Tag Archives: Star Trek

Hey Kids,

Today is a special anniversary!  It was 50 years ago today, November 17, 1966, that Star Trek aired the first part of it’s only 2-part episode, The Menagerie, on NBC. 

The episode  conveniently helped keep production costs down by recycling Star Trek’s original pilot The Cage into a new story about Spock’s loyalty to his first captain, Christopher Pike. Pretty clever, actually, and aren’t we grateful for it! Gene didn’t want the pilot to be forgotten, and by making it the center of a new episode, it built up the canon of the original series.

But even more importantly, it offered first insights into Mr. Spock’s past, and revealed his devotion to his first captain, now seriously paralyzed, and willingness to risk court martial and even death to give his captain a better life.  It also gave us our first inklings into just how human this logical, stoic Vulcan could be. I’ll discuss more about it in a future post. But for now, I really loved this episode.   A shame there were not more two-parters made.

Do you have a favorite moment?  Here’s some images from the classic episodes – with my silly captions, of course! (Hmm, maybe I should turn this into a full fledged comic…)  But if you haven’t seen it, get thee to thy nearest streaming site! (Netflix, Amazon, etc)

Fun fact: Did you know that ‘The Menagerie’ and ‘Court Martial’ were filmed back-to-back? Maybe they had narrow window for dress uniform rentals! 😉