Apologies: just saw this. I don't seem to be getting notifications when people reply to me anymore!! First off, I hope I didn't come over as in any way didactic. It's the unfortunate thing with writing the way you speak: text can be read so many different ways.
I watched both The Cage and The Menagerie, so I don't really see a problem. I was aware of what The Cage is and how it's related to the rest of the franchise, so watching it in no way lessened my enjoyment of other episodes or The Menagerie itself. On the contrary, I enjoyed being pleasantly surprised by the improvements in production values between The Cage and the first official episodes.
The reason I was surprised you watched The Cage first is that you were so keen on a 'correct' order. The Cage wasn't broadcast until decades after the original series. Indeed, they only 'finessed' the sound mix and edit in the 2000s for the Remastered project. The Cage is in no way canon.
I actually quite enjoyed The Cage, to be honest. And maybe I missed some things, but why shouldn't it be considered canon?
Anything not seen in The Menagerie never happened in the continuity. This is the issue: 'ground zero' for Star Trek is season one, whether you start on Where No Man Has Gone Before or The Man Trap. The foundation of the viewer's understanding of Star Trek and its universe is the Kirk era.
Then we get the flashback story, The Menagerie, which is a Kirk and Spock story guest starring Christopher Pike. The Cage - an actual story with Pike as the lead, has many different aspects, notably warp travel. It's a failed pilot and a curio, not a 'proper' Star Trek story.
If I recall correctly, almost all of its footage was incorporated into The Menagerie, meaning that all of its events did, in fact, "happen". Or am I missing something?
No, Check out the colour and black and white version and you'll see all the extra bits in context. The Menagerie happened. The Cage didn't.
By the way, if by "that peculiar TV show on Paramount+" you mean Strange New Worlds, I have to say that I love that show. It's the closest that the Kurtzman-era Star Trek has come to the original spirit of the franchise (TOS and TNG), and the show has only been getting better and better, so I don't have any real issues with it. You don't like it?
Strange New Worlds is a disgrace. It's a televised Las Vegas show masquerading as a Star Trek series. Where to begin... hmmm...
I'm fine with prequels in principle, if the people who created the originals are involved or if the prequel is set somewhere else and doesn't involve any of the original characters. So by all means make a 23rd century Star Trek as long as no characters or situations from the original show up. I can tolerate the Kelvin films as they're set in a different reality.
However, Secret Hideout purport to be making canon Star Trek, so what you see Pike and co get up to is effectively what Jeffery Hunter's Pike supposedly did. So you're changing original series continuity. That's a problem. If Gene Roddenberry had created Strange New Worlds, I would have accepted it. I mean, I'm not big on the Star Wars prequel trilogy, but it's George Lucas's baby, so fine. Sequels made by other people are less of a problem: if you want to read books by a continuation author, you can, but equally, you can disregard them and imagine your own follow ups. I can toss aside the Star Wars sequel trilogy as the inept corporate garbage it is.
However, we now have people with no working connection to Gene Roddenberry (Rod Roddenberry, who gets a vanity credit, sadly never got the opportunity to know his dad very well) using Roddenberry's characters and - crucially - changing them. Gene Roddenberry never got to say that Spock had learning disabilities (complete bollocks idea, by the way!) for example and neither did Leonard Nimoy. So, while Secret Hideout might have the technical
legal right to make such a change, they don't have the
moral right. It's vandalism of an established character. The same goes for the use of the Guardian of Forever. That was Kirk's discovery in one of the greatest original stories. On top of that, Harlan Ellison - had he been alive - would certainly have kicked up a stink about its use. Similarly, you don't f--- around with Balance of Terror. It's all unimaginative and it's disrespectful.
The Trek universe has also had a ground up redesign, effectively rewriting the originals. The Berman Treks were content to let the original designs stand, incorporating the original designs into TNG, DS9, Voyager and Enterprise. Part of this is because the team now making the series believe that Star Trek should be 'our' future, which is ridiculous and has involved scrapping and rewriting large chunks of established continuity. It has long been accepted that Star Trek is its own timeline and that's not the same reality as ours. That's part of what made it so interesting.
The theft of characters such as the Kirks, Spock, Pike, Uhura, Chapel, M'Benga and others shows a lack of actual creative ability on the part of the writers. Number One shows one of the most disgusting aspects of the series: her entire backstory was nicked from a Star Trek novel by DC Fontana and no accreditation has been given. But that's the level these fraudulent 'creators' have reached.
The only thing produced by Secret Hideout to come close to TOS and TNG is Picard Season Three, which interestingly restored the original Constitution class designs and resolved long-running issues from the TNG films. The TNG films were the first 'corporate' Star Treks and Ron Moore, among others, has discussed the mistakes they made, notably casually destroying the Enterprise and tossing away Jim Kirk's life. That team came to understand that you don't interfere with someone else's creation. They could do what they liked to Picard and co, because they were the creative team. Kirk was the child of Roddenberry, Coon, Meredyth Lucas, Fontana and others. Showrunner Terry Matalas came from the Berman era and his season three respectfully repaired the many errors, notably with regards to Jim Kirk, while Kurtzman and Goldsman had given up on the series and gone away to make Strange New Worlds.
Ultimately, I'm fine with people writing their imaginary continuations, but when you mess with the foundations of a series and the characters who are part of the foundations of a series, you're stepping on dangerous ground. Strange New Worlds and Discovery should never have been made. Picard Season Three should have been made in 2017 and launched a new 'Next, Next Generation' of Star Trek. That the fraudulent creators have had to rely on characters such as 'Mikey Spock', Spock's never-before-mentioned smarter foster sister and recast many original series characters shows a complete lack of originality and imagination on their part.
I hope the sale of Paramount might lead to a wholesale rethink of Star Trek, because the modern Trek series have never done all that well, with Picard season three being the only one to get consistent ratings.
I dearly love Star Trek going back to my childhood. I've been reading the novels since the mid-1980s. I remember an era where there was only one iteration of Star Trek. I hate to see the jumbled mess it is right now.
Put it this way: imagine in 20 years time someone gets hold of the rights to Twin Peaks and makes a prequel, recasting everyone, that shows Coop going to Twin Peaks when he was younger, features Laura Palmer as a child, Windom Earle working with the Renaults, reveals Nadine was actually shot by Earle using a sniper rifle to distract Big Ed who was due to meet Gordon Cole to set up the Bookhouse Boys to protect the entrance to the Lodges. Meanwhile, Major Briggs is in Seattle training Coop, Desmond and Jeffries. Plus the series redesigns everything for 'modern audiences' and changes the dates the story is set in, because it 'makes more sense' for it to be set in the 2020s. I doubt Twin Peaks fans would be very happy. In essence, that hypothetical Peaks scenario is what's happening to Star Trek.
