The cage (1965)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The cage |
| Original title | The cage |
 | |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1965 |
| length | 64 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Robert Butler |
| script | Gene Roddenberry |
| production | Gene Roddenberry |
| music | Alexander Courage |
| camera | William E. Snyder |
| cut | Leo H. Shreve |
| occupation | |
| |
| chronology | |
|
Successor → |
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The cage (original title: The Cage ) is an American science fiction - TV movie in 1965. He was a pilot episode of Star Trek television series Star Trek produced, however, rejected by the transmitter. Some scenes from the pilot episode were later used in the eleventh and twelfth episodes of the series.
The full pilot episode first aired on US television on December 24, 1988. In Germany it ran for the first time on October 25, 1993 on Sat 1 .
action
After a loss-making mission on the planet Rigel VII, the Enterprise under the command of Captain Christopher Pike follows an emergency call to the planet Talos IV. The landing team led by Pike finds a group of survivors of the research vessel Columbia, which has been missing for 18 years . Among the survivors is the attractive Vina.
Distracted by Vina, Pike is captured by the Talosians, a sophisticated, telepathic species. It turns out that the distress call was fabricated by the Talosians and that the survivors, with the exception of Vina, were just an illusion with which the Enterprise was to be lured to the planet.
Pike is in a cage interned and Talosians trying to manipulate his mind to bring him Vina close, but resists Pike. He realizes that the Talosians have lured him to Talos IV in order to breed a new human race with him and Vina, which they can then enslave .
When another landing team is beamed to the planet to rescue the captain, Number One and Ensign Colt also come under the control of the Talosians. They are caged with Pike in the hope that Pike will be attracted to them. Eventually, Pike is able to overpower a guard and the prisoners escape to the planet's surface, which was atomically destroyed centuries ago.
When the landing party is caught by the Talosians, Number One threatens to kill everyone with an explosion of her phaser, because she would rather die than live in captivity. The Talosians let Number One and Ensign Colt go. They reveal to Pike that Vina was the only survivor of the Columbia crash . She had survived the misfortune badly disfigured and to help her, they created the illusion of an undamaged appearance. Pike asks the Talosians not to take this illusion away from her, whereupon they add the illusion of a Pike to her side while Captain Pike returns to his ship.
background
production
The pilot episode The Cage was filmed at Desilu Studios in Culver City , California from November 27 to mid-December 1964 , post-production lasted through January 18, 1965. The cost of production was approximately $ 630,000.
The Talosians were played by women and dubbed with male voices in the English version; In the German language version, the Talosians are both male and female.
Premiere and rejection as a pilot film
The cage had its world premiere in a 78-minute cut in 1965 at the Weltcon in Cleveland (Ohio) . The broadcaster NBC rejected The Cage, among other things, as too intellectual and too low in action. The character Spock was criticized as "satanic", just as the female leadership role of Majel Barrett's number one was criticized that did not correspond to the then common understanding of roles.
After the pilot was rejected, Jeffrey Hunter withdrew from the role of Pike to focus on his cinema career. Gene Roddenberry was hired to produce another pilot episode (The Tip of the Iceberg) , which came closer to what the station wanted. This episode later aired as the third episode in the series .
Use as a flashback in the series
Scenes from The Cage were used in the double episode Talos IV - Tabu of the first season of Starship Enterprise. In this, a framework story tells how Spock undertakes a mission to rescue the disfigured Captain Pike, in violation of Starfleet law, scenes from The Cage are used as flashbacks to explain his motives and the character Pike as Kirk's predecessor as Captain of the USS Enterprise introduced. Talos IV - Tabu is a continuation of The Cage to the extent that at the end of the double episode Spock brings his former superior to the Talosian planet on the planet Talos IV in order to enable him to continue living there in dignity.
The episode Memory Force from the second season of the series Star Trek: Discovery begins with a short cut of The Cage , as Michael Burnham and her stepbrother Spock are traveling to the planet Talos IV in this episode. Vina and Captain Pike speak to each other twice in the sequence. Pike also brings the Discovery to Talos IV.
Later publications
After the series ended, Gene Roddenberry performed a black and white working copy at various science fiction meetings. The original color photos, with the exception of the scenes used for Talos IV - Tabu , were thought to be lost and were not found again until the 1980s. In October 1986, Paramount Home Video released a VHS version of the film, consisting of the black and white recordings and colored scenes from the episode Talos IV - Tabu and an introduction by Gene Roddenberry.
At the end of November 1988, Paramount broadcast the two-hour Star Trek special The Star Trek Saga: From One Generation to the Next with Patrick Stewart as the presenter, in which the episode was shown in full color for the first time in a 64-minute cut.
It was first broadcast in Germany on October 25, 1993 on Sat.1 , also as part of this special, which was shown under the title Raumschiff Enterprise: From one century to the next .
In 2004, the color and black and white version appeared with Roddenberry's introduction in the DVD box of the third season. Like the series, The Cage was digitally remastered in 2009 and released again in the DVD or Blu-Ray box of the third season. The opening credits were completely recreated and various special effects were optimized. The original version is also included on the Blu-ray.
Differences to the series
The main difference between the cage and the series is the cast. The character of Captain Pike was replaced by Captain Kirk and newly cast with William Shatner . The female "number one" was dropped, actress and later Roddenberry wife Majel Barrett took on a small supporting role as nurse Christine Chapel in the series instead . The on-board doctor role was played with DeForest Kelley as Dr. McCoy newly cast. Only Leonard Nimoy as Spock found his way into the cast of the series as a science and new first officer , with regard to this character Roddenberry was able to assert himself against those responsible at NBC. In The Cage , Spock's character is much more emotional than later in the series.
The set designs and uniforms have also been revised for the series.
synchronization
The German synchronization was only in 1993 by the Arena Synchron GmbH , for a dialogue book and the dialogue director Ulrich Johannson.
| role | actor | German speaker |
|---|---|---|
| Capt. Christopher Pike | Jeffrey Hunter | Mathias Einert |
| Spock | Leonard Nimoy | Norbert Gescher |
| Lt. Cmdr. Una "number one" | Majel Barrett | Madeleine Lierck-Vienna |
| Dr. Phillip Boyce | John Hoyt | Heinz Theo branding |
| Vina | Susan Oliver | Sabine Sebastian |
| The magistrate | Meg Wyllie | Barbara Ratthey |
| Sergeant JM Colt | Laurel Goodwin | Maja Dürr |
| Lt. José Tyler | Peter Duryea | Boris Tessmann |
reception
StarTrek-Index.de describes Der Käfig as an “ambitious pilot film, which in some places wants a bit too much” and therefore seems “sometimes a bit lengthy”. Nevertheless, the cage is "an interesting, intellectually demanding drama about the mind manipulation of overpowering beings and about the moral effects and justifications of captivity". Even in this pilot film, “the extraordinary thing about Star Trek becomes clear”.
Web links
- The cage in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- The Cage (1965) in the Star Trek Wiki Memory Alpha
- The cage in the German StarTrek Index
- The cage at Fernsehserien.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c David Alexander: Star Trek Creator: The Authorized Biography of Gene Roddenberry. Roc, 1994, ISBN 978-0-451-45418-8 (English).
- ↑ a b c Ralph Sanders: The Star Trek Universe. Heyne-Verlag, 1994.
- ↑ a b Star Trek HD: The Cage , accessed November 9, 2014.
- ↑ JD Spiro: Happy In Hollywood. In: The Milwaukee Journal. 4th July 1965.
- ↑ Der Käfig , fernsehserien.de, accessed on March 18, 2017.
- ↑ The cage in the German synchronous file
- ↑ Star Trek Index 1.00 , accessed November 9, 2014.
