molokai, Hawaii on December 31, 1993.
  • Serena Sande…..Second Talosian (uncredited)
    • Serena Sande (1928-2001) had a number of credits including The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, The Flying Nun, and in other uncredited roles, such as in The Ten Commandments (1956). She died in 2001 in Los Angeles.
    • The Second Talosian was also voiced by Robert C. Johnson.
  • Jon Lormer…..Dr. Theodore Haskins of the “American Continent Institute” (uncredited)
    • Jon Lormer (1906-1986) made three appearances in TOS (“The Cage,” “The Return of the Archons,” and “For The World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky“). Formerly a stage actor, he eventually moved to film and television, having over 150 credits to his name, including many John Wayne films. Among his many television roles, he appeared in four Twilight Zone episodes (“Execution,” “Dust,” “The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank,” and “Jess-Belle“). He died of cancer in 1986 in Burbank, California at the age of 79.
  • Leonard Mudie…..Second Survivor (uncredited)
    • Born Leonard Mudie Cheetham (1883-1965), Leonard Mudie has one line of dialogue in this episode as one of the Columbia survivors. He was a veteran of dozens of films dating back to the 1930s, including Boris Karloff’s classic Universal monster picture The Mummy (1932), as well as Les Misérables (1935), Top Hat (1935), Captain Blood (1935), The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940), and many others. He was 81 years old when “The Cage” was filmed, and he died the following year. He was the second-oldest actor ever to appear in the original Star Trek series and the first to pass away.
  • Anthony Jochim…..Third Survivor (uncredited)
    • Anthony Jochim (1892-1978) appeared in many shows like The Outer Limits, The Wild Wild West, The Andy Griffith Show, Get Smart, Perry Mason, Bonanza, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and many others.
  • Joseph Mell…..Earth Trader (uncredited)
    • Joseph Mell (1915-1977) was a U.S. Army veteran who later appeared in many classic television shows and films. He died of a heart condition in 1977 at 62.
  • Janos Prohaska…..Anthropoid Ape / Humanoid Bird (uncredited)
    • Born János Prohászka, Janos Prohaska (1919-1974) was a Hungarian-born American actor and stunt performer who appeared on American television from the 1960s and usually played the roles of animals (mostly bears and gorillas) or monsters. He appeared in episodes of The Outer Limits, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Lost in Space, Gilligan’s Island (where he plays a gorilla), Perry Mason, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, among others. He appeared in three episodes of TOS wearing alien costumes he himself designed as an Anthropoid Ape / Humanoid Bird in “The Cage,” the Horta in “The Devil in the Dark,” and the mugato in “A Private Little War.” He stunt-doubled for both Arnold Stang and Peter Falk in the 1963 comedy film It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. In 1974, Prohaska and his son Robert were tragically killed along with 34 others in a plane crash near Bishop, California, while filming the television series Primal Man. The plane flew into a mountain ridge in darkness (the exact cause of the crash was never determined).

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Star Trek Trivia:

• Per Marc Cushman in These Are the Voyages: TOS Season One, on the day principal photography began at Desilu-Culver, Friday November 27, 1964: it was the day after Thanksgiving, America was in its ninth month of Beatlemania, the song “Leader of the Pack” by the Shangri-Las was getting the most radio play, the most watched TV shows the night before were Bewitched and My Three Sons on ABC, and The Munsters on CBS. Other top shows around this time included: Gilligan’s Island, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and the Dick Van Dyke Show. This was around the same time that Martin Luther King Jr. won his Nobel Peace Prize and the third James Bond film Goldfinger was released.
• Desilu Studios acquired the Hollywood and Culver City facilities of RKO Studios in 1957 after RKO fell on hard times. Then in 1967, Desilu was acquired by Gulf and Western Industries and merged into G+W’s other production company, neighboring Paramount Pictures where its intellectual property resides to this day.
• It was Herbert Solow at Desilu who first secured the funding from NBC for the pilot episode of Star Trek.
• Also in his book These Are the Voyages: TOS Season One, Marc Cushman writes that Roddenberry was partly inspired by Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels when creating Star Trek.
• During production, the title for this episode was changed from “The Cage” to “The Menagerie.” However, when the later two-part “Menagerie” episode aired, this original shelved pilot episode was later reverted to its original title “The Cage.”
• There is an amusing story about Gene Roddenberry acting like a mysterious eccentric in order to sell Star Trek to studio executives.
• Gene Roddenberry consulted with Harvey P. Lynn, a physicist from the RAND Corporation as the unofficial technical adviser for this episode. He helped Roddenberry better explain starship navigation between stars and planets.
• The movie Forbidden Planet (a futuristic retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest) had considerable influence on this pilot episode as well as many other shows, especially The Twilight Zone. Another influence was Space Cadet, a junior sci-fi novel by Robert Heinlein.
• The original captain’s name was to be Robert April. He was designed to be a 34-year-old space incarnation of C.S. Forester’s Captain Horatio Hornblower.
• The first words uttered in Star Trek are by Spock: “check the circuit.”
• In this episode, Captain Pike claims there are 203 lives aboard the Enterprise, even though later in the series it is revealed to be a much larger number while Kirk is in command.
• Many scenes from this unaired pilot episode were later featured in the classic two-part Season 1 episode “The Menagerie.”
• This episode was first screened in February 1965, but it was later released in 1986 in VHS format with an introduction by Gene Roddenberry. It was first broadcast on television in 1988.
• There is an amusing story about how the cinematography effects department was confused about why Gene Roddenberry desired to have a fully green-colored woman appear onscreen. So they kept adjusting the film so that her skin appeared pink until finally the situation was resolved (this story was confirmed by Fred Phillips).
• Leonard Nimoy as Spock is the only character carried over from the pilot episode into the future series. Notably, Spock is not the First Officer in this pilot episode.
• This pilot episode uses the term “hyperdrive” instead of “Warp speed.”
• The new ships can apparently travel faster than older ships like the S.S. Columbia because the “time barrier has been broken.”
• The Talosians use the term “magistrate” to refer to their leader.
• Most of the Talosians were played by women but were voiced over by men. One of them known as “The Keeper” was played by Meg Wyllie. Another, the “First Talosian,” was played by Georgia Schmidt and the “Second Talosian” was played by Serena Sande.
• Two of the other prisoners are visible in the Talosian prison: an ape-like alien and a humanoid bird. The ape was used in an episode of The Outer Limits, and the bird was brought back by Wah Chang in an Outer Limits episode as well. A large crab-like creature can also be visible. In addition, when one of the Talosians transforms himself into a vicious creature, a prop from The Outer Limits is used again.
• Wah Chang also developed the huge pulsating heads of the Talosians (with tubes going down their cloaks) and he designed the now-famous flip-open communicator and tricorder.
• When indicating the region of the Talos group on his viewscreen, Spock calls up a photograph which is actually of the Pleiades Cluster.
• Richard Datin designed a three foot model of the Enterprise which was used for all future filming of Star Trek.
• According to Leonard Nimoy, Star Trek make-up artist Fred “Freddy” Phillips (1908-1993) created the Vulcan pointed-ear look for Spock (for a long time it was wrongly attributed to John Chambers with whom Phillips had worked together on many episodes of The Outer Limits). Phillips had previously worked on The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Around the World in 80 Days (1956) as well as shows like The Outer Limits. His daughter, Janna Phillips, is also a make-up artist who worked on several seasons of TNG.
• The filming of this episode was disrupted by noises on the stage –including a flock of pigeons nesting in the rafters and the sound of sewage moving through pipes in the walls.
• The transporter effect was created by the Howard Anderson Company who turned a slow-motion camera upside-down and photographed shiny grains of aluminum powder as they were dropped between the camera and black background. Like the idea of Class M planets, the transporter was initially devised as a cost-saving measure for the studio.
• The initial name for the Enterprise was the Yorktown. The design of the ship was created by Walter “Matt” Jeffries in consultation air and space professionals from the RAND Corporation. He chose the acronym NCC to symbolize a united earth and thereby distinguish it from the Soviet Union, and he chose the numbers 1701 as numbers that could be easily seen from far away (avoiding numbers like 4, 6, 8, or 9).
• “The Cage” was far and away the most expensive episode of the original series of Star Trek.
• In this episode we learn that Captain Pike hails from the city of Mojave in California.
• In Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, Bob Justman describes amusing stories of the first attempt to film this episode –pigeons living in the rafters, the sound of toilets flushing through the set pipes, bee hives in the old studio.

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