1.0 The Cage

Overview
Christopher Pike receives a distress call from a planet and decides to investigate it. When he and his crew arrive on the planet, Pike is captured by Talosians.

Plot
Vina emerges from the crowdStardate: unknown

Picking up a distress signal from a planet, Captain Christopher Pike decides to launch a rescue mission to retrieve the inhabitants of the planet. Upon arriving they discover a camp comprised of aged humans who have been surviving by themselves all these years. A young woman is also part of the abandoned crew, with the difference in age between her and the others being explained by her being just born at the time of the crash. Taking note that they simply seem too healthy for having to live off of such desolate planet, the shipwrecked crew decide that it's time to show how they have managed to survive as they have. The young woman takes Pike to show him their secret, however it turns out to be a trap! Instead aliens emerge from an elevator and take Pike, who has been knocked unconscious underground. Pike being punished for refusing to cooperatePike wakes up to find himself inside a cage built into the wall of the underground cave separated from the rest of the hallway by a glass wall that he can not break. Throughout the episode the crew of the enterprise, as well as Pike through his own separate experiences, realize that this species holds the power of illusion. These illusions are so powerful that everything about them might as well be reality, and there's no way to tell the difference. Pike also learns why he has been imprisoned. The aliens, having destroyed their surface world, were forced to retreat underground, where they learned to develop their power of illusion. Unfortunately, having gone this path, they've lost knowledge essential to maintain the devices that their ancestors made in order to make life underground possible. As such, they now require a human slave force in order to rebuild their world on the surface before the machines break down, dooming their species. In order to do this they plan to mate Pike with the young lady who crash landed on the planet 15 years earlier. Pike learns that he can block out their ability to read his mind by only thinking primitive thoughts such as hate, but even this plan backfires when he can't keep it up for long periods of time. All hope seems lost until the aliens put the final stages of their plan into action by gathering all human knowledge from the Enterprise's database. Vina's true selfAt this point the aliens suddenly decide to let Pike and his crew leave. When questioned on the sudden change of mind, the aliens comment that after attaining the knowledge of human history, they saw that humans have an abnormal hatred of being held captive, even to the point where they would choose death when their freedom is threatened. As such, they are a dangerous choice for a slave force and will not serve their purpose. The aliens accept that their species is doomed to extinction and retreat back underground. Pike asks Vina, the woman who crashed on the planet 15 years ago, to join them on the enterprise, however after refusing, the aliens undo the illusion on her, showing that she is in fact scarred and disfigured from the crash. Pike accepts her reasons for wanting to live in an illusion, and allows her to go back underground with the aliens.

Production Notes
"The Cage" was originally the pilot episode along with "Where No Man Has Gone." It was first shown to NBC executives with the hope of more Star Trek episodes to come. In the end, the episode was rejected, and "The Man Trap" became the pilot. Footage from the episode survived and was used in the two part episode "The Menagerie."

This episode was originally called the Menagerie. However, it was renamed "The Cage" by fans after it was passed through conventions and so forth.