Exclusive! Star Trek “The Cage” Unreleased Original Pilot Scripts

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As any Trekkie or Trekker or anyone that has any knowledge of the ‘Star Trek’ universe knows – “The Cage” was the original unaired Pilot that started it all. This was before Kirk or McCoy entered the picture. It introduced a Captain by the name of Christopher Pike (played by Jeffrey Hunter) and a much happier Mister Spock. J.J. Abrams later recycled the Pike character for his ‘Star Trek’ reboot.

Jeffrey Hunter was originally supposed to be the star of this show until NBC said “Hey, for various reasons, we don’t like this Pilot. Do it again!” So Gene Roddenberry wrote a new Pilot (“Where No Man Has Gone Before”). But he ran into a problem. Jeffrey Hunter didn’t want to return to the role. Apparently, he wanted to focus on his movie career instead. So enter the characters of Kirk, McCoy and the rest of the crew we’ve come to know and love over the years. As for Mister Spock, he was the only holdover character, minus his emotions.

But I’m not going to sit here and write about the history of “The Cage.” There have been literally hundreds, if not thousands, of articles written about this episode already.

So instead, what I have here are two exclusive scripts that I have good reason to believe you probably haven’t seen elsewhere. Or at least, I haven’t.

The first script was owned by Gene Roddenberry (and contains some handwritten notes). It’s dated October 6, 1964. The second script is a Secretarial copy dated November 20, 1964. I haven’t compared both scripts to the final episode, but there are definitely some differences. One of those differences in both drafts is that before Roddenberry settled on the name for Pike, he first went with Captain Robert April and then later changed it to Captain James Winter.

Another interesting tidbit is that the first script goes by the name “The Cage” while the second script was renamed “The Menagerie.” Eventually, the Pilot’s name was changed back to “The Cage” after the original series incorporated footage from this Pilot into an episode and named that “The Menagerie.”