The Menagerie (parts one and two)

Hey, we’ve got this footage left over from the original pilot. Maybe we could cut it in with new scenes using the current cast and get a two-part episode out of it. Sure, the hero was a whole different character in the pilot, but we can work around that.

Well, it sorta works and it sorta doesn’t.

The pilot’s story line functions well enough. Captain Pike (Jeffrey Hunter), in command of the Enterprise, beams down to Talos IV to search for survivors of a crash that occurred some years earlier. In short order he’s captured by the Talosians, a powerful race of subterranean telepaths who intend to use him and a female survivor of the original crash as breeding stock to repopulate the surface of the planet.

The Talosians themselves are one of the series’ more interesting alien races. They have abnormally large heads, bald and veiny in a scrotal sort of way. And to make matters worse, their veins pulse when they communicate telepathically with Pike or with one another. And their odd physical appearance matches their cruel natures. In order to force Pike to mate with the woman, they alternately tempt him with several hallucinatory fantasies and torture him for refusing to comply.

However, his often-violent resistance eventually convinces the Talosians that their pets are more trouble than they’re worth. They release Pike to return to his ship, but his would-be girlfriend stays behind. Turns out she’s actually horribly scarred from the crash, and Talosian illusion is the only thing that keeps her young and beautiful.

All that’s fine. But then they had to find a way to work it into the series. The bracket story is nowhere near as good as the Pike plot.

Years after the original Talos incident, Pike has been burned beyond recognition in an accident. He lives his life in what looks like a rolling steam chest, and he can communicate only by flashing a light on the front of his box. Secretly he longs for the respite and nepenthe of Talosian illusion. Somehow Spock – his former first officer – manages to perceive this, and then the story collapses like a flan in a cupboard. He kidnaps Pike and programs the Enterprise with a locked course for Talos IV, which is now subject to a no-trespassing order violation of which is punishable by death. During Spock’s shipboard court martial en route to the planet, the back story slowly emerges.

Frankly, they would have been better off just running the pilot as-is and then concocting an excuse for Kirk’s replacement of Pike.

Episode rating:

Stardate: 3012.4

Episode type: Powerful alien

Written by: Gene Roddenberry

Original air dates: November 17 and November 24, 1966

The Corbomite Maneuver / The Conscience of the King

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