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TOS The Cage (First Pilot)
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Krel
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PostPosted: Sun May 05, 2019 11:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

According to "The Making of Star Trek", G.R. thought the LASER pistols, which were made by the studio, were too plain, and undetailed. He wanted something different looking for the phasers.

The LASER pistols had powerful magnets on the left side to attach to the gear harness. He didn't want a conventional holster. How well the magnets would have held the prop under physical activity, I don't know*. The harnesses were modified British WWII paratrooper harnesses.

In the 1980s, they made a pistol holster that was a plate magnet. I don't know how effective they were, but I've never seen one in real life. They also make these magnet holsters to hold pistols under desks and counters. Probably more effective there as no movement is involved.

David.

*For the phasers, they used Velcro and lightweight phaser props. Even with the lightweight props, they would falloff with physical activity. So they resorted to sewing the props to the costumes for those scenes.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon May 06, 2019 9:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Krel wrote:
In the 1980s, they made a pistol holster that was a plate magnet. I don't know how effective they were, but I've never seen one in real life. They also make these magnet holsters to hold pistols under desks and counters. Probably more effective there as no movement is involved..

The guns that used the plate magnates must have been small and light. To hold a gun to the underside of a desks or counter would mean the magnet would have to support the entire weight, and it would be positioned horizontally.

If the magnet was too strong, it would make it slightly difficult to pull loose, and if it was needed quickly, that might be a problem. Then again, it would probably slide easily straight back towards the person who was holding it.

I love the leather holsters the cowboys wore, but the newer ridged holsters like FBI agents carry have an almost futuristic appearance.




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Krel
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PostPosted: Mon May 06, 2019 12:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:

The guns that used the plate magnates must have been small and light. To hold a gun to the underside of a desks or counter would mean the magnet would have to support the entire weight, and it would be positioned horizontally.

If the magnet was too strong, it would make it slightly difficult to pull loose, and if it was needed quickly, that might be a problem. Then again, it would probably slide easily straight back towards the person who was holding it.

I love the leather holsters the cowboys wore, but the newer ridged holsters like FBI agents carry have an almost futuristic appearance.




______________

The magnets were advertised as being able to hold the pistol either horizontally, or vertically. You would grab the grip and rotate the pistol so the slide top is against the magnet. This makes it easier to pull off the magnet. A magnet made to hold a weapon under a counter, or desk would not need to be as strong as one that would be used as a holster, where it would need to hold the weapon while you are walking, running, climbing, bending over and so on.

A lot of Law Enforcement Agencies have gone to plastic holsters. They are considered to be lower maintenance, and more weather resistant. Leather holsters can hold moisture, which is not good for the weapon.

But no plastic holster can look as good as a quality leather holster.

David.
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Bogmeister
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 01, 2019 3:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

____________

_____ Classic Star Trek: The Menagerie (Part 1 and 2)


__________


___

ABOVE: Remastered Starbase 11, with new FX

BELOW: the original shot of Starbase 11

______

This was the only 2-part episode on TOS, necessary at the time because such a sci-fi show was a hassle to get done on time back then.

Roddenberry was able to incorporate most of the footage from the 1st pilot, The Cage, shot a couple of years earlier. As a side effect, this was also the closest the original series probably came to presenting an epic episode; audiences, back then, were not aware of the pilot and it seemed as if the producers spent double the money on this episode, presenting an entire 'other' Enterprise crew of another time on top of the current one.

So, it was like a Trek version of a historical epic, presenting over a dozen years of Starfleet history.

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The plot begins as a space mystery; the Enterprise is diverted to Starbase 11 for unknown reasons and, pretty soon, Spock is a suspect.

Even as McCoy belabors the fact that subterfuge on Spock's part is not possible due to his Vulcan heritage, it turns out that Spock is indeed acting out some mutinous scheme to shanghai the starship and kidnap his former captain, Christopher Pike, who is now horribly crippled.

Well, Spock is half-human, we tend to forget — or has he simply gone mad? He directs the ship towards a planet named Talos IV, which is strictly off-limits. When the jig is up, there's a great scene of Spock surrendering to a flabbergasted McCoy, as Uhura looks on in shock.

__
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Later in the episode, the audience begins to see transmitted images of an Enterprise mission from 13 years earlier, when Captain Pike was commanding and Spock was one of his officers.

It's all a bit odd and we don't know where it's all heading, and that makes this a very good 2-parter. We really need to find out what it's all about in the 2nd part. Not only is Spock in serious trouble but it looks like Kirk's career may be finished as well.

Things may have wrapped up too easily at the very end (the death penalty threat evaporated) but Pike's final fate was about as good as TV science fiction gets.

BoG's Score: 8.5 out of 10




Extra Trek Trivia: Though Pike of the past was obviously portrayed by Jeffrey Hunter in footage from The Cage, the crippled & scarred Pike of the present episode was played by actor Sean Kenney.

Commodore Mendez (Malachi Throne) is in charge of Starbase 11, last seen in Court Martial, when it was commanded by Commodore Stone.

Some sources list Starbase 6 in this episode, but that starbase was mentioned in The Immunity Syndrome; confusing enough?

Since this two-part episode was about the length of an actual film, a remastered version was screened in actual select theaters in recent times.




BoG
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Pow
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 13, 2020 8:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

May 1964, Gene Roddenberry & Herb Solow pitch Star Trek to NBC television execs.

The NBC Program Development V.P. & V.P. of Programs for the West Coast aren't interested.

Solow made a last-ditch effort to persuade the execs and it works.

NBC V.P. Mort Werner asks GR for 3 story outlines for Star Trek.

GR submits "The Cage," "The Perfect World" which will become "The Return Of The Archons," and "The Women" which will become "Mudd's Women."

In his quest for scientific accuracy, GR seeks technical advice from the RAND Corporation.

Having the creator of a sf TV show want to consult with scientists in order to strive for scientific reality was unusual at that time.

The alien Talosians originally resembled crabs in early drafts of the script.

The Laser Cannon was a modified camera dolly.

Vinna, the Orion Slave Girl, was meant to be green skinned.

Green test makeup was applied to Majel Barrett in order to see what would work.

GR was puzzled because all the test footage kept returning with MB looking normal and not green at all.

Turns out that the film processing lab thought that the green look to Majel was some kind of error and they were purposely "fixing" it by altering her complexion to look a normal flesh tone.

The very first scene shot was Captain Pike & Dr.Boyce talking in Pike's quarters on November 27, 1964.

The anthropoid ape creature that was one of the captured specimens of the Talosians was from The Outer Limits episode "Fun And Games."

The humanoid specimen was from TOL episode "The Duplicate Man."

The ape was provided by Janos Prohaska. Janos would create & play the Horta creature in the ST:TOS episode "The Devil In The Dark."

Wah Chang created the bird creature as well as the Talosoan headpieces.

Famed matte painter Albert Whitlock did the beautiful painting of the Rigel VII fortress.

Director Robert Butler wanted the Enterprise sets to show dirt & rust because he felt the pilot came off as too square & perfect looking. GR nixed that idea immediately as it did not reflect his vision of the future.

Producer Herb Solow observed how GR would take credit for ideas for the show by other people.

Lloyd Bridges was considered for the role of Captain Pike, Martin Landau as Mr.Spock and Yvonne Craig as Vina.

DeForest Kelly was considered for Dr.Boyce or Mr.Spock.

The voice of the Transporter Chief is dubbed by Bob Johnson. Bob supplied the voice for the tape recorder assignments each week on Mission: Impossible. As a big M:I fan I caught Bob's voice immediately in that scene.

Fans note that Mr.Spock is more emotive in "The Cage" pilot. This was due to partly the fact that GR & Nimoy were still exploring just what the alien officer was to be like. Also, Nimoy felt that since the Captain Pike character as played by Jeff Hunter was a very internalized and controlled persona, Spock needed to be energized & animated by comparison.

Cost for the pilot was $500,000 which was an unheard of sum for any TV pilot back in that day.

Herb Solow said that producing ST: TOS was a painstaking process because few TV film crews were capable of undertaking such a demanding and complex show as Star Trek. So building a crew for the series had to be done from scratch.

When Jeff Hunter did not choose to continue with the show after NBC picked it up as a weekly series, William Shatner was hired.

GR showed William Shatner "The Cage" pilot in order to get his opinion of the series and to see if Shatner would be interested in starring in it. Shatner was impressed with the quality of the production from the look of it and its intelligence.

He did feel that it was lacking any humor and that some of the actors were melodramatic in their roles.
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Krel
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 13, 2020 12:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

When it came time to have Yvonne Craig as an Orion woman, they found that the formula for the green makeup was lost. The solution was to use green makeup and bathe Yvonne Craig in green lighting to get her to look green enough for the cameras.

When he showed the pilot to the NBC executives, Herb Solo was confused by their negative reaction to the character of No. 1. He was taken aside and told that they didn't have a problem with a female First Officer, they had a problem with the character being portrayed by Gene Roddenberry's mistress. He didn't know.

I wonder how the NBC executives would have reacted, if they knew that Nichellle Nichols was was also his mistress.

David.
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Pow
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 13, 2020 2:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

More Tidbits for "The Cage."

The Transporter was created since the idea of landing the 14 story Enterprise upon a planet each week would have seemed scientifically implausible.

Plus filming landings on planets each week would have busted the show's budget.

The initial concept for the star ship Enterprise's resident alien Mr.Spock was to have him with a red-toned skin makeup.

This idea was nixed due to the fact that back in 1966 many Americans only owned black-and-white television sets.

Red makeup on those TV sets comes off as appearing dark and muddy.

Yellow makeup on the other hand would give Mr.Spock a pale looking complexion.

So Mr.Spock's makeup would be yellow.

Charles Schram who was the head of the makeup department at MGM would tackle the onerous task of creating Mr.Spock's Vulcan ears.

Schram had worked on the MGM classic fantasy film "The Wizard Of Oz."

The pilot required 16 days to film.
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Pow
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 16, 2021 5:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Some Nits

The Enterprise landing party tells the faux crash survivors that they won't believe how fast they can return to Earth now that the "time" barrier has been broken.

Presumably Gene Roddenberry was referring to flying faster than the speed of light. So these crash victims made it all the way to Talos IV by traveling less than the speed of light?

Captain Pike informs the Talosians that he is from a stellar group on the "other end" of the Galaxy.

The galaxy is 100,000 light-years across. Depending on the precise position of Talos IV, it would take a sublight ship no less than 30,000 years to reach that planet from Earth.

I don't think these survivors are supposed to be that old.

Vina claims that she is deformed because the Talosians had no guide when they reconstructed her badly mangled body.

Why didn't the Talosians simply use their own form? They appear to be humanoid and not vastly different than humans.

On the other hand, why didn't they just read her mind and find out what she thought she looked like?

On that note all I can come up with is that Vina might have been in a coma. Reading her mind might have been like reading a book through scrambled eggs. Perhaps it was too unreliable for the Talosians to go by her chaotic & agony filled thoughts to depend upon them to correctly guide them with her healing process?

In this episode, Mr. Spock can simply wave his hand and change the setting of the viewscreen. Kirk's Enterprise lost that ability.

Attempting to rescue Captain Pike from the Talosians, the crew of the Enterprise bring down a laser cannon. As it fires, Number One gives instructions to the ship. Every time she calls for more power, she speaks into her communicator, but when she wants them to disengage, she lowers her communicator and shouts at the sky.

They probably felt that was more dramatic for the scene even if it was unrealistic.

The laser cannon was a nifty looking prop that we never see again once the series was picked up by NBC and became weekly. One wonders why they ever needed it here?

Wouldn't the ship's laser beams fired from orbit have been able to make the attempt to blast open the doors just as well as a laser cannon?

They'd have to be adjusted regarding their power output since you wouldn't want them to destroy the entire area...crew members included.

On A Piece of the Action, Scotty is able to set the Enterprise's phasers to a stun setting just like the phaser pistol has and knock out some mobsters. So the power of the phasers can be adjusted.

On The Apple we see the Enterprise fire phasers upon the cave where the master computer Vaal resides. They are able to destroy the computer without actually destroying the cave entrance. And Kirk & Spock aren't all that far away from the action.

Wouldn't the lasers on the Enterprise be able to be reduced from full power to still be formidable and zero in on the Talosians doors? Even though for the sake of the plot they would not have cracked open the doors

The Talosians inform Pike that should there be contact with the Talosians, humans would learn their power of illusion which could ruin humans & ultimately the Talosians.

Is their power that easy to acquire? Vulcans can do Mind Melds but humans have never learned how to do that?

I wonder if any Talosians ever ventured out into space before they lost their abilities to maintain & repair their mechanical devices?
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scotpens
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 16, 2021 8:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Krel wrote:
When it came time to have Yvonne Craig as an Orion woman, they found that the formula for the green makeup was lost. The solution was to use green makeup and bathe Yvonne Craig in green lighting to get her to look green enough for the cameras.

I remember reading somewhere that spray-on "liquid bandage" was used to keep Yvonne from sweating off the green body makeup. When they shot the scene where Marta is taken outside into the planet's poisonous atmosphere and pleads for her life with outstretched arms, the stuff formed cobwebby globs that looked like green moss hanging from her armpits. Fortunately, it didn't show up on film.
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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2021 6:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think they believed that the powers of the ship's lasers from orbit might have been too powerful and would have killed Captain Pike rather than save him! Which would have defeated the point of the exercise, to be honest!
JB
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2021 10:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

JB is right. They didn't want to vaporize the entire hill, just the door. When their hand phasers didn't work, they went to the next most powerful weapon — which actually did the job, but the Talosians made them think it hadn't worked.

However, as Pow pointed out, several episodes demonstrated that the ship's phaser were remarkably precise. In fact, I think they played a bit fast-and-loose with the idea on some occasions.


POW wrote:
The Enterprise landing party tells the faux crash survivors that they won't believe how fast they can return to Earth now that the "time" barrier has been broken.

Presumably Gene Roddenberry was referring to flying faster than the speed of light. So these crash victims made it all the way to Talos IV by traveling less than the speed of light.

Captain Pike informs the Talosians that he is from a stellar group on the "other end" of the Galaxy.

I suspect we can chalk up things like this to the fact that Rodenberry himself wasn't overly concerned with scientific accuracy, and he figured (falsely, perhaps) that 90% of the audience wouldn't know a nebula from Nerf ball. Rolling Eyes

So, he just referred to certain things in highfalutin "sciency" terms.

quote="POW"][size=20]Vina claims that she is deformed because the Talosians had no guide when they reconstructed her badly mangled body.

Why didn't the Talosians simply use their own form? They appear to be humanoid and not vastly different than humans.
[/quote]
This a clearly a case of "artistic license" . . . taken to an extreme. The Talosians didn't even make the poor girl's body symmetrical, much less fully functional!

And was Susan Oliver's lovely appearance supposed to be the way Vina looked before the crash? If so and Talosians now know what she was supposed to look like, why didn't they do some follow-up surgery to improve the lousy job they did the first time? Confused

Your other comments concern the things the Talosians could have done (like read her mind, etc.) and your examples of how the ship's phasers work are all well thought out.

I sincerely wish Roddenberry had been able to get your help with the script! Very Happy

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Pow
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2021 7:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes, the ship's lasers could indeed vaporize the entire site if they were at full power.

I pointed out that the ship would not use full power but reduce it in order to attempt to blast open the lift doors but not everything around it.

We see Pike's memory of battling the giant savage in the castle fortress. Exciting scene.

Except it didn't make much sense strategically. Why was the captain of the Enterprise all alone brawling with this guy; where were the other crew members?

Where was Pike's laser pistol? Was this some kind of peace mission that devolved into a trap? So the crew left their weapons back on the star ship? Not smart.

Where was Pike's communicator so he could call for help or beam the hell out?

It was 60s television and the networks wanted exciting fight scenes with the hero...logic be damned.
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scotpens
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2021 8:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
Yes, the ship's lasers could indeed vaporize the entire site if they were at full power.

I pointed out that the ship would not use full power but reduce it in order to attempt to blast open the lift doors but not everything around it.

The power, range, and accuracy of the ship's weapons wasn't yet established in the original pilot. In the first-season episode "The Alternative Factor," we saw the ship's phasers were capable of zeroing in on Lazarus' one-man spaceship -- which was smaller than a Volkswagen Beetle!

Pow wrote:
We see Pike's memory of battling the giant savage in the castle fortress. Exciting scene.

Except it didn't make much sense strategically. Why was the captain of the Enterprise all alone brawling with this guy; where were the other crew members?

That never made much sense to me either. Pike says to Dr. Boyce: "I should have smelled trouble when I saw the swords and the armor. Instead of that, I let myself get trapped in that deserted fortress and attacked by one of their warriors."

Well, yeah, a bunch of battle-armored, sword-wielding, fierce-looking giant dudes with bad teeth might be a signal to get the hell out of there.


Last edited by scotpens on Sun Jul 18, 2021 12:07 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Krel
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2021 10:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It was never said that he went hand-to-hand, just that he had to battle his way out. It could mean that he LASERed his way out while they were using their own weapons. In close quarters, it could reduce the advantage of a beam weapon.

The Talosians wanted excitement and emotion, so they didn't let Pike have his LASER in the rematch.

I found out recently that the magnets on the LASER pistol were not strong enough to hold the prop while moving, so they added a wire clip to the side, like the communicators have.

I would like to point out, that in the beginning S.T. was very much a space opera. It wasn't until Gene Coone came in that things changed to be less of a space opera.

Understandable as all shows have their teething pains, and change as they go on as they learn what works, and what doesn't' work.

David.
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 24, 2022 2:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I just found this intro which was filmed with Gene Rodenberry.

Enjoy!
_

"The Cage" - Star Trek Original Pilot - Gene Roddenberry Intro!


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