TOS “The Cage” Discussion

“The Cage”, is most assuredly a product of its time as I am sure most of you know.  It did have a heart in the right place though. It was entertaining to revisit Pike’s existential crisis and early show production.  I enjoyed watching them showcase the state of the art special effects for the time.  As my guest (Mama Tonks) mentioned, viewers back then were easily impressed with television special effects.  After the recording, I reflected on this part of our conversation and considered recreating what they did.  Even with After Effects and photoshop recreating the effects would be time consuming.  Making this show today without practical effects wouldn’t be even possible recording digitally.  At least probably, I’ll have to give this some thought.  

I really appreciated the undertones of the plot.  If you haven’t seen it go watch it.

Something that was kind of brushed over was the Talosian and what exactly happened to them.  My takeaway was that they got addicted to a manifested reality after a Nuclear War forced them underground.  As a result they lost touch with innovation, maintaining infrastructure and civilization.  See Talosian from Memory Alpha for more info.  The concept of the Talosians has parallels to modern cautionary tales of creating virtual realities and A.I..  It is likely that at some point artificial intelligence will eventually advance both practical and entertainment technologies.  When that happens after a generation or two people will no longer have an understanding on how to innovate, engineer and create. If you want to dig deeping in that rabbit hole see the links to Issac Arther’s channel in the references.  I’m sure I’ll be referencing Issac a lot here. 

In the episode the Talosians are trying to set up a breeding program for able bodies to rebuild the surface of the planet.  They lure Pike and the Enterprise into a trap at Talos with the intent of studding out Captain Pike to a single survivor that crashed from a survey ship the SS Columbia. Using their mind manipulation the Talosians create different realities for Pike to choose from.

I felt the cage was interesting with some very advanced concepts.