The Enterprise receives what appears to be a distress message. But when they get to the planet where the message was sent from, they discover that the supposed survivors were nothing more than illusions created by the inhabitants of the planet. And they also capture Captain Pike. While Captain Pike tries to cope with the experiments and tests that the aliens are conducting on him, his crew tries to find a way to rescue him. But the aliens illusions are too powerful and deceptive.

Jeffrey Hunter - Captain Christopher Pike

Susan Oliver - Vina

Leonard Nimoy - Mr. Spock

Majel Barrett - Number One

John Hoyt - Dr. Phillip Boyce

Peter Duryea - Lieutenant Jose Tyler

Laurel Goodwin - Yeoman J.M. Colt

Michael Dugan - The Kalar

Clegg Hoyt - Transporter Chief Pitcairn

Anthony Jochim - Third Survivor

Robert C. Johnson - First Talosian

Jon Lormer - Dr. Theodore Haskins

Ed Madden - Enterprise Geologist

Joseph Mell - Earth Trader

Leonard Mudie - Second Survivor

Robert Phillips - Space Officer

Janos Prohaska - Anthropoid Ape/Humanoid Bird

Adam Roarke - C.P.O. Garison

Gene Roddenberry - Host of Video Release

Serena Sande - Second Talosian

Georgia Schmidt - First Talosian

Malachi Throne - The Keeper (voice)

Meg Wyllie - The Keeper

This was the first pilot episode of the cult series Star Trek. In 1965 it was presented to the NBC executives, which rejected the pilot and asked for a second pilot - Where No Man Has Gone Before.

The first pilot was not aired on TV until 1988, when is was used as a filler episode for Star Trek: The Next Generation due to a writers strike.

Footage of this pilot has been used to create the two part Star Trek story "The Menagerie". Because of a production delay they had only one week to produce two episodes, and so they edited this pilot into two new episodes.

Leonard Nimoy's Mr. Spock was the only character from the first pilot to survive into the series. The ship's first officer character, Number One, was rejected for the series by the network because she was female. Actress Majel Barrett (Roddenberry's girlfriend at the time and later wife) was recast as Nurse Chapel. When the pilot was recycled as the two-part series episode "The Menagerie," it was established the events in this episode take place 13 years prior to the events of the Star Trek series.

During pre-production make-up tests, the Orion Slave Girl footage (with Majel Barrett acting as a stand-in for the not yet cast Susan Oliver) kept returning from processing with the character's green skin changed to Caucasian. Initially believing that the green makeup was somehow failing to show up on film, the producers learned that the developers at the processing lab hand-corrected the color, believing it to be a processing error.

Spock's emotionless Vulcan nature had not yet been established, therefore this is the only Trek episode where Spock (without any alien influence) grins. Spock is also seen limping throughout the film. Apparently there was to have been a reference to Spock being injured during a recent battle, but this never made it into the final version.

The Cage and follow-up pilot Where No Man Has Gone Before were the only episodes that were not filmed at the present-day Paramount Studios in Hollywood. The pilots were filmed at The Culver Studios (now owned by Sony Pictures) in Culver City, California.

The officer rank insignia in this episode (single gold braid for everyone) was intended to be generic so as to imply that the space service of the future had no need for ranks and titles, and was not intended to be a military organization. This concept did not carry over into other Star Trek series, as a classic rank insignia structure was developed and Star Fleet was clearly indicated to be based on the military.

Revealing mistake: As Pike retreats up the stairs from the warrior on "Rigel VII", you can see the blade of his spear bend as it pushes against the warrior's chest.

Audio/visual unsynchronized: When the Enterprise crew prepares to blast through the Talosian door the with the laser bank, Mr. Spock's voice can be heard counting down, even though Number One had closed her communicator.

All prints of the original version of "The Cage" were destroyed by Paramount sometime in the sixties...or so it was thought. For over two decades, the only surviving copy had been a 16mm black and white proof print personally owned by Gene Roddenberry. Mr. Roddenberry took this proof print with him on the college lecture circuit throughout the 70's and early 80's. As a result of many showings in dilapidated 16mm projectors, it has become badly scratched and damaged. One of the versions available on video is a re-created hybrid of the original, using the B&W proof print as a reference, reconstructed from footage used in the episode "The Menagerie" (transferred from the original color camera negatives) and the deleted footage (as originated from the B&W proof print)...this version was originally released on video in the 1980s (and most recently on DVD) with a special introduction by Gene Roddenberry. Then, a few years later, in 1988, a full-color original print of the episode was discovered in the Paramount archives and then released as a filler episode during the original syndication run of Star Trek: The Next Generation due to a Hollywood strike (it was later shown during the Sci-Fi Channel's first run of the original Star Trek series). The original soundtrack to the discovered print was missing, but the re-mixed soundtrack used for the previous hybrid B&W/color version (in which the "Menagerie" soundtrack was used wherever possible to avoid using the severely scratched and degraded optical soundtrack from the proof print) was re-synched to this restored full-color version to make it look and sound whole. In any event, the most significant difference in the existing versions of the pilot is the voice of the Keeper. In the numberous restored versions, it switches between that of actor Vic Perrin in the footage taken from "The Menagerie" and that of Malachi Throne in the restored footage. This is because, coincidentally, Malachi Throne was cast as Commodore Mendez in "The Menagerie". The producers, quite rightly, thought that it would be confusing for Commodore Mendez and The Keeper to have the same voice, so The Keeper's lines were re-dubbed. (All Thelosian characters were played by women with dubbed male voices.) Among the other addtional scenes/differences in the original version--

-Pike discovers a monster lurking in the Talosians' chambers during the Captain's imprisonment; an extended version of Pike's first illusion, set on the planet Rigel VII (referred to earlier in the film by the ship's doctor)

-Spock and crew suspect that their weapons are an illusion by the Talosians -extended dialogue by the Keeper about "Number One"

-an extended illusion scene set in the countryside

-an extended version of the Orion Slave Girl sequence

-the Enterprise loses power as they are about to escape from Talos, and the computer bank goes out of control (both a result of the Talosians' telepathic powers)

-and an extended closing scene aboard the bridge.

Aside from the alternate versions released on video, the version currently airing on cable TV is edited down to the sixty minute format for the syndication market (47 minutes without commercials).

My Review: An interesting story and it has all the constituents in it that Where No Man Has Gone Before. There's psychic abilities, fight scenes and technobabble a-go-go. However it's the besic formula that sets the two apart. The Cage has the fight scene before the intellectual understanding, where as WNMHGB has the intellectual part first and then the fight scene. The cast are a mix of talented (Pike, Number 1, the Doctor and the Helmsman), the mundane (most of the extras) and the downright awful (Spock and the Engineers). The story itself take a leisurley time to get anywhere, but this can be attributed ot its 63 minute run time, I dare say if 15 minutes were edited out of it then there would be a more intense story. The sets are all rather good, a lot of time and care has been put into them to make them all unique. The ship itself is barely recognisable as the Enterprise of the Kirk era but the general layout of the birdge and the transporter rooms has a flavour of what is to come. I'd like to say I loved it but I didn't. It's a competant story with good acting but it's by no means a classic.