Star Trek: 5 Reasons Now Is The Perfect Time To Rewatch The Cage
1. Why Did It Fail?
Apparently, the pilot was simply 'Too Cerebral'.
The Cage was accused by NBC of spending too much time talking. Roddenberry would later say that he felt that he should have concluded the episode with a fistfight between the hero and the villain, as that was the norm for television at the time. He felt he had written something highly imaginative, yet not very exciting.
Spock was also an issue. His pointed ears and slanted eyebrows were 'Satanic', which the network felt was going to cause issues. They also were not sold on Majel Barrett.
DeForest Kelly viewed the episode at nearly the same time as the producers, and his verdict seems to have been a summary of the feeling at the time:
'Well, I don't know what the hell it's all about, but it's either going to be the biggest hit or the biggest miss that God ever made.'
He was, in a way, right on both counts. With The Cage rejected, the show was revamped for the second pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before. Producer Herb Solow hired a full-time casting director for the pilot and much of the original cast were dropped.
Nimoy remained with the show, with Spock and Number One being somewhat amalgamated into a single character. Its failure to launch would be seen retroactively as simply the purest tenets of Star Trek displayed too early. Majel Barett would remark years later that this was her favourite episode of all of Star Trek, that it was beautiful and it was pure.
As the franchise revisits this world, now is the time to revisit this hour of science fiction and decide for yourself!