13. The Menagerie, Part IIWHY WE LIKE IT: Easy access to most of "The Cage", and that Vina is lovely any day of the week (except when she's green, never really dug the green thing).
WHY WE DON'T: Kirk and company have nothing to do but play at being cabbage heads.
REVIEW: This part gives us most of The Cage, and if you don't have any other way of accessing the original pilot, that's great. If you do, then there's little to draw you to The second part of The Menagerie.
The start of the episode is kinda funky, with the theatrical "what has gone before" against black background, nicely surreal in the context of the Talosian adventure, but from there... eeeeech. We only hear from the trial to 1) remind us that we're watching Star Trek, and 2) to dumb down a story that NBC executives thought too intellectual. Interruptions to answer questions like "Is that really Vina?" or to explain that we're seeing illusions are totally unnecessary.
The ending with Mendez being an illusion, yet also having reviewed the Talosian transmission back at Starbase 11 is likewise puzzling. I mean, what's the difference? It's all wrapped up with a nice bow so that it's like it never happened. Ugh.
I will say that the re-editing of the end of The Cage is a clever finale (though hardly giving Spock time to beam Pike down to the planet), and that all the stuff from The Cage is eminently watchable (even if some of it makes the regular series look a little cheap by comparison).
LESSON: Films are made in the editing room.
REWATCHABILITY - Low/High: If it's your only means of watching The Cage, then by all means. If not, there's little reason to watch anything but the last 2 minutes of the framing story.
Comments
To each his own, I suppose.. but dang! GREEN ORION ANIMAL WOMAN!
What green-blooded boy could not go ga-ga over her?
Oh, wait.. thare's the problem. You're probably RED blooded.