Recap / Star Trek S1 E0 "The Cage"

Hey, why do the uniforms look like that? Who's that on the captain's chair? Where are Sulu and Uhura? Why isn't anyone wearing a red shirt? Why is Christine Chapel on the bridge? Who's that sitting next to her? And what are those lamp things doing there?

The original Pilot Episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. Written by Gene Roddenberry and produced in late 1964, it preceded the series itself by a good two years. While this pilot was not considered to have been a success at the time, the network executives did like it enough to finance a second pilot episode. And you all know how well that turned out.

The episode begins with the USS Enterprise (under the command of Captain Christopher Pike) on a routine patrol. Pike is suffering from self-doubt, having just come from a mission where a number of his landing party were killed in action (including his close friend and Yeoman).

The ship receives a belated S.O.S from survivors of an Earth spaceship that crashed on the nearby planet Talos IV some time ago. Once they arrive on this barren and desolate planet, they find a ragtag bunch of survivors, but something doesn't feel quite right about them. While the landing party does a thorough examination of the group, a young woman named Vina lures Captain Pike to a secluded spot, where he gets zapped by humanoid aliens and taken deep underground.

The survivors vanish, having been revealed to be an illusion created by the alien Talosians. Captain Pike has been placed inside a zoo. The Talosians aim to pair him off with Vina, who is in fact the only true survivor of the earlier spaceship crash. While the aliens use their telepathy to try and bring Pike and Vina closer together, in illusionary versions of his recent near-death encounter, his home city of Mojave back on Earth, and a Orion slave harem; the crew of the Enterprise attempt to breach the underground complex and rescue their kidnapped captain.

The Talosians finally kidnap two further females from the Enterprise crew, giving Pike the choice of three potential mates. The Enterprise's female first officer sets her hand phaser to self-destruct, forcing the Talosians' hand and giving them no option but to let the three of them go. Pike watches sadly as the true extent of Vina's injuries are revealed, explaining why she cannot come with them.

Footage from this unaired pilot was later re-edited as a two part regular episode called "The Menagerie", where the events were presented as something that had happened to a former crew of the Enterprise, ten years prior to the start of the main series. The original version, however, eventually made its broadcast premiere in 1988, as part of the TV special The Star Trek Saga: From One Generation To The Next, which previewed the writers' strike-delayed second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. "The Cage" was also the last of the digitally remastered TOS episodes to air, debuting the week before Star Trek (2009) opened in theaters.

Star Trek (2009) takes place in an Alternate Timeline and predominantly takes place at about the same time as this episode, reimagining Pike as played by Bruce Greenwood and a mentor figure for Kirk before showing the change of command. In the main timeline Captain Pike is recast with Anson Mount as he shows up in the second season of the prequel series 2017's Star Trek: Discovery, chronologically about two years after the events of this episode. In 2022 Star Trek: Strange New Worlds debuted, set shortly after the events of Discovery and about seven years before the first season of TOS.

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"The Cage" provides examples of the following tropes:

• Adam and Eve Plot: The Talosians kidnap Captain Pike, and then Number One and a female yeoman (Colt), to act as breeding stock. To avoid it being a "polyg" situation, the Keeper mentions that "with the CHOICE of female...", in keeping with 1964 TV broadcast standards, but what would have been done with the two women Pike didn't choose is unclear. Had the Talosians intended to produce a race of human servants, it'd have made sense to have Pike sire children with ALL THREE of them. At the end, safely back aboard the ship, Yeoman Colt, her "unusually strong female drives" and curiosity getting the best of her, asks her Captain WHO would have been "Eve", much to Number One's annoyance.
  Number One: "Offspring" as in... he's Adam.
• Aggressive Negotiations: Pike tries to negotiate the life of the Magistrate for his crew's freedom and to Take Him Instead but Number One threatens mass suicide before they respond.
• Alien Blood: When threatening the Talosians, Pike wonders along about what color their blood would be.
  Pike:  I'll break out of this zoo somehow and get to you. Is your blood red like ours? I'm going to find out.
• Alien Geometries: The alien prison has weird angles and perspectives (done purposefully with optical illusions), and also Bizarrchitecture: slanted walls and weird shapes. Notably, the form of their monitor display is in a really weird shape.
• Aliens Are Bastards: Pike certainly thinks so and he's right, at least at the start. Then we learn the Talosians do just as many benevolent things as they do malevolent. They saved Vina's life, try to find a suitable man to keep her company as she's lonely, and, later on, allow Pike to peacefully retire with them to be with Vina after he's also disfigured.
• Alien Sky: The first illusion where Pike is placed has a lilac sky dominated by an immense moon and distant ringed planet.
• All Planets Are Earth-Like: Of course there is a planet that is conveniently "Class M" (Trek for Human Habitable).
  Spock: Solar system similar to Earth, eleven planets. Number four seems to be Class M, oxygen atmosphere.(In the series proper, "oxygen-NITROGEN" atmosphere is used, anyone familiar with the Apollo I tragedy knows the extreme fire hazard of a pure oxygen atmosphere!)
• All There in the Manual:
  • Spock is shown to be limping when the party first beams down to Talos IV. According to the script, Spock was one of the crewmen mentioned as having been injured on Rigel VII.
  • A few novels have theorized as to the cause for the vast differences between Spock's highly emotional behavior in this episode and his reservedness in the regular series. Examples of this include Spock possibly not having complete control of his emotions at that point, as he was still quite young, and that he achieved full control of his emotions by observing Captain Pike. In fact, the novel Burning Dreams establishes that indeed, whether Pike liked it or not, Spock did consider him a mentor and so Pike tried his best to live up to that assignment. The novel The Fire and the Rose establishes that Spock was simply emulating Human behaviors such as smiles, and that there was truly no emotion behind his own smile. He eventually stopped though when his crew mates came to distrust him, believing him not to be truthful about himself to them.
• Ambiguous Gender: Enforced: Producers went out of the way to ensure ambiguity to the point of dubbing male voices over the female actors.
• Anatomically Ignorant Healing: Vina turns out to have been left disabled and disfigured by the Talosians' well-intentioned efforts to heal her — they were able to successfully restore her to physical health, but their unfamiliarity with human anatomy led to them putting her back together as a scarred hunchback.
• Baby Factory: The aliens present the women to Pike so he can "choose" the best specimen for intelligent offspring.
• The Bartender: Dr. Boyce brings some alcohol with him during his visit to the Pike's quarters, and mixes him a martini as a part of the captain's Epiphany Therapy.
  Boyce: Sometimes a man will tell things to his bartender that he'd never tell his doctor.
• Beneath the Mask: The Talosians put Captain Pike in a fantasy where he's a decadent Orion slave trader with a Green-Skinned Space Babe dancing erotically for him. Earlier Pike had been griping about The Chains of Commanding and let slip a thought about giving it all up to be an Orion merchant.
  Vina: A person's strongest dreams are about what he can't do. Yes, a ship's captain, always having to be so formal, so decent and honest and proper. You must wonder what it would be like to forget all that.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Inverted with the Talosians. They've never seen a human before Vina and have no idea how to properly heal her injuries beyond making her basically functional.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The Talosians, who want Captain Pike to breed them a race of slave workers, offer him blonde fellow captive Vina and, later, his own crewmembers — the coldly intelligent Number One (Brainy Brunette) and his pretty female yeoman (a redhead with "unusually strong female drives").
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Although they keep sentient beings enslaved For Science!, the Talosians aren't exactly evil; they just don't understand why humans hate being held captive. When they do figure it out, they release the humans — not out of respect for their desires, but because their hatred of captivity makes them unsuitable for the Talosians' plans.
• Body Horror: Downplayed, but real Vina has been left scarred, withered and exaggeratedly hunchbacked as a result of her ship's crash.
• Book Ends: The Crash-Into Hello is replayed again at the end, with Captain Pike repeating his exact same words.
• The Bridge: Ur-Example! Although movies and series with crews in space are known (see Forbidden Planet and Lost in Space), in The Bridge most action revolves around the Captain's Chair as the center of the bridge.
• Bridge Bunnies:
  • Yeoman Colt; ironically her presence makes Captain Pike uncomfortable as he's not used to having a woman on the bridge.^note Colt actress Laurel Goodwin ultimately became the last surviving credited cast member to perform in the episode, dying in 2022 at the age of 79.
  • Averted and Lampshaded HARD by Number One, who gives Pike a Death Glare until he leaves the bridge.
• Broken Aesop: Although the episode's lesson teaches that humans value their freedom, Captain Pike keeps sending the women to the kitchen and ignoring their feelings even after they're treated as Baby Factories and sex slaves.
• The Captain: Roddenberry confessed he styled the captains on Horatio Hornblower. The Captain is the Hero Protagonist to whom everything happens around him.
• The Chains of Commanding: Pike lays out how tired he is of being responsible for the lives of his crew, and making decisions that include "who lives, and who dies".
• Characterization Marches On: Spock's emotional outbursts, such as his joyful reaction to hearing the singing plants on Talos IV and his panic when he realizes the women have been kidnapped, contrast with his later deliberately emotionless persona. According to Spock's actor Leonard Nimoy, this is because he felt that Spock needed some warmth to balance out how Hunter played Pike. At this point, Spock was just supposed to be an alien, "probably half Martian". Vulcan heritage and stoicism weren't part of his character yet. He is also a fairly minor character in the plot, serving as third in command after Pike and Number One and not having much of a focus on his personality compared to the others or Dr. Boyce.
• Cool Starship: The Enterprise itself, the basis for the whole series where they use it to travel through the stars. But note that is our only look at the Pike-era Enterprise, distinguished by the spikes on the red warp nacelle caps.
• Crash-Into Hello: Introduces Colt, embarrasses the Captain, and establishes her as a one of the possible Love Interests.
• Cross-Cast Role: Although male voices were dubbed in for the Talosians, three of the Talosian actors were actually women. Robert Butler and Gene Roddenberry struck upon using this casting method at about the same time as one another, Butler reckoning that it would lend the Talosian characterizations an alien-like androgynous quality. Roddenberry believed that the lighter builds of females might suggest that the Talosians had allowed their bodies to atrophy while instead choosing to concentrate on advanced brain development. Upon searching for suitable performers to play the parts, Roddenberry scoured Hollywood for short actresses with faces that he deemed to be interesting. Character actress Meg Wyllie was cast as the Talosian Keeper on Butler's recommendation, as they had previously worked together.
• Crystal Spires and Togas: Deconstructed with the Talosians. Their manner of dress and their city is very elegant, but they're also completely detached from any kind of adventurous spirit, not understanding why anyone wouldn't choose a pleasant dream over unpleasant reality, and being unable to grasp the more primal emotions.
• Damsel in Distress: Complete with medieval dress, screams and ineffectual defense. Might actually be a Deliberately Distressed Damsel as she already knows it is All Just a Dream.
• Despair Event Horizon: The Talosians reach this point with the failure of their plan:
  Captain Pike: And that's it. No apologies. You captured one of us, threatened all of us...
  Talosian: Your unsuitability has condemned the Talosian race to eventual death. Is this not sufficient?
• Dirty Mind-Reading:
  • Pike's fantasy of being an Orion trader is implied to be this, as he mentioned it during his gripe session with his doctor.
    "Glistening green. Almost like secret dreams a bored ship captain might have..."
  • After beaming Number One and Colt down to Pike's cell as alternate mating choices, the Talosian Magistrate tells him that Number One's Ice Queen demeanor is a façade and she's often had fantasies about him, while Yeoman Colt has assumed the captain was out of her reach, "but now is realizing this has changed".
• Dirty Old Man: The doctor pointedly inquires about Colt's impertinent question "Who would have been Eve?"
  Boyce: Eve as in... Adam?
  Pike: Adam as in all ship's doctors are dirty old men.
• Distress Call: One of these kickstarts the plot, with a radio wave keyed to trigger the sensors of a passing vessel (it initially appears to be an oncoming object) thereby drawing the attention of its crew. In a subversion, Pike's initial response is to ignore the signal on the grounds that a 20 year old distress signal with no indication of survivors doesn't warrant changing course, so the Talosians send another indicating that there are survivors in distress.
• Double Entendre: The Talosians comment that Yeoman Colt has "unusually strong female drives." One assumes they weren't referring to an urge to shop.
• The Dulcinea Effect: Pike correctly deduces that the Talosians are trying to make him feel protective of Vina so that he'll fall in love. However, after he points to the illusions that cast her as a Damsel in Distress, he protests against their treatment of her in the real world, proving that their ploy is indeed working.
• Dying Race: The Talosians. Turns out being able to create illusions indistinguishable from real life but better makes you largely uninterested in real life.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Everything, from the characters, to the uniforms, to some details of the USS Enterprise itself. Some of it could be explained through changing uniforms and refits, but some dialogue like their Faster-Than-Light Travel being described as both "Time Warp Factor 7" and "Hyperdrive" before it settled into being a Warp engine in the series proper.
• Enemy Scan: To properly get to know the capabilities of humans, the Talosians scan through the ship's computer to learn all about them.
• Energy Weapon: The huge laser cannon that gets wheeled out on the planet surface to use as a Laser Cutter during the Enterprise crew's attempt to break into the Talos compound.
• Epiphany Therapy: Dr. Boyce's attempts to help Captain Pike get over his Heroic BSoD.
  Boyce: A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on and licks it, or he... turns his back on it and starts to wither away.
  Pike: Now you're beginning to talk like a doctor, bartender.
  Boyce: Take your choice. We both get the same two kinds of customers — the living and the dying.
• The Evils of Free Will: The fact that humans would prefer death to any form of captivity is a sticking point on why they are unsuitable for the Talosians' plans. Pike tries to console the Keepers, suggesting some sort of mutual cooperation to solve their population problem. The Keeper, however is savvy enough to know what will happen if humans eventually acquire the Talosian power of illusion. All of this at least explains why there is a General Order forbidding any contact with this planet.
• Expy: The main crew members have identifiable counterparts in the series that eventually developed. Pike is an early version of Kirk, Number One was combined with Spock, Dr. Boyce is early McCoy, and Colt is early Rand. Of course, this pilot came first, so it's technically the characters of the eventual series who are the expies. The notion of referring to the First Officer as "Number One" returned in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
• Face Palm: Vina does this when Pike gets punished for thinking wrong thoughts.
• Facial Dialogue: When the captain refuses to respond to the distress call, a couple of blueshirts exchange a puzzled shrug after he leaves the Bridge.
• Failed Pilot Episode: Zig-Zagged. On the one hand, the network rejected this as the pilot for ST:TOS and ordered another one which led to the show that started the franchise. On the other hand, this episode was repurposed as a two-parter in the series, making it canon. On the other other hand, season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery would feature Pike, Spock, and Number One along with the Enterprise, which would lead to them getting their own show — so in a sense, this pilot did get its own show, just a few decades later than anyone thought.
• Fantastic Flora: Talos IV's surface is home to turquoise plants that emit eerie, almost singing sounds, which give the planet a distinctly alien atmosphere. Pike and Spock touch them to discover what exact sound each leaf produces.
• Fate Worse than Death: Rather than allow Pike to submit to Talosian captivity, Number One puts her phaser on overload to destroy all three of them. Vina elects not to retreat underground either, since it would mean the Talosians would just grab another man later.
• Fire and Brimstone Hell: The Talosians invoke the feeling of being tapped in a fiery Hell on Pike any time they want as punishment, and threaten to outdo that trauma if they have to.
• Food Pills: With a slight variation: all the nourishment Pike needs is in liquid form in a small slender glass.
• Foreshadowing:
  • While talking with Doctor Boyce, Captain Pike talks about the battle on Rigel Seven and two activities he might partake in after retiring: going on a picnic on Earth or becoming an Orion trader. Each of these is used as the basis for one of the telepathic illusions the Talosians use on him later.
  • Throughout the episode it's implied that Vina is not who she seems. At first this seems to be explained by her pretending to be a Talosian illusion in hopes of more easily seducing Pike; then Number One offhandedly mentions that, rather than Vina having been born right as the Columbia crash-landed on the planet, she was listed on manifests as an adult crewman. This foreshadows her true appearance, that of a much older, deeply scarred and disfigured woman.
• Glassy Prison: One wall of the cells the humans are kept in is made of a crystal material, so the specimens can be put on exhibit and analyzed.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: The Trope Codifier. Although strictly speaking, Vina is only pretending to be a green-skinned space babe. However, she's still the first one ever seem in Star Trek.
• Happy Place: The aliens construct visions of Pike in "Happy Places": Back Home and as an Orion Slave Trader (actually a Psychological Torment Zone, as he is perturbed and runs out of the harem), but Pike immediately knows it's All Just a Dream.
• Heroic BSoD: Captain Pike is going through one of these when the episode begins, having lost several crewmen (including his personal yeoman) on a mission.
• Humans Are Special: The Talosians desire humans for their adaptability, but then they access the records of the Enterprise and conclude that humans have "a unique hatred of captivity" that renders them unsuitable for their purpose.
• Ice Queen: Number One, whom Vina sarcastically compares to a computer when she's kidnapped as another potential mate. There are several hints that this is a façade however.
• Inertial Impalement: How Pike finishes off the barbarian in the illusory battle.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Inverted, Boyce implies to Pike: "YOU need a freaking drink!".
• In Medias Res: The story begins as the Enterprise has completed a mission that resulted in serious casualties and is returning to base.
• Instant Sedation: The aliens spray a gas in Pike's face and he falls down to the ground immediately.
• It Only Works Once: As Pike foiled their plans for breeding a Slave Race, the aliens just give up and accept their fate of their failed civilization. To be fair, they indicate they had already tried out several other species (possibly the ones Pike saw in the zoo) but none of them had shown the same adaptability as humans. Pike was their "last hope".
• I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure: Pike doesn't know Vina and doesn't especially like her, but he objects when she's punished for his lack of cooperation. This is all part of the Talosians' plan to make him breed with her, because it causes Pike to feel empathy for Vina over her unjust punishment.
• Knockout Ambush: Pike was led by Vina where the aliens surprised him, knocked him out with a gas, then took him away.
• Labcoat of Science and Medicine: Averted. It's rare where scientists are not portrayed in labcoats, and in this case they appeared in normal clothes, but ragged and tattered.
• Loafing in Full Costume: Averted; Captain Pike is shown passing by a couple of off-duty crewmembers dressed in civies.
• Lost in Transmission: A distress message inexplicably just "fades" away before it can explain a certain crucial danger. Rather than concealing a crucial plot point, this was just a lure by the Talosians to Pike, who had previously turned down answering the earlier (and genuine) Distress Call.
• Love at First Sight: Both Pike and Vina are attracted to each other and explicitly say so.
• Lured into a Trap: Pike is coaxed to walk right into a trap where the aliens capture him. Vina mentions that he's been feeling tired, and Pike is noticeably distracted by her, so he's likely not as alert as he should be.
• Magical Security Cam: When the crew are greeting the survivors, the aliens see the scene through an alien monitor, but there are no cameras or devices that anyone can see.
• Male Gaze: There's a shot of an off-duty female crewmember walking away from the camera in a pleated skirt.
• Master of Illusion: The Talosians force Captain Pike to partake in a series of illusionary worlds. When he resists, they are also able to punish him with a Fire and Brimstone Hell and then believably threaten to go deeper into his mind for experiences even worse! Similarly, the Enterprise crew actually easily breaks into the Talosian base, but their powers of illusion made it appear that they'd been doing no damage at all, so they didn't realize they'd succeeded until Pike was already released.
• Meaningful Background Event: Lt. Tyler, the navigator, is shown wearing a bandage on his right hand/wrist. Although it is never acknowledged, but it presumably happened during the landing on the previous mission on Rigel VII.
• Mind Probe: The aliens probe Pike's mind and discover "excellent memory capacity". This is not shown and the Captain does not seem to even notice or show any signs of the probe.
• Mind Rape: Pike is tortured with visions of fire and brimstone.
• Moving the Goalposts: Pike agrees to pick an illusion to share with Vina if she answers his questions. After she does, he says that he made a "bargain with someone that didn't exist" and it doesn't count, which forces her to admit that she was lying about being yet another illusion.
• My Brain Is Big: The aliens have very visible bigger craniums with pulsing veins, which give them great mental power.
  Spock: Look. Brains three times the size of ours. If we start buzzing about down there, we're liable to find their mental power is so great they could reach out and swat this ship as though it were a fly.
• My Greatest Failure: Pike is troubled by the fight at Rigel 7 where he lost three crew and seven were injured. He claims It's All My Fault, establishing a Guilt Complex (he is tired of being who decides "who lives and who dies") so bad he is in Heroic BSoD and considers retiring. Boyce does respond with the typical You Did Everything You Could.
• Named After Their Planet: Talosians. From Talos IV.
• No Name Given: Majel Barrett's character is referred to throughout simply as "Number One".
• Nondescript, Nasty, Nutritious: One of the "sustenances" given to Pike while in the holding cell is a glass of blue mystery liquid, which the Talosian Keeper claims contains a "nourishing protein complex". They compensate for its blandness by using their mental powers to make it seem like whatever food is desired.
• Not Like Other Girls: When Pike complains about how unused he is to having a woman (Yeoman Colt) on the bridge, he says that Number One doesn't count. He doesn't seem to realize that she is apparently insulted at the way he differentiates her from other women.
• Number Two: Number One, actually, who goes by no other name. Spock is present but is not the First Officer as he would become when the show went to series. (He appears to be third-in-command behind Pike and Number One, as he takes command after Number One is abducted, but this isn't definitely established in dialogue.)
• One of the Boys: How Captain Pike treats Number One regarding her presence (as a woman) on the bridge.
• People Farms: The aliens try to make Pike "breed" with any female, and were planning to make them a Slave Race to rebuild the surface of the planet.
• Pet the Dog: After their plan fails, the Talosians release Pike without harm, but allow Vina to have an illusion of him staying with her. They also refuse Federation aid to prevent other races from falling into the same trap that they did.
• Pilot Episode:
  • A failed one, in fact, but it showed enough promise for the network to commission a second pilot.
  • Trope Namer! When asked for an example of a pilot of a show, this episode is commonly used as an example.
• Plot Twist: Survivor Rescue plot is actually Aliens Want to Breed Us.
• The Power of Hate: Pike lunges at the glass wall of his cell, causing the Keeper to flinch. Since the Talosians can read his thoughts, and should have known he was going to do that, he deduces that his powerful, 'primitive' emotion was able to block their telepathy. Pike then concentrates on feeling intense hatred for his captors.
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: The Talosian Keeper tries to get Pike to release him by threatening to destroy the Enterprise. Vina confirms that he's not bluffing about his capability — the Talosians' illusion power could reach the orbiting starship and trick the crew into operating the wrong controls — but it turns out that he's bluffing about his willingness to follow through on the threat.
• Psychic Static: The Talosians can't read "primitive" emotions like anger or violence, so Pike uses that as a Psychic Block Defense. However Vina points out that it's impossible to maintain such emotions over a long time.
• Raised by Dudes: Vina claims to be this at first, acting awkward and unfeminine around Captain Pike because she was raised by a group of old male scientists.
• Ray Gun: The laser had been invented just a few years before; hence the use of the term for the handheld pistols and crew-manned laser cannon. This would later be changed to the fictional term 'phaser' to avert the Technology Marches On trope.
• Recycled with a Gimmick: The start of the Horatio Hornblower In Space subgenre of sci-fi. Pike's ruminations on choosing which crewmen will live and die are remarkably similar to Hornblower's thoughts on being a Valkyrie "chooser of the slain" in Hotspur.
• Red Alert: A red flashing light goes off and an alarm sounds when the ship seems to be in danger, but the alert is not vocally called.
• Refusal of the Call: Pike refuses to answer an eighteen year-old Distress Call because they have their own wounded to take care of (it's also implied that Pike is tired and his morale is low after recent events). Only when another message arrives confirming that there are survivors in need of help does he order the Enterprise there.
• Rubber-Forehead Aliens: The Talosians have entire rubber heads. They are more elaborate than later makeups in the series, and they also cast female actors but dubbed-over male voices in an attempt to make them more alien.
• Same Language Dub: Clegg Hoyt played the transporter chief, Pitcairn, but his voice was dubbed in by Bob Johnson, who was the voice on the tape (and disc) in Mission: Impossible.
• Script-Reading Doors: Dr. Boyce knocks on the door and it opens automatically before the Captain responds.
• Secret Underground Passage: Actually an elevator, but the doors are hidden from view, camouflaged as a rock wall, and they do lead underground.
• Shrug Take: Right after Captain Pike refuses to look for survivors and leaves the bridge.
• Signature Sound Effect: Averted (in later episodes) with the "singing" plants of Talos IV. Pike and Spock verify (in a lovely bit of non-verbal acting) that the plants are the source of the low, eerie wailing heard in the surface scenes. Future episodes re-used the same sound on many — if not most — of the other planets the crew visited, without explanation.
• Sole Survivor: The aliens confess there was an actual crash of an Earth vessel, but with only one survivor, Vina.
• Space Clothes: The Talosians (and Vina) wear shiny, silvery clothes. Averted with the crew of Enterprise, whose uniforms are deliberately mundane.
• The Spock: An Ur-Example. The Stoic, computer-mind character was supposed to be Number One, a female. As Roddenberry said, the network didn't want a woman in a position of power (the executives denied this), so he passes the traits to Spock.
• Stay in the Kitchen: Pike starts to chastise Colt when she interrupts him, explaining that he asked for the report. He then openly says he is not used to women on the bridge.
• Strictly Professional Relationship:
  Colt: Sir, I was wondering. Just curious. Who would have been Eve?
  One: Yeoman! You've delivered your report.
• Subspace Ansible: Averted; the distress call has taken eighteen years to reach the Enterprise's current position.
• Surveillance as the Plot Demands: The Talosians seem perfectly capable of seeing everything that goes on in the cell as well as reading minds, but the Keeper doesn't see Pike waiting to ambush him. Probably masked by Pike's anger and treachery. That should have been a big, fat, hint to the Talosians that the humans would prove unmanageable, but they might have been too desperate to save their race to recognize the hint.
• Technobabble: Spock's initial utterance sounds too simple, but it is used to establish that something "Techy" is going on. First Star Trek words recorded.
  Spock: Check the circuit.
• Technology Marches On: An in-universe example. The consoles on the Enterprise bridge are here fitted with what look like personal computer printers (which print out messages on paper), and the Yeoman is seen using a clipboard with paper sheets on it. The beam weapons are called lasers instead of the later phasers. And the weapon used in the attempt to blast the Talosian entrance is a bulky device transported from the ship instead of ship-mounted weapons. By the time of the series proper, both would be replaced by more futuristic devices. Medical science is presumably more primitive than it's portrayed in TOS, as Pike doesn't even speculate about the possibility that Vina's disfigurements might be repairable with Trek-era medicine. But technology has also already marched on, as one crewman enthusiastically says to the "survivors": space travel is now incomparably faster than 18 years before. Nearly 60 years later, things like printers and paper on clipboards would seem "old school", but Science Fiction tends to predict the future with things we're still familiar with. Besides, the special effects involved in showing hi-resolution imagery on something like an iPad were somewhat beyond even what a high-budget movie could do in those days.
• Telepathic Spacemen: The Talosians are telepathic, and it's how they create their illusions.
• Teleporters and Transporters: To avoid the hassle and cost of showing travel by shuttle, the Landing Party travel by the Transporter.
• 10-Minute Retirement: Albeit only an illusory one for Captain Pike, indulging in activities he talked about. As soon as He's Back! on duty:
  Pike: What are we running here, a cadet ship?
• This Is the Part Where...: The Talosians note that, after hurling himself in frustration at the glass, Pike will now threaten them with the power of his starship. Hearing this, Pike chooses a more diplomatic (but equally futile) approach.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Pike tries throwing a sword at the barbarian during the illusory battle; it hits at the right angle and with enough force to embed itself in the barbarian's back.
• Too Good to Be True: Pike realizes too late that the Columbia's heroic survivors they've seen were just playing into their ideal fantasies. Also, Boyce suspects something fishy is going on, as all survivors are in perfect health.
• TV Telephone Etiquette: Mr. Spock calls on the ship's video intercom to deliver exposition and cuts the call immediately.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension:
  • Between Pike and J.M. Colt in particular. According to the Talosians, possibly also Number One.
  • This was the entire purpose of the Talosians capturing Pike: to get him to develop enough tension with Vina that he would give in and help them breed a new race to reclaim the surface.
• Unusual Ears: Mr. Spock is alien, of course. Don't you see the Pointy Ears?
• Wagon Train to the Stars: Ur-Example. This was the first pilot presented to the network to show this concept.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: After Number One and Yeoman Colt beam down, the Keeper punishes Pike for "wrong thnking." While the two are wondering what is going on, Vina just cradles her head in her hand. She knows that Pike is being punished and while it seems like a couple of seconds, for him the punishment could be lasting for hours.
• Your Heart's Desire: Orion women are presented as a dark male fantasy come to life. They're exotic, animalistic Sex Slaves, from a culture where they actually want to be taken advantage of so you don't have to feel guilty about doing so.
  Orion slave trader: Suppose you had all of space to choose from, and this was only one small sample. Wouldn't you say it was worth a man's soul?
• Your Mind Makes It Real: According to the Talosians, Pike could visualize the vial of nourishment liquid provided by the Talosians as any meal he wished. Presumably, as long as he was able to somehow forget that it really was nothing more than a vial of blue liquid. Whether Pike's mind could fool his GI tract enough to turn it into dietary fiber, OTOH...

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