Here's our roundup of the best new series of the year so far, and where to watch them.
Related lists from IMDb users
Title: The Menagerie: Part II (24 Nov 1966)
Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below.
| Episode cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| William Shatner | ... | Capt. Kirk | |
| Leonard Nimoy | ... | Mr. Spock | |
| Jeffrey Hunter | ... | Captain Christopher Pike (archive footage) | |
| Susan Oliver | ... | Vina (archive footage) | |
| Malachi Throne | ... | Commodore José Mendez | |
| Majel Barrett | ... | Number One (archive footage) (as M. Leigh Hudec) | |
| Peter Duryea | ... | Lt. José Tyler (archive footage) | |
| John Hoyt | ... | Dr. Phil Boyce (archive footage) | |
| Laurel Goodwin | ... | Yeoman J.M. Colt (archive footage) | |
| Adam Roarke | ... | C.P.O. Garrison (archive footage) | |
| DeForest Kelley | ... | Dr. McCoy (credit only) | |
| James Doohan | ... | Scott (credit only) | |
| Nichelle Nichols | ... | Uhura (voice) | |
| Sean Kenney | ... | Christopher Pike | |
 |
Hagan Beggs | ... | Lt. Hansen |
Spock's court-martial board views the video stream from Talos IV of Captain Pike's imprisonment 13 years earlier and of the Enterprise's attempts to rescue him. The Talosians, using their powers of mind-reading and illusion, place Pike in worlds from both his memory and his imagination. The one constant is Vina, the beautiful blonde survivor of a crashed Earth ship (the other half of a Talosian plan for a captive Adam and Eve). Number One's attempts to liberate Pike result in her and Yeoman Colt's capture (additional breeding stock for the Talosian plan), but when the humans and Talosians learn more of each other, the situation takes a turn neither side expects. As the Enterprise approaches Talos IV once again, Kirk and the court watch the past unfold and learn the real reason for Spock's mutiny. Written by Tom D.
When NBC turned down the original Star Trek pilot The Cage, which still had Leonard Nimoy but starred Jeffrey Hunter instead of William Shatner, many people assumed that episode was gone forever. They were wrong: not only can it be seen on the Season 3 DVD, it was actually incorporated into two other episodes of the series, as part of Gene Roddenberry's attempt to acknowledge the episode's existence on-screen. The merger comes to a head in the second part of The Menagerie, arguably one of the best Star Trek episodes, or at least as far as the first season is concerned.
Picking up from the end of Part One, Spock's court-martial continues, and the officers judging him (including Kirk) are offered a visual testimony of what happened 13 years earlier, when Pike was imprisoned on Talos IV, the now forbidden planet Spock is trying to bring him back to. As the images, which are revealed to be mental projections coming from the Talosians themselves, progress and the truth about Pike's harrowing experience is revealed, Spock's motive becomes clearer and the mystery gets closer to its rather surprising conclusion.
The main interest of the episode lies in the fact that it features very little of the regular cast: about 70% of the footage is archive material from The Cage, featuring Jeffrey Hunter as Pike and Leonard Nimoy as a more "human" Spock (yes, you read that correctly). This extended flashback is a clever trick used by Gene Roddenberry to tie his two visions of Star Trek together, uniting what could have been with what actually came to be. Remarkably, from what can be seen here, the "first draft" turned out to be every bit as riveting as the final version, except for the absence of one James T. Kirk.
As a standalone mystery story, The Menagerie holds up beautifully. It's the heartfelt inclusion of the previously unaired footage, however, that lends it that extra emotional punch. In fact, it's a bit of a shame Captain Pike wasn't brought back in some other form when Roddenberry rewrote the pilot script: it would have been fun to see the character interact properly with Kirk.