Months before I was born, Star Trek's original pilot episode, The Cage, was completed. NBC found it too intellectual, with not enough action, and ordered a do-over. Footage from The Cage was later repurposed for use in an episode called The Menagerie.
In The Cage, the inhabitants of Talos IV are physically frail, with huge heads and brains. They communicate via telepathy, and eventually found a way to make illusions that seem real. In this episode, the Talosians have kidnapped Captain Pike and are using illusions to convince him to fall in love with Vina, a beautiful woman. Their plan is to breed humans to help them rebuild and repopulate the planet. Here's a little of the dialog from the episode:
Captain Christopher Pike: Why did they go underground?
Vina: War, thousands of centuries ago.
Captain Christopher Pike: That's why it's so barren up there?
Vina: The planet's only now becoming able to support life again.
Captain Christopher Pike: So the Talosians who came underground found life limited here and they concentrated on developing their mental power.
Vina: But they found it's a trap, like a narcotic...
Vina: When dreams become more important than reality, you give up travel, building, creating. You even forget how to repair the machines left behind by your ancestors. You just sit, living and reliving other lives left behind in the thought record.
Does this not sound at all like what too many people experience today with their phones and gaming and VR?
1 comment:
Yes, and strange thing is that the later Star Treks fell into the same trap. I lost interest when too many were just holodeck situations.
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