The Cage

As Mr Spock would say - "Fascinating". I'd only ever seen this pilot episode when it was very cleverly spliced into the Series One two-parter "The Menagerie", but it was great to view it at last as a stand-alone programme. This is the way "Star Trek" might have turned out if this introduction had caught on originally with the commissioning powers-that-be, which only adds to the interest as the keen Trekkie looks for the similarities and dissimilarities between what we have here and what would come to be only a couple of years later when James T Kirk, Bones, Scotty and all joined Spock, the only retained character from "The Cage" on the Enterprise.

So we get the familiar Enterprise craft and bridge, all the sound effects and devices like phasers, transporter and communicators. There are no real titles as such however, likewise the famous theme music isn't played from the outset and of course there's no "captain's log" either. Interestingly Captain Pike uses the phrase "Engage" which skipped Kirk but ended up in the vocabulary of the next captain, Picard, played memorably by Patrick Stewart.

With the exception of Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike (who sadly died only a few years after this was made) and naturally Leonard Nimoy as Spock, I'm not sure I'd have retained any of the precursor characters here, but obviously I might be doing the actors a disservice through the simple expedience of unfamiliarity. Susan Devine makes for a pretty temptress to the smitten captain.

Anyway, the story itself is terrific, suitably out of this world, delivering a thoughtful but imaginative narrative with as much psychology to ponder as action to thrill to.

Proof that Captain Kirk did in fact boldly go where man had actually gone before.