I think Hunter as Pike would have been more of a blending of a Kirk and Picard captian

It might have been a completely different show than what TOS ended up being and likely lasted only one season if that.

The Cage is my favorite episode of the original series- I really wish they had stuck it out and continued making episodes. TOS would have been a masterpiece of science fiction.

Answer: More cerebral and only 6 episodes before it was cancelled.

It would have been a boring short lived and unmemorable 1960s TV show. When Star Trek was conceived, cowboy shows were still a thing at the time and those shows provided plenty of mindless action and adventure. Roddenberry pitched Star Trek as a Wagon Train to the stars. So the show had to be a space western with action. Captain Kirk is essentially a space ranger who was ready from week to week to brawl with bad guys and/or be romantic with a lady as the Enterprise encountered a new adventure each week.

Fax was made in the 1930's

Well. Shit.

Dude watch the star trek the next generation series then ask yourself did Pike ever make it out=nope just like how Q says "you really don't get it do you". Q also being a clearance in governments around the world relating to the Hill which is Q in hieroglyph something Snowden let out in the Rogan interview when he said he went to a little known place called the Hill for even more secret than secret clearance meaning he is Q or was Q now. Den means what it means hollow in Earth doesn't it... Bi-den, Wy-den, Snow-den, the town I live in is a small town in another small town called Holden. My stepfather is Dennis Dean & you don't need to know his last name but it's funny right but who believe such things that reality is simulation & they use illusion in this holodeck to control everything pathologically leading everyones lives like how they said they would steer Pikes life meaning choice is an illusion. What Matrix was saying what I've said my entire time here again. Scroo this place.

This didn't age well.

@@Nosiu Ever notice the birth-death dates of Spock-Kirk are all about skull & bones who use CrownVirus as a symbol or the 322-CV hence it's use not that most of you can even think right I mean you're mostly Q-Audience hence 1701 Enterprise being based entirely in a simulation in a C-AG(Q)E. But hey whatever right it's cool don't think enjoy the ride. Gates who is from the mirror Set-Q makes much more sense when you know Charlton Heston had Q clearance so did John G Trump... But hey it's all coincidental right like Bond movies or Q clearance in UK as well but it's coincidence LOL... Said the program with a memory block disabling neural pathway.

One of his biggest earlier movies he played Jesus, look it up

Re: Jeffrey Hunter - The Star Trek movies would have had a very different history if they had lost their Captain.

Yes, if Jeff Hunter stayed on all would have been different world, I think Hunter died young, so he would not have been around for a Star Trek movie later on, and the tone of the series might have been different. William Shatner adds a lot of charisma to his acting in those days. Kirk was fun to watch when he outwits his opponents in strategy, and his dialogue with Spock and Bones and the mostly good writing kept this TOS series a fan favorite for years after it was cancelled.

BEEP

That is nothing compared to being stuck in a universe with weak humans.

As Q said in "all good things" you never left the cage, never made if off Talos-sol at meaning the trial never ends ever. Welcome to why humanities history here most certainly isn't humane now is it.

It looks more like Rod Serling's Twilight Zone, or Outer Limits, which had premiered in the early 1960's, and had built up cult followings.

Unlike now, eh?

ye4s considering all that schlock TV programming of those days.

Samual Whitelord No it wasn't. All fans understood it and loved it.

It was ahead of its time when I was a kid back then. Now we live it. We just have to UNITE, as a people in space. We are Terrans!

The FANS understood the show, the execs at NBC didn't and that's why they originally rejected it. 'The Cage' didn't air in its original form for years afterward. The pilot that DID air was 'Where No Man Has Gone Before', and the original pilot footage got recycled in 'The Menagerie'.

Did you reply -- "No, of course not, his name is Jizz." ??

Me too!

me too

I've heard it said people do not want freedom so much as a kindly taskmaster.

This fits in well with Devo's 1980 song, "Freedom of Choice". Very profound lyrics by Mark Mothersbaugh, "Freedom of choice is what you've got. Freedom from choice is what you want."

People want freedom...but are satisfied with the mere illusion. Or they convince themselves they are.

Brilliant. This was Roddenberry's message! TV with a message. WOW...

This was before they decided to make Vulcans unemotional. Number One was meant to be the cold, logical character. When they were forced to cut her, the grafted her characteristics onto Spock.

@@bcbock and then way far off in the future, the role "Number One" would be the most arrogant man in Starfleet history.

I realize I am replying to an old comment, but re: Spock's early tone, Majel Barrett's character, Number One, was supposed to be cool and calculating. So, they didn't want two characters like that. When some studio brass said they couldn't have a female second in command, they decided to give Nimoy's character those attributes.

I was 9 when ST debuted in '66, so I'm sure I saw all of the originals in B&W, as we didn't get a color TV until '71. I've seen each ep so many times since then in color that I don't harbor that same nostalgia for the B&W you possess. I do prefer watching some things in black and white, like old tv shows and westerns of the fifties that I was not so personally attached to. It seems to be able to provide that sense of nostalgia that you mentioned. I once researched why "B&W" provides that sense and seems to heighten that sense of emotion, as I was always curious about it. I read that since there is no "color" provided, you mind is required to more or less "fill in the blanks", and somehow that is attached to creating the added emotional resonance.

They couldn't have! First, The Cage was rejected as the first pilot, there's no way they would make TWO of them, including special effects. These shows were EXPENSIVE to make at the time, there's no way they'd reshoot the show just to get it into color when it already had been rejected as a pilot.

I just checked, the original negative was in color, but there was a black and white copy that Roddenberry had "for reference purposes" (this is from Wikipedia) that was a complete copy of the original Cage. A film archivist later discovered the removed portions of the film from the original color negative, that were taken out of The Menagerie and with that, the entire original was reconstructed. It's ironic that it doesn't really matter today, the black and white version would have been colorized anyhow and enhanced to have the same quality.

He probably wouldn't have died if he had agreed to do the series. If he had been doing the series, he wouldn't have been injured on a film set in 1968, which killed him a few months later.

Brian Wilson Spocks limp was was in reference to a previous unseen mission where he and other members of the crew were injured. In one of the fantasy scenes when Pike was in The Menagerie and fighting in sort of a medieval looking planet he relives the situation worse pocketed up getting injured.

Ted Richardson Correct! And kudos for your knowledge of that little know tidbit. 👏

Spock also seems to be limping when he runs back to the Weapons Control Room in Balance of Terror.

he would puke

The Blue Comet Ison is coming round the Sun.

JEFF HUNTER DIED IN A DRUNK sad to say, He fell down the stairs in his house and hit his head fracturing his skull. His autopsy is online...u do ur own search, its all there!

Looks like he will have to wait till after the Millenium to be Resurrected and taught not to over indulge in alcoholic beverages.

TOO BAD FOR HIM. GOD WILL GIVE HIM A NEW BODY LATER

Imagine if we have DS9 Holosuites?

His wife persuaded him to go for bigger movie roles. TV wasn't that well paid back then. He was on a good track but sadly died age 42 after an accident in 1969.

it's on netflix, and you may still be able to view it on the cbs site as well as hulu for free.

Thanks

ur welcome! Hope you find & enjoy it. It's one of my favorites episodes. A cerebral, intensely-worked script, & the best makeup, aliens and set work in the series thanks to a rumored 500k budget & art dept. who created monsters on The Outer Limits.

+jctoad Pretty sure it's the same. The first time that I saw it, it alternated between colour and B & W, because they used the colour segments that were used in the Menagerie Part 1 & 2. Later they made a complete colour version, but the non Menagerie segments are of lower quality.

+AbuserTube Thanks. If it was a totally different shoot I would watch it. But I'm not going to bother if it's just a b/w version of the same thing.

jctoad You're welcome.

@@jctoad It's exactly the same thing. They made The Menagerie by literally cutting up the edit of The Cage, using the pilot's camera negatives. They then lost the unused 35mm cuts that weren't used in The Menagerie, so the only surviving copy of the full pilot was a black and white 16mm print. In 1987, they found the unused 35mm camera negatives and were thus able to re-assemble the full episode in colour. I don't know why the non-menagerie sections would be any lower quality as they're the original negatives just like was used in The Menagerie. Maybe they weren't stored properly? I don't remember noticing any differences in quality the last time I watched it.

...and their win!!!

desiguy55 it's on netflix

& the cast/crew would probably have liked Hunter

Nah. He wouldn't have been. Shatner was a huge reason the show is still watched today.

Shatner is probably the biggest reason I quit watching the old series. :)

I concur with Scott. Hunter played Kirk as an uber-serious captain 100% of the time. As good as he was, the show would have ended up missing something in the long run. When Shatner was brought aboard the show, Roddenberry asked him, "What, if anything, do you think the show might need that it doesn't already have?". Shatner replied, "A little bit of levity and fun here and there. Let Kirk have a playful side, when he's not otherwise dealing with heavier situations." Say what one will about Shatner's at-times dated style of acting on the show, he was great at establishing that element throughout the series. It made him, and the rest of the cast, more human and more interesting, I believe. I don't think I would have watched it for nearly as long, otherwise, and it's one of the main things that keeps me coming back. The Next Generation-as good as it was-could have used a wee bit more of that kind of thing as well.

It would have been disastrous in the long run, as Hunter died quite soon after the series was finished... That would have put a big damper on Star Trek's future.

Jesus Christ is alive and He reigns forevermore!

I know I am responding to an old comment, but re: color in the Star Trek's 'The Cage', I believe it was originally shot in colour, but a bunch of the original colour masters were lost for a long time -- only to be found relatively recently in the grand scheme of things.