Star Trek's Unaired Pilot: The Cage

It's 1964, and television Western writer Gene Roddenberry has just been rejected by NBC executives for the pilot to his new interstellar science fiction project: Star Trek. That pilot was entitled The Cage, and it was turned down on the basis that it was "too intelligent."

Damn right it was too intelligent. Not in a hard sci-fi, technological, hyper space and time travel understanding kind of way, but Star Trek was, and always has been, a show that could hack away at some of the touchiest social issues of the period for the simple reason that it's not so touchy if it takes place on another planet with a race of aliens rather than humans. Who cares if aliens live in a society of hierarchical oppression? Oh wait, that's a reflection of Western culture? Shit.

The Cage introduces the USS Enterprise and its crew: starring Mr. Spock, Captain Pike, Number One, and Yeoman Colt. If you're wondering who three out of four are, it's not because you're new to the series; the relaunched pilot, The Man Trap, reinvented the crew of the Enterprise. I only mention it because I'm about to blasphemy myself as a non-trekky when I say that Captain Pike had that perfect period acting, and character-wise, the perfect street-smarts and attitude, and here it is: I wish he had made it on to Season 1. Shatner just doesn't really do it for me. I don't get it. I guess he'll have to grow on me. I like Pike better.

So Captain Pike is tired and jaded and wants to retire from the ship, and he is given the perfect opportunity to do so when he lands on a Matrix-esque planet where he could just pull a Cypher and stay a while in a fantasy land inside his head.

"Why, oh why didn't I take the blue pill."

The purpose of his mind-trap is to get him to agree to be the partner of Vina, a human woman who was greatly disfigured in a space ship crash. As you can see, the aliens who took her in can deceive Pike's mind to make him think she is beautiful, when really she's a scarred, oldish, crone.

The other character missing when Season 1 got green-lighted is Number One, our feminist lead, second in command and the only woman allowed on the bridge. Because, according to Pike, she's "different, of course." Yeah, never say that to a woman. This is the face she'll make at you:

Oh, and the doctor (who is, I'm informed, not Dr. McCoy) reminds me of the doctor on Battlestar:

"Sometimes a man'll tell his bartender things he'll never tell his doctor."

The Cage is kind of awkward, I'll be honest. The aliens helping Vina, the Talosians (or whatever), try to manipulate Pike by capturing Number One and Yoeman Colt as well and offering either of them to be his, erm, partners, in the hopes that he will choose Vina over his female co-workers. Talk about office romance. While the show, I've heard, champions feminism, I suppose the question The Cage asks is how to deal with women entering command with concern for professionalism and sexuality. It's just so awkward because the Talosians can read the women's minds and they tell Pike that both of his co-workers have feelings for him, or would consider a sexual relationship - I mean how do you show up to the office the next day?

Well, they didn't - neither character appears in the actual pilot, The Man Trap, an episode that I felt carried some of the themes of this story, including a female who, like Vina, can change her appearance. However, unlike the Sherlock pilots, this new pilot was completely rethought, reworked from start to finish. The story that is most like The Cage is called The Menagerie, a two-parter spanning episodes 11 and 12, and in fact, The Menagerie features much of the footage from The Cage.

Needless to say, I would have liked a series that included The Cage and some of its characters.

Star Trek had a rocky history in terms of production and reception. The original pilot was rejected and it's lucky NBC bought the series and filmed a completely new one. The series was almost cancelled after Season 1, it never did well in ratings, it was moved to the Friday night death slot in Season 2 and the shows cancellation in Season 3 was hardly unforeseen - which hopefully means the original series ended on a well-written note, with a storybook ending. I'll let you know when I get there.

Sherlock Holmes and the Unaired Pilot

Sherlock is a consulting detective who lives at 221B Baker Street in modern day London. He's a mass-texter with an addiction to nicotine patches, because "It's impossible to sustain a smoking habit in London these days", and he solves crime using what he calls The Science of Deduction on his personal website.

Translating a myth like that of detective Sherlock Holmes into modern life is a very dangerous task.

If you're going to take the most beloved of crime fiction stories and translate it to a contemporary setting, you had better do a damn good job of it. Everyone knows that you should never mess with a classic, and Sherlock Holmes has come to be a great literary figure period, not just the greatest of formula detective fiction.

Luckily, BBC's Sherlock has the production value, writing and pitch-perfect cast to keep the show from being an utter disaster. In fact, it's really quite good.

Casting Martin Freeman (as Doctor Watson) and Benedict Cumberbatch (as Holmes) was probably the first step to success. The second probably had to be the re-shooting of the entire pilot with better cinematography, a faster pace, and yet the length of a short movie.

The pilot you will encounter on Netflix is entitled A Study in Pink, a nod to the first Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet. It's 90 minutes of a good old fashioned Conan Doyle-esque mystery, except that Sherlock sends tactical texts and hacks e-mail accounts to draw out the serial murderer.

The unbroadcast pilot is worth a watch, but only if you're really curious. It's the same story. Oh, the work they must have put that cast and crew through to re-shoot the entire episode, with most of the scenes matching up with little more tweeking than costume design and a tightening up of the acting, but some being almost completely re-written. It is, however, a very good thing they re-worked the script and shot the whole thing over - this time looking much prettier.

Another change, beyond the drastic diference in length, is that the premiere, broadcast in 2010, manages to actually establish a longer term plot line by having a vague hinting toward a certain Moriarty. Of all the shows I'm examining, Sherlock might be the last I expected to resist that episodicness I was complaining about earlier.

You know how much I love a show that doesn't treat me like an idiot. In fact, sometimes Sherlock makes me feel like maybe I am an idiot - as authentic an experience of watching Sherlock Holmes solve mysteries as you can ask for. I mean, he is a genius.

If he wasn't smarter than the audience, the show wouldn't be worth watching.

The dialogue does go a little fast so you might want to have a cuppa before watching and prepare yourself to keep up. Or maybe it's just the British accent (but it seems like they talk really fast).

Created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, both writers for Doctor Who.

To some, a modern Sherlock who relies on his cell (or those of the people around him) and the internet to solve mysteries might sound hokey and not worth the watch. Paul McGuigan defends the use of modern technology in Sherlock: "In the books he would use any device possible... He will use the tools that are available to him today in order to find things out." The defence seems kind of unnecessary - I think the main problem is that we just don't really know how to deal with the new world of tablets, apps, GPS and facebook messaging on the screen yet, big or little.

If you have watched Sherlock already, what did you think of all that texting? And the way the information was displayed for us? Was it all too heavy-handed, or is it the right direction for modern storytelling?

And if this review has not convinced you yet to sit down for 90 minutes of A Study in Pink, consider the banter.

Watson: Why didn't I think of that.
Sherlock: Because you're an idiot. No no no, don't be like that. Practically everyone is.

And that most everyone the show throws at us assumes the flatmates are a couple. Good time to be alive and watching television!