No Star Date given.
Summary: The Enterprise beams a crew down to the surface of a planet called Talos as part of a rescue mission. They find what appears to be a ragged encampment of survivors who have been living on the planet for several years since their starship crashed. However, they soon learn this is all an illusion, as a young woman named Vina leads Captain Christopher Pike into a trap which results in his being locked in an underground cell by the Talosians. The Talosians nearly destroyed their planet in a long-ago war, and were forced underground in order to survive. In the many years underground, the Talosians developed amazing mental powers to read minds and create extremely vivid illusions --- and possibly the ability to transport people and objects with their minds, though that's not clear.
The Talosian surface is just now starting to become habitable once again, and the Talosians are looking for a new species to rebuild a society on the surface --- in short, they need a new Adam and Eve. It's not entirely clear why, with their immense mental power, they are unable to do this themselves. Vina explains that they've forgotten how to use the machines they had on the surface, which is really laughable considering everything else they can do with their minds.
Anyway, Pike is a candidate to be Adam to Vina's Eve. When he resists, two female crew members are beamed down from the Enterprise as possible substitutes. In the end, Pike and the other crew members escape, and shortly afterward, the Talosians decide they don't want humans anyway, because we're too barbaric. Pike and the others are allowed to return to the Enterprise, and we learn that Vina's beautiful, youthful appearance is also an illusion --- in fact, we learn that she is the sole survivor of the years-ago starship wreck, and she is disfigured. She therefore chooses to remain on Talos with a Talosian-induced double of Pike.
Wow. Not what I expected. No Kirk, no Bones, no Uhura, no Scotty, no Chekov, no Sulu --- and Spock wasn't himself at all. According to what I can find on Wikipedia, the original pilot was rejected by Desilu studios in 1965, and a second pilot commissioned. After that, portions of the original pilot were spliced together as part of a later episode, and what with one thing and another, the episode was considered 'lost' for more than 20 years. A complete copy was found in 1987, after the Star Trek franchise was well-established, and thus it was aired on broadcast television for the first time in late 1988 --- either in late November (Wikipedia) or Christmas Eve (IMDB).
At any rate, the series hardly started off with a strong vote of confidence from the studio.
I find it interesting that the 2009 Star Trek movie brought back Captain Christopher Pike, who clearly made only a single appearance in the original series. Clearly the leaders of the new franchise aim to cater to hard-core Trek fans --- there's also a reference to 'green animal women' from the Orion colonies, which reminds me of the green woman young Kirk finds himself with in the 2009 movie. I also found it interesting that the first mate in this episode (to whom Pike refers only as 'Number One', as Patrick Stewart would famously do more than 20 years later) is a woman. Quite progressive for 1964 --- although after an awkward interaction with a female Yeoman, Pike tells Number One: "I can't get used to having a woman on the bridge". Then, after a beat, saying: "No offense, Lieutenant. You're different, of course".
Apart from a female Number One, and the Vulcan Spock (not identified as such in the pilot), the rest of the crew are all white men. It seems someone (probably Roddenberry) made a successful push for ethnic diversity before the second pilot.
In this episode, it appears that the crew need to wear special tunics over their uniforms to transport. Either that, or the tunics are some sort of garment they routinely wear whenever they leave the ship.
Leonard Nimoy walks with a limp. Will have to watch that in future episodes to see whether he always walks that way, or whether something was wrong with his leg just in this episode.
The first scene with Pike and Vina in his cell is confusing. By the end of the show, we learn that the Talosians only have the ability to read minds (when not clouded by 'primitive' emotions), to telepathically induce pain, and to create hyper-realistic illusions. But I don't think they have the ability to physically move people in the manner of teleportation. If that's correct, then how does Vina disappear from Pike's cell? It could be just an illusion --- she's really in the cell, only Pike isn't able to see her --- but he feels around on the seat where she was lying in agony just seconds before, and can't feel her. Plus, her dress gets left behind. I think we're supposed to believe that the Talosians actually transported her out of the cell.
But they clearly don't have the ability to do something like that, otherwise they wouldn't have had to open a door to the cell to feed Pike in the very next scene, and the Talosian wouldn't have had to try to sneak into Pike's cell at the end.
No, I take that back. Later in the show, Spock, Number One, the aforementioned female Yeoman (J. M. Colt, according to IMDB), and three other male crew members attempt to beam down to stage an assault on the Talosian power supply. The females (Number One and Colt) successfully beam directly into Pike's cell --- not their intent, they knew they were unable to control their destination on the planet --- while the males remained on board the Enterprise. The Talosians clearly controlled this transport, and the ultimate location of all 6 crew members was not an illusion.
So the Talosians can transport people and objects with their minds, which opens up all kinds of holes in the plot. Ah well.
And if the Talosians want the phasers out of Pike's cell (and we overlook the fact that they can simply beam them out with their minds), why is it the Talosian leader who sneaks into the cell and is subsequently conveniently taken hostage? Why not some underling?
And I'm sure others have opined endlessly about the fact that Number One only threatens to overcharge her phaser and kill herself, Colt and Pike after Pike has agreed to remain on Talos with Vina. Is she nobly sacrificing herself (and Colt and Pike) to prevent the Talosians from breeding an entire 'race of humans to live as slaves' from Pike and Vina, as she suggests? Or is it just because she'd rather kill herself and Pike than to see him with another woman?
Ah. At the end of the episode, Pike transports back to the Enterprise without his tunic. So that's that.
Interesting choice Vina makes at the end. I can understand that she likes the narcotic of the Talosian illusions, and that she wants to remain on Talos with her imaginary Captain Pike. But the real Pike returns to the Enterprise, and says he agrees with Vina's decision to stay. Isn't that a bit like allowing a heroin addict to choose to keep living with her dealer? An abusive one, at that?
And I get the whole deal about the Talosians losing interest in humans as a breeder species once they learn how violent we are --- I'm betting we see many variations on this theme as the series continue --- but they all seem a bit too sanguine about going extinct at the end of the show.
As for visual stuff, special effects, I get that this was recorded in 1964 (all shooting was done by the end of 1964, the show was in post-production into 1965), so the special effects seem laughable by today's standards. But what is going on with the exterior shots? It looks like the Enterprise is sailing through a bunch of Christmas lights, which is probably pretty close to how it was shot. Nothing like they way stars actually behave, being light years apart and all.
On the plus side, the video quality was excellent --- and, I'm sure, completely wasted on mid-1960's TV sets, if any of them had ever received this episode. Much better than the early 1980's Family Ties reruns I'd been watching up until now.
All in all, I must say I was fairly positively impressed with the show, given that it was Roddenberry's first foray into an area of TV programming where no one had gone before. Now I'm eager to compare it to the second pilot, which has all of the original Star Trek crew we all know and --- well, that we all know, anyway.
The Moral of the Story: If you offer someone what you think they want, sometimes they'll let you abuse them (Vina), sometimes they won't (Pike). Not exactly uplifting.
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