Part Two of “The Menagerie” is mainly dominated by the bulk of the first Star Trek pilot, “The Cage.” As is standard practice here, I am going to assume that you, the reader, are already familiar with the show and have seen it.
The frame story here is not meant to be thrilling at all, but maybe rather just compelling. Sure, Spock is on trial for his life (I could go off on a whole side rant about why the death penalty still exists in the 23rd Century…), but I guess we’re just intrinsically supposed to worry that Spock might get obliterated before the hour is over.
In hindsight, the whole experience of this two-part episode is really good. I enjoyed it the first time I saw it, and I continue to enjoy it to this day. The 1966 version of me would no doubt have felt the same way.
Next Thursday, Star Trek was preempted on NBC for a Jack Benny special. So, in my attempt to restore the original look of the previews that aired each time, in this case, “The Conscience of the King,” I think it might have looked like this:
https://youtu.be/Kfdr7mlhvOk
By the way, I will be writing a blog post next Thursday (at least.) Stay tuned…
Oh a whim, back in September, I decided to watch the pilot of a new show called “This Is Us.” It was kind of a blind shot in the dark for me. I hadn’t read much about the show prior to that first time I watched it. Boy, was I amazed, mesmerized, and blown away all at the same time.
If you want a description of the show, I won’t waist your time here. Try Wikipedia for that. I’ll just go right into my thoughts.
This is one of the greatest shows I have seen in the last decade. It’s very rare to have such a high quality, family oriented drama that brings back the great hallmarks of what a TV show used to be and should be. This is the kind of show that is touching yet modern.
The writing and editing are top notch. It’s so impressive how they can weave and connect the past of the Pearson family to the present so seamlessly that you’re always having an “aha” moment. For example, in last night’s Thanksgiving episode, “Pilgrim Rick,” the hat and the ball of yarn that came from young Kate’s sweater.
I could go on for hours and hours about this show, but I promise you that if you just watch the show, you will be very impressed. For starters, you can go here and watch it on your favorite device. Mark my words, this show will be an Emmy contender. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.
Well, after almost eight years of doing “Nick’s Flix” on YouTube and Facebook, I felt like I wanted to rebrand, refresh and hopefully generate some discussion. Thus, the morphing that was necessary occurred. Ladies and gentlemen one and all, I present to you “Nick’s Mix”.
Every day, I will post a video review or an article about anything in the entertainment world that I might find interesting. You can contribute too! Post about something and start a discussion. Suggest a movie, TV show, song, album or whatever that I might like. I just want it to be an active group of open discussion. That’s it!
You can go to the Nick’s Mix Facebook page and like it today!
Also, subscribe to my YouTube channel to see Nick’s Mix videos along with other videos that I come up with from time to time!
It wasn’t cheap to make Star Trek, even by 1960’s TV budget standards. Fairly early on, the show was running into not only a money crunch, but was also coming dangerously close to not meeting their airdates. It got to a point to where they probably would have to consider doing the show live, or even worse, in a gestational phase that is beyond description.
(That last sentence is not meant to be taken seriously.)
I have always thought that while Star Trek had its ups and downs in its first season on the air, it wasn’t as big of a struggle as it was to just get NBC to buy the show altogether. As you probably well know, the first pilot, “The Cage“ was rejected for not being the series pilot they had hoped for. That pilot cost over $600,000 to make and yet it was sitting around, collecting dust. So, Gene Roddenberry devised an ingenious idea, to write a new frame story around the existing footage, and thus, you end up with a dynamic, excellent two-part episode. Essentially, two episodes for the price of a lot less than one.
So, fast forward to November 10th. The broadcast of “The Corbomite Maneuver” is on NBC, and at the end, the preview of next week’s show goes out on the air at approximately 9:28pm Eastern time. The 1966 version of me, along with a lot of other people in the audience upon seeing the clips of the first pilot at the end of this preview, would have more than certainly been saying, “Who were those characters!?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPLvsBL8Z2U
I, the 1966 viewer, after seeing that promo most assuredly would have been locked in on this: The frame story as written is a thing of beauty, giving a great added layer to the already great drama that was inherent in “The Cage”. What you see of the first pilot (in this case having never seen it before) makes you want to see it again so you can see all of the nuances of the show that were different at this stage of the game. My drive for information about what this pilot actually was would have been at the forefront. Keep in mind however that the internet obviously wasn’t around then, so the best way I probably could have determined what that first pilot actually was and the story behind it would have been to take a trip to the local library and possibly look up Variety or Daily Variety. However, a local library in Knoxville, TN probably wouldn’t have been getting that publication.
So, onward to Part 2, and take note here of some obvious differences between some things you hear in this Next Week preview and what you will hear in the show. More on that next week!
We have arrived at the first Star Trek episode to be filmed after it was sold to NBC. This episode (and to a lesser degree, “Mudd’s Women”, the next episode filmed after this one) stands out as different from the episodes that followed in very subtle, and some not-so-subtle ways.
The story takes place almost entirely on the Enterprise, and involves Kirk having to outsmart and outguess a would-be enemy known as Balok of the First Federation ship, the Fesarius. What ends up happening is a test of Kirk’s intuition and resiliency. Thankfully for everyone involved, he passes with flying colors.
Now about those differences. First up:
Check out that huge collar on Spock’s uniform. Leonard Nimoy’s costume had to be in two halves so it could be taken off without damaging his time consuming makeup job.
Next:
Uhura’s gold uniform. She also wore this in “Mudd’s Women” before she changed to her red uniform with her appearance in “The Man Trap” (the 4th episode filmed in season one.) I don’t know why they changed the color. The best reason I can think of is that the red complemented her beauty more than the gold did. Or at least that’s what I think.
Finally, from the “Before They Were Stars” department:
Yes, that’s Ron Howard’s brother Clint as Balok. I guess it pays to know people at Desilu. After all, they did film “The Andy Griffith Show” at Desilu in Culver City.
The 1966 viewer in me would find this whole episode riveting and very fascinating. It’s a great “ship in a bottle” bottle show. It’s more emotionally intriguing in many aspects, albeit Kirk, McCoy, Spock and guest star Anthony Call as the navigator, Bailey.
Next week, we come upon an episode, which at least from the preview, made a lot of people probably say, “What the heck is that footage of those characters I don’t recognize!?!?”
As you go out to vote today (and please, do go out and vote today), remember that having the right to cast a ballot is one of the many great things about the United States of America. If you take that for granted… I’m sorry.
To put it more succinctly, I’ll say it with claymation:
When I first saw this episode, it scared the living heck out of me. There wasn’t necessarily anything scary on the screen, it was the story and the possibilities that were being discussed that scared me. How very astute of a 12-year-old boy to think that such high concepts would scare him.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just watch the preview of this episode and you’ll see what I mean.
In just that one minute preview, you realize the terror that a machine like the Neural Neutralizer can cause.
For my money, Morgan Woodward’s guest performance as Dr. Simon Van Gelder is arguably one of the best in the entire first season. To just think of the depths of one’s talent you have to go to to play a tortured scientist who has been forced against his will to hide pertinent information, lest be subjected to great pain. For someone to have to act that out is very, very tough for any actor. I have read that Woodward had to take four days off after the filming of this episode because he probably was very drained from this. Those were well deserved days off!
I, the 1966 TV viewer, would have been very mesmerized and impressed by what I would have seen. This episode is a classic, at least as far as my standards are. Top notch television.
One other thing: during the script development for this story, Dr. Helen Noel wasn’t the one going to the planet, but one Yeoman Janice Rand was. Even your more modest fans could see that that was a bad idea. As has been noted by others, why in the world would you have a Yeoman go down to a rehabilitative colony? The production staff wisely changed it to a specialist instead. It made more sense for the overall plot.
That’s all for this week, next week, we go back to the very first episode filmed after the pilots:
As everyone knows, “Star Trek” premiered on NBC on September 8th, 1966. One might assume that the show debuted on stations from coast to coast. However, as I recently discovered, that was not the case… at least in my current city of residence, Knoxville, Tennessee.
Above are portions of an article that appeared in the Knoxville News-Sentinel on August 28, 1966. The article was looking ahead to the new NBC shows on WATE-TV 6, at the time Knoxville’s NBC affiliate. As you see above, the station’s program director at the time, John Reese, passed on “Star Trek” for the Knoxville market. The Sentinel’s writer, Frank Weirich, didn’t think much of the show either, calling it a “far-out space thing.” As you can also see, WATE also passed on “a bit of nonsense” called “The Monkees.” (Davy Jones and gang finally did appear on Knoxville screens starting on February 6th, 1967 for the final 8 shows of their first season.)
In hindsight it’s easy to see why both of these programming decisions could be lauded as terrible. However, when you look at the demographics of Knoxville at that time, you can see why the decision was made. To further prove that point, here is what they aired instead:
Instead, they aired the popular western series “Rawhide,” which aired on CBS from September 1959 to December 1965. Westerns were very popular with TV audiences, and I can gather from this decision that Reese felt more confident that Rawhide would do better against the other programs, “My Three Sons” and the first 30 minutes of the Thursday Night Movie on WBIR (CBS) and “The Tammy Grimes Show” (which was cancelled after four weeks) and “Bewitched” on WTVK (ABC).
Things would change for the fate of “Star Trek” on Knoxville TV screens. That story, however, is for another day.
We are just over one week out from what can be called a very tumultuous election cycle. My blog is not one for opinions or debate. All I ask you to do is just to exercise your rights as citizens of this great country and get out and vote. I don’t care personally who you vote for, just do your duty and then you won’t have any reason to complain, no matter the outcome.
After you do that, you’ll feel mighty glad you did.
Life is a funny thing. Human bodies are constantly deteriorating, and one day, our mortality catches up with us and we perish. On a distant planet, one which for some reason is an exact duplicate of our planet Earth, some crackpot scientists tried to prolong the inevitable… only to create a biological disaster instead.
This is a very good story with some very interesting questions to ask about mankind and the constant search for the so called “Fountain of Youth.” We are a culture, as much today as in the 1960s, of trying to look, act, feel and preserve being as young as we can. Some people get caught up in pursuit of vanity that, while it’s not the worst thing in the world about mankind, sometimes some people can go a little too far.
Kim Darby plays Miri, just another girl on this planet that befriends the landing party, particularly Captain Kirk. She takes a liking to him of course. She handles the role with great sensitivity. Darby would, or course, go on to play a more famous film role in the John Wayne movie “True Grit” in 1969. Michael J. Pollard plays Jahn, a rather old looking pubescent teenager. His later claim to fame was in the Warren Beatty classic “Bonnie and Clyde.”
But, there is always one baffling thing for me in this episode. It’s the shot of the duplicate Earth:
Look at that. Not a cloud or any sign of weather at all on this planet. That… is very odd. Now, granted, the special effects are a bit primitive and were the best they could do at the time, but come on, don’t you think they could have figured out a way to get some clouds on the planet? Now, for comparison sake, here is what they did in the “revised visual effects version” of this episode:
This is probably a rare thing in that revisionist history version of Star Trek that I think is an improvement. I however have to stick to my laurels as a purist and live with it.
Now, there is one more thing to mention. Me, the 1966 TV watcher, would have a tough time on this one. Yes, it’s a good story with potential. But, the first 30 minutes I would more than likely have been watching a special over on CBS (in place of the regular program My Three Sons)…
When I talked this programming decision quandary over with my husband Greg the other day, he said that he would watch the Peanuts special and hope for a repeat of Miri in the summer. I reminded him that that’s a risky chance as not all series episodes will get a summer repeat. In hindsight, luckily he was right, as Miri was indeed repeated on June 29, 1967.
The Great Pumpkin notwithstanding, this was a very memorable Trek, if not for the diseased adults, but certainly for the inane and annoying children saying BONK! BONK! BONK! repeatedly.
Next week, we delve into the mind and chew the scenery in one of the great guest starring performances in the whole series:
