The Menagerie Part II

The Menagerie Part II opens with a brilliantly stylised tracking shot. First we see Kirk full face, looking out of the screen with the Captain's log playing in voiceover. As the camera moves Spock comes into frame, again facing the camera, with Commodore Mendez in profile. Mendez reads a list of charges against Spock who replies each time with the single word,"guilty". As part of an episode it would look unbearably hokey but here in the teaser it's a quick and effective way of bringing the viewer up to speed on events in The Menagerie Part I. Those events being the mystery of Spock kidnapping Captain Pike, and hijacking the Enterprise to the forbidden planet of Talos IV. The Menagerie Part II explains why. Sort of.

Talos IV is a sealed world. To prevent humans learning the Talosians' techniques of illusion projection Starfleet imposes General Order 7 on the planet. "No vessel under any condition, emergency or otherwise, is to visit Talos IV." The punishment for any breach of this order is death; the last remaining capital offence. The Talosians' ability to project convincing illusions means Pike will be able to effectively leave his shell of a body and live a normal life. So we now know why Spock believes Talos IV is the ideal place to take Pike but what's missing is his motivation. The risk Spock is taking goes way beyond simple loyalty, or compassion, or logic. Surely other people could also benefit from life on Talos IV? What makes Captain Pike so remarkable? Spock invites the death penalty on himself, and, apparently, gets Kirk relieved of command simply for watching images sent from Talos IV. We can never see what occurred during Spock's 11 year service with Captain Pike to form such a remarkable bond because we are limited to footage from The Cage. Unfortunately because The Cage footage is also edited to largely focus on Captain Pike we see very little interaction, or chemistry, between him and Spock. Ultimately Spock's motivation is left frustratingly vague.

The Menagerie Part II also doesn't make Talos IV seem the best place for Pike to spend the rest of his life. We see him kidnapped by the Talosians, and tortured. Fellow captive Vina describes her life on the planet. “They keep at you and at you, year after year, tricking you, punishing. And they won. They own me.” When Pike rejects, Vina, the Talosians obtain other women from the Enterprise intending to breed a slave race to rebuild their planet. Only a suicidal gesture of self-destruction persuades the Talosians that humans are unsuitable as slaves, and the Talosians tell Pike he has condemned their race to death. Still, it's all water under the bridge. The Talosian's have had 13 years to get over any bad feelings. I'm sure Pike and Vina will be very happy together.

Unfortunately The Menagerie Part II is attempting to tell a story at odds with the footage from The Cage. The Menagerie Part II wants to show us how an illusionary life can sometimes be preferable to reality. The Cage footage wants to show us how an illusionary life is a prison. This basic difference between the two, and I suspect, the sheer speed at which the envelope script was written and filmed, means it doesn't always tell a satisfactory story. For example at the end of act three the Talosian's stop broadcasting their images, leading to Commodore Mendez forcing through a court martial verdict and declaring Spock guilty. Yet when the broadcasts resume at the start of act four Kirk, Mendez, and Pike watch them again as if nothing has happened. Beyond the need for a dramatic cliffhanger to end act three there is no story need for the guilty verdict, or the transmission interruption.

The ending is one of the most effective moments of the episode. Not the 'all charges dropped General Order 7 suspended on this occasion' message from Starbase 11 which feels overly convenient but the point where Kirk realises he has been tricked. Kirk turns to speak to Mendez, who, in a nice touch of continuity, vanishes in exactly the same way as the Talosian illusions we have just been watching. A simple fade would have established his illusionary nature equally well, and been cheaper, so it's nice to see someone went the extra distance and found the money and time to recreate the original effect. Likewise it's something of a surprise when the Keeper suddenly addresses Kirk by name. Two weeks of seeing Kirk and the others unable to do anything except passively watch Talosian broadcasts makes any interaction a surprise. The brief conversation between Kirk and the Keeper is what finally ties the two plot strands together and does most to make The Menagerie Part II feel like an story in its own right, rather than an episode in which Kirk, Spock, Mendez, and Pike watch a story. Imagine my delight at discovering Malachi Throne, the actor who plays Commodore Mendez, also voiced the Keeper in The Cage and The Menagerie Part II; a clever piece of budget casting.

In the review of The Menagerie Part I, I suggested we play Gene Roddenberry for a Day and try to come up with a similar envelope story for Where No Man Has Gone Before. The best I could manage was a flashback story in which the Enterprise crew relive the events of Where No Man Has Gone Before; first as dreams and then as increasingly real memories. As the Enterprise is pulled back to Delta Vega Spock realises Gary Mitchell has returned. Kirk did not kill Mitchell, he simply put Mitchell to sleep while his powers regenerated. Kirk is now faced with killing his friend a second time. Mitchell appears on the bridge and reveals he has grown beyond humanity and revenge. Mitchell apologies to Kirk and the crew, the events they have experienced were a side effect of his powers regenerating and exceeding their previous limits.

Pretty thin stuff. Especially the bit about Mitchell outgrowing humanity. I now imagine him appearing on the Enterprise bridge as a green tinted, toga wearing demi-god, with an echoey voice and the all important ripple effect obscuring Mitchell's face; it would probably cost too much to hire Gary Lockwood again. The challenge Gene Roddenberry faced when writing The Menagerie was a considerable one, and he deserves praise for the solution he came up with. 

Enterprise crew deaths: None. It's not entirely clear what the rest of the Enterprise crew are doing while Kirk and Spock watch an old episode of Star Trek but none of them die.
Running total: 19

The Menagerie Part I

It's time to play, Gene Roddenberry for a Day. The rules are simple. Pretend Where No Man Has Gone Before was the first Star Trek pilot and think of an envelope story to wrap around the footage and pad it out to two episodes.

Why, Where No Man Has Gone Before? Only because the actual first pilot The Cage was the basis for The Menagerie. To get some idea of the difficulties Roddenberry faced it's necessary to choose an episode where we can't watch his solution. And Roddenberry's solution is inventive. Robert Justman first suggested turning the unbroadcast 78 minutes of The Cage into a two part story but it's Roddenberry, the writer, who deals with the problem of making sense out of a story featuring a different cast, set, and production style.

The Menagerie (at least the portion of the script not recycling footage from The Cage) is also the first story completely scripted and filmed since Star Trek began broadcasting on 8^th September 1966. This is significant because it becomes the first story made against the background of public reaction to the series, and the public reaction was Spockmania! According to Leonard Nimoy's autobiography I Am Spock -and other cast and production people confirm this- by week five there were “laundry bags full of mail” coming in for Mr. Spock. Week five would be the week of broadcast of The Enemy Within, and according to records the Monday of that week, October 3rd, is the date on the first draft of The Menagerie. Now, Spock is the only character carried forwards from The Cage, so it is inevitable Gene Roddenberry's envelope script would be Spock heavy but The Menagerie Part I almost seems to fetishise him.

Star Trek has already established a lot of information about Vulcans. The mind meld was introduced in Dagger Of The Mind, and the nerve pinch in The Enemy Within. Miri established Spock was physiologically different to humans, and every episode seems to drive home Spock's emotionless nature. The most Spock heavy episode of the first series, The Galileo Seven, has been filmed but not yet broadcast. Despite all this I find it hard to think of anything to compare to the two scenes in The Menagerie Part I where Spock sends false orders to the Enterprise.

Spock creeps into the computer room on Starbase 11 and incapacitates one member of staff with a nerve pinch. He is finalising his fake message to the Enterprise when he is challenged by Chief Humbolt. Spock fights him off, takes several heavy blows to the head, nerve pinches Humbolt as well, and then uses faked messages from Captain Kirk to trick the Enterprise into accepting his new orders. Plus we get two scenes emphasising Spock's loyalty and Vulcan nature; one where Kirk defends Spock to Commodore Mendez's aide, the other where McCoy defends Spock to Kirk (a change from the normally antagonistic McCoy/Spock relationship). We've been told in the past that Spock is different to humans; smarter, stronger, more intelligent. The tone feels slightly changed here, as if we are just being told Spock is great.

Roddenberry could have felt these scenes were necessary to make Spock's betrayal of Kirk credible and to demonstrate he could hijack the Enterprise alone, or this might be a series creator responding to the first flashes of fan enthusiasm and grateful at least one element of his series is an undisputed hit. Whatever the explanation, after this point William Shatner will have to share the lead actor position with Leonard Nimoy. This is the beginning of the path leading to Nimoy's demand for a second series pay rise so large the producers consider replacing him, the Shatner-Nimoy feud (the seriousness of which depends on whose account you listen to), and the 1967 album Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr. Spock's Music From Outer Space.

A modern audience will never be able to watch Star Trek in the same way the original audience did but that's especially true here. For the original audience the highlight of The Menagerie Part I must have been the first few scenes from The Cage which take up the last 15 minutes of the episode. Not knowing their source it must have looked as if the production team had hired a whole new cast, redesigned the sets, and then taken care to shoot the footage differently. I spent ages trying to work out why the old Enterprise bridge looks so dull. It's because The Cage was not lit by series director of photography Jerry Finnerman who memorably used enormous splashes of colour to light the sets. It's hard to believe The Cage was filmed in 1964. It looks ancient compared to The Menagerie footage. The script tells us the events of The Cage took place 13 years previously, and this is mostly to distance Nimoy's not quite there performance, at one point he even cracks a smile, but it really does look as if it was filmed in 1951. When blonde haired navigator José Tyler puts on a blue blazer-like top to go planetside he looks so square he only seems to be missing an “I LIKE IKE” badge.

Kirk and Mendez take a shuttle to catch up with the Enterprise, the first time we see one of these crafts on screen, but the shuttle was built for The Galileo Seven filmed two episodes previously. Once again resources spent on another episode end up making The Menagerie look more lavish. And that's the main triumph of The Menagerie Part I. Gene Roddenberry takes an unpromising brief and turns it into something entertaining. A quick, cheap, and mechanical story, with no goal beyond getting the cast into a position where they, and the audience, can watch edited highlights of The Cage, turns out to be very watchable. 

Enterprise crew deaths: None. Spock's takeover of the Enterprise is a bloodless coup.
Running total: 19

Misc:

As well as The Menagerie, two other things helped Star Trek claw back some lost production time. The Corbomite Maneuver had been made as the first episode in regular production but held back until week ten. Then, Star Trek was preempted on Thursday 1^st December for an episode of The Jack Benny Hour (which you can see here, complete with “Star Trek will not be presented tonight...” announcement, and groovy NBC “living color” logo). However time ran out on 22^nd December when the series took an unscheduled break and What Are Little Girls Made Of? was repeated.

Where No Man Has Gone Before

This is Star Trek's second pilot. Picked by NBC from three scripts (the other two being The Omega Glory, and Mudd's Women) and made more action oriented at their request. So while original pilot The Cage ends with then Enterprise Captain Christopher Pike accepting fantasy is sometimes preferable to reality Where No Man Has Gone Before ends with Kirk and new God Gary Mitchell having a fistfight.

If Charlie X is The Man Trap's brainy cousin Where No Man Has Gone Before is Charlie X's knuckle dragging older brother. Charlie X and Where No Man Has Gone Before tell different stories but both could have sprung from Gene Roddenberry's one line proposal for The Day Charlie Became God “The accidental occurrence of infinite power to do all things in the hands of a very finite man.”

Where No Man Has Gone Before may be less thoughtful than Charlie X but you can see how it persuaded NBC to buy the series. As an episode it's insanely ambitious. From the catalogue of expensive production techniques all that's missing is location filming. There are matt paintings, and planet exteriors, and interior sets, and shipboard action, and unique special effects sequences -including a really unusual optical zoom in the teaser as the camera pulls back from a star field to show Kirk and Spock watching it on a screen-, and new props (I don't think Kirk's phaser rifle was ever used again), and stunts, and fights, and special make-up. Also three guest cast members get killed off. Not just three nameless non-speaking extras but proper actors with lines. That's quite expensive. If I was a producer on a budget I'd remove the doomed Lee Kelso character and replace him with one of the featured cast; probably Scotty because Sulu is still head of Astrosciences in this episode. The Doctor can come in and say “Scotty's been choked unconscious, but he'll be okay.” and you've saved the cost of an actor. Penny pinching, but we're talking about an episode budgeted at $215,644 -against the standard first season budget of around $190,000 per episode- which ended up costing $354,974 (about $2,534,841 today). Incidentally, on the other side of the Atlantic the BBC was making Doctor Who and the four part story The Time Meddler was broadcast as Where No Man Has Gone Before was filmed. In 1965 100 minutes of Doctor Who cost £7157 or about £114,297 today.

So, what did Desilu Studios get for their money? The script for Where No Man Has Gone Before is entertaining but utterly routine. A standard story of absolute power corrupting absolutely. It has some nice moments. Kelso's death comes as a surprise because of a scene in the turbolift where Kirk and Mitchell mention him when he's not on screen. This doesn't often happen to one off characters who are not also the main guest star. It establishes the friendship between the three, makes Mitchell's later killing of Kelso more shocking, and ups the stakes in Kirk and Mitchell's fight. Which is why the producers didn't cut Kelso's character in the first place. Actually, if the producers did want to save money by cutting an actor they should have removed Yeoman Smith. It's a real nothing part which doesn't serve the plot and just makes Kirk and Mitchell both look unprofessional. Kirk can't remember her name and calls her Jones by mistake. Then Mitchell holds her hand as the Enterprise tries to break through the galactic energy barrier; the ship's at red alert, both hands on the steering wheel mister. Also, because Smith is standing slightly behind Mitchell he is forced to extend his arm back at a very awkward angle. It looks stupid and unnatural and is, presumably, at the instruction of the director because having her standing further forwards would mess up the framing of his shots. Apart from that moment the direction is quite stylish. Some interesting camera angles -an unusual overhead shot of Kirk and Spock entering a turbolift- and a great moment during the fade to commercial break between act one and two. Gary Mitchell's silver eyes linger on screen shining out from the black, I don't know if this is deliberate or just a happy accident of the fade to black process.

So what does happen to Gary Mitchell? The episode implies gaining the abilities of a god simply drives Mitchell mad with power but this has happened to other Star Trek characters without similar results. Commander Riker in Hide and Q is the most obvious example, but we've also seen Charlie Evans in the previous episode, who seemed to have comparable powers, and the Organians from Errand of Mercy. As Mitchell gains in power he becomes egotistical, cruel, and emotionally distanced from the crew. Maybe Mitchell is just unstable to begin with but if that's the case why does he say “Jim” in such a saddened and regretful way when his power is momentarily drained by trying to walk through a security force field? The Enemy Within shows us a transporter accident that splits Kirk into good and evil individuals. Maybe the energy from the galactic barrier performs a similar function, massively boosting the evil side of Mitchell's personality. For all his powers, Mitchell never displays any empathic ability like Counselor Troi from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the one telepathic power which would seem to be rooted in the good side of a person's personality would be the ability to sense what others are feeling.

Enterprise crew deaths: 12. Nine unnamed plus Mitchell, Dehner, and Kelso.

Running total: 16