Star Trek Flashback: The Menagerie, Parts I and II

Halfway through the first season of the original Star Trek, the production found itself over budget, behind schedule, and in serious danger of failing to meet its network order. A clever solution was found. Gathering dust on the shelf was "The Cage," the original series pilot, unable to be shown due to its almost completely different cast of characters. But if that episode could somehow be packaged inside a "modern" episode, the footage could be saved. Thus was born Star Trek's only two-part episode, "The Menagerie."

Enterprise is summoned to a starbase by celebrated captain Christopher Pike, only to discover such a summons would have been impossible: after a horrible accident, Pike has been confined to a robotic chair and can communicate only through a blinking light. Before that mystery can be solved, a larger one appears: why has Spock mutinied?! He abducts Pike, steals the Enterprise, and locks it on course to the one planet forbidden by Starfleet: Talos IV. When Spock is put on trial, his defense revolves around the one prior journey to that planet over a decade earlier... and ultimately reveals his loyalty to his previous captain.

If you've watched "The Cage" recently (which I have), it's difficult to watch "The Menagerie" without a finger poised over the fast forward button. It truly is one new episode and one old episode shuffled together. Indeed, "Part II" has so little new footage in it that I feel it could hardly stand on its own for the sake of a separate review. So here, I'll just take on both parts, and set aside any comments that would apply only to "The Cage."

"The Menagerie" is really a clever idea, only possible because of Spock's presence in the original pilot. It comes at just the right time in season one, after we now know Spock well enough to be utterly mystified about his reasons for hijacking the ship. Kirk is emphatic: if Spock says they received a message to come visit Pike, that's what happened. McCoy is surprisingly even more certain that Spock could not be duplicitous, exposing the trust beneath their constant sparring.

It's fun for the audience to watch Spock take control of the ship. Of course, it demands his technological savvy, and a battery of faked messages he has prepared. It demands stealth (even if it strains credulity when he "sneaks" right by some technician who is looking right in his direction). It demands strength and a trademark Vulcan neck pinch (even if Spock illogically throws the guy around a bit before incapacitating him). Only Spock could carry out something this elaborate, and that only adds to the feeling that he must have a very good reason.

To jump to the end: he does. It is a great testament to Spock and his usually-repressed human half that he cares deeply enough for Captain Pike to risk his own career (and very life; I'll get to that in a moment) to give Pike a chance at happiness. It's possibly hard to square all this against the "needs of the many" Spock of later years, but it tells you just how much this relationship means. (And is one of the factors that makes spin-off Strange New Worlds such a joy to watch; it cares about establishing deep relationships like this, among all its characters.)

The extent of Pike's "locked in" state feel a bit extreme. It works well for the story, but also shows a lack of 1960s imagination; even current technology allows people similarly immobilized and confined to a wheelchair to be more communicative that this. And then there's Star Trek's penchant for over-inflating the stakes. It's not enough that going to Talos IV is dangerous, it has to be the one act in the Federation for which you can get the death penalty. (Yet also, some starbase commodore can just waive that rule if he wants to.) Also,"Part I" ends with Kirk being in hot water too, even though that plot thread isn't picked up in "Part II" at all.

A late plot twist makes no sense to me at all -- it turns out that the Commodore Mendez who accompanied Kirk to the Enterprise was never really there, but an illusion placed in everyone's minds by the Talosians. If it's possible for the Talosians to reach across light years with their powers to this extent, then they're more powerful than it's possible to contemplate. (And "General Order 7," forbidding contact with Talos IV, seems laughably moot. Maybe that's why the real Mendez can just waive it.) If the Talosians can do all this, then why does Pike have to be brought to them for them to use their mental powers to restore him to his pre-accident self?

Other observations:

• There isn't a lot of time for character beats in this episode outside of Spock's story -- but McCoy's flabbergasted reaction when Spock surrenders to him is a good one. 

• When footage from "The Cage" plays in such close proximity to new footage, you can't help but compare all the changes to production that are "similar, but different": uniforms, colors on the sets, lightning changes, and more. 

• They really shouldn't have left in the shot where Spock smiles at the noise-making plants on Talos. It's just not consistent with the character he became. 

• It's some kind of film "Inception" when the people at the trial are watching a TV of Talosians watching TV of Pike on the planet surface. (Add it us watching it on our TVs for yet another layer.) 

• Part II opens with a kind of "previously on" package that isn't actually a "previously on" package, as Kirk, Spock, and Mendez pose theatrically and Kirk narrates via log entry what happened last episode.

• Part II has such a low budget that a line of dialogue explains Spock's trial will be a "closed hearing" -- covering why the people who attended in Part I (like Scotty and McCoy) aren't around anymore. 

• Most of the new footage in Part II is useless interjections that just restate the plot of "The Cage" as we're watching it. But I had to laugh at the shot that follows the line about human males being unable to resists Orion women: a shot of Captain Kirk.

• One shot they do cut from "The Cage" is the moment when Vina is given the illusion of her own Christopher Pike. Cleverly, this lets them use the footage later as though it's the real Pike now on the surface of Talos IV.

If I were making recommendations for someone watching the original Star Trek, I'd actually suggest they skip "The Cage," so they could come to "The Menagerie" as audiences in the 1960s did: seeing it as two new episodes of television. It's basically impossible for me to see it that way. So rather than grade "The Menagerie, Part II" as some bottom-feeding "Shades of Gray"-type flashback episode with little new footage (and most of what's there not making any sense), I'll give it an "N/A" -- and grade the whole of "The Menagerie" a B-.