They listened for two hours. Roddenberry was convinced that he’d sold them on it. They were certainly interested in his thoughts on saving costs and designing ships, among other things, but their questions turned out to have another motive entirely. When he was finished, they thanked him politely, but passed on the proposal, as they already had a science fiction series of their own in the works. Roddenberry may very well have inadvertently helped them launch Lost in Space, which even, by some coincidence, had the Robinson family embarking on a five-year mission of exploration. Lost in Space premiered in 1965 and, like Star Trek, ran for three seasons.
Roddenberry, even though disheartened by CBS’s cavalier treatment of him, kept on trying. In May of 1964, NBC offered Roddenberry twenty thousand dollars in story development money. The deal was that Roddenberry would develop three story ideas for a Star Trek pilot, then write a pilot script based on the idea chosen by the network. NBC chose the story entitled “The Cage.” Roddenberry set to work on a shooting script. In September of 1964, the script was approved: the first Star Trek episode had received the green light.
Roddenberry had already been laying the groundwork for this. Of primary importance was the starship Enterprise itself, which he hoped to have avoid all previous spaceship clichés.
The final design of the U.S.S. Enterprise was largely the work of assistant art director Matt Jefferies, who had a strong background in aviation.
During World War Two, Jefferies flew B-17 missions over Africa, and later devoted much of his spare time to restoring vintage airplanes. The starship and its various sets were drawn from Jefferies’s own familiarity with aeronautics.
As a member of the Aviation Writers’ Association, Jefferies was able to collate a large number of designs from NASA and the defense industry … all as examples of what not to do. All previous science fiction spaceship designs were also held up as things to be avoided.
Hundreds of sketches were made for the design of the Enterprise; the main hull was, at one point, going to be spherical, and even the now-familiar final design almost wound up being shot upside down. (Admittedly, this wouldn’t make much difference in space.) As a final touch of authenticity, red and green lights were added on the port and starboard sides, a time-honored nautical practice. Finally, a three-foot and fourteen-foot model of the Enterprise were constructed.
Again, Matt Jefferies’s air force engineering background came in handy in the design of the sets. The U.S. Navy was so impressed by the bridge design that it supposedly used it as a basis for one of its own communications centers.
Another seemingly insurmountable problem revolved around Roddenberry’s desire to feature a green-skinned woman in the pilot. For some reason, all the makeup department’s experiments failed to show up on the test footage shot of actress Susan Oliver for this purpose. No matter how dark they made the green, their model always showed up on film as looking perfectly normal. Eventually, they discovered that someone at the photo lab, perplexed by the pictures coming his way, was chemically correcting what he thought was a flaw in the initial photography. When this was cleared up, the desired makeup effect was achieved with a minimum of fuss.
“The Cage” began shooting with a cast of characters drawn from the original format, although the captain was now named Christopher Pike. Pike was portrayed by Jeffrey Hunter, who had the rare distinction of having once played Jesus Christ, in King of Kings. John Hoyt played the ship’s doctor, Philip Boyce. Leonard Nimoy appeared as Spock, but the character was a bit different from its later incarnation, as the logical aspect of his future personality belonged to the character Number One, portrayed by Majel Barrett.
Leonard Nimoy had assumed that he would be trying out for the part of Spock; he failed to realize that he was Roddenberry’s first and preferred choice for the role. The prospect of a regular series was exciting to the actor, who, despite his frequent guest appearances on television, did not have what could be called a stable income. He did have some misgivings about the part; what if the show was an unmitigated flop? Would he become a laughing stock, forever derided for having dared to don those silly-looking pointed ears? In conference with his friend Vic Morrow, he even pondered the possibility of developing character makeup that would completely conceal his true face—just in case Star Trek was a disaster and an embarrassment. Fortunately for his future recognizability, he thought better of this idea.
Still, one obstacle remained to be overcome. The makeup department had yet to come up with a painless means of applying the Spock ears. The ears were irritating and painful where the glue was applied; one of the reasons for Spock’s general stiffness was the fact that any facial movement, however slight, served only to compound the intense physical discomfort generated by the aural appliances.
Matters were even more confounded by the odd fact that, due to contractual obligations, the actual ears had to be made by the props department, not the makeup department. Considerable variations in the shape of the ears (as well as in Spock’s general appearance) can still be seen in the two pilot episodes. Leonard was frustrated by this situation, and expressed his dissatisfaction over it to his producer.
Roddenberry could tell that Nimoy’s anguish was real—but what could he do? Finally, grasping at straws, he promised Nimoy that if, after thirteen episodes, he was still unhappy with the ears, Roddenberry would personally write an episode in which Spock had an ear-job to give him normal, human-looking ears. Nimoy pondered this, and then broke into laughter. The fate of the ears was sealed—and Spock still has them to this day.
“The Cage” introduces viewers to Roddenberry’s nascent version of the Enterprise crew as it is headed toward a starbase after a disastrous first contact with an alien culture. Captain Pike and his crew are tired and in great need of some rest, but they are distracted by a distress signal from a nearby planet.
When they investigate, they find a colony of scientists who have survived a crash nearly twenty years earlier… and a beautiful young girl, Vina, who the survivors claim was born just as their ship crashed. When Vina lures Captain Pike away from the encampment, he is abducted by dome-skulled aliens and taken below the surface. The scientists and their camp, merely an illusion designed to lure humans, disappear.
Pike regains consciousness to find himself in an enclosed space; he has become part of an alien zoo, held prisoner by beings who can read his thoughts and project him into a bewildering variety of subjective but real-seeming scenarios. As he goes through these, he resists them at every turn, but begins to realize that the girl has a role in all this, too. Perhaps she is not an illusion, but another captive; she constantly tries to get him to accept his situation and make the best of the illusions his captors create.
Meanwhile, Number One and Spock haul out an impressive array of technology in their attempts to free their captain from his subterranean prison, but to no avail. Beneath the surface, the philosophical drama unfolds, with Pike finally being freed after resisting mind control. It is revealed that the woman, Vina, was the only survivor of the crash; not truly young, she was also severely disfigured by the crash. When Pike offers to take her off the planet to rejoin humanity, she elects to stay and live the rest of her life in the illusionary happiness the aliens have provided her. The aliens have been acting partly out of their own motivations but also out of a desire to help the lonely woman. Pike goes on to a starbase while she continues to embrace a reality that is false but which offers her the only comfort she will ever know.
NBC’s reaction to this pilot was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. In its intelligence and its appearance, it surpassed anything done in the genre television before, and looked better than the vast majority of theatrical science fiction films as well. No one had a bad word to say about the finished product.
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