Ok so I have a few initial thoughts about this. Firstly, the music is kind of awful. It sounds like a restaurant from the 50s and all the old christmas music that crawls out of its hole when december starts.
But, that being said, credit where it's due. It kind of looks really, really good when you consider the era this came out in. Like, it looks really bad, but that's only really by modern standard. Definitely respectful work.
The synopsis of the pilot is basically that a bunch of aging psychic
aliens lure Captain Kirk Something Piker to be an Adam to
the Eve of another human in their keeping,
and shenanigans ensue.
Being honest, I don't have too many thoughts on this episode, because (1) I was largely distracted by this really feeling like a show from the sixties (will get to that in a sec), and (2) I watched this across two nights due to my laptop almost dying at work.
So, the Captain's (unnamed) number one and an unnamed yeoman
(which I assume was later changed to ensign in later seasons?)
are the only women on the bridge. Our fearless
Captain Kirk Riker Piker notes that he's
"Still not used to women on the bridge".
From this we can definitely see that the show is
trying to be progressive, and perhaps for the sixties this was.
But the rest of the show does a lot to show that it's very much
entrenched in the usual gender stuff. Probably other stuff to, but like
I said, I was only paying so much attention to it.
The most notable thing, tho, is that at the end it's revealed that the beautiful human woman captive turns out to be very very ugly and deformed. The reason she doesn't go back with the others is because she's too ugly or something ick as fuck as that. Nevermind future tech making this a meaningful problem. Nevermind future attitudes making this not something that should even be an issue. There's... a lot to unpack here. And part of it I might not be fully up to unpacking at this stage.
I did end up, despite this, really liking this episode.
The aliens basically used illusions to manipulate people into doing
what they wanted. And what they wanted was a slave race to take care of
their needs, as a race devastated by war and no longer
able to physically take care of themselves. And there's a lot that can
be said about this. This is obviously a gross disregard for consent.
The Teraliens (I think that's their name? Telorians?) do everything in
their power to "convince" Captain Riker Picard Piker and
the human woman to get together.
But the show doesn't even acknowledge this, which is kinda meh at best.
What the show does get into (somewhat) is the fact that they're being trapped there. There's a big theme of not wanting to be trapped. In fact, the reason I like this episode is because it's very "Big Monke Brain Go Brrrrr Ha Ha Ha Ha". The answer to the cage was basically, be so batshit crazy, hateful, and spiteful that human beings are infeasible for the project the Toralians need them for. This appeals to me on a very base, very dumb level. I thought the Talosians were icky as fuck, maybe desperate, but icky as fuck, and it felt good for them to be beaten by brute force.
I've noted that, if I weren't feeling so uncomfortable while at work, I might see this more charitably. But I am uncomfy, so fuck these dudes.
The other big theme, one I've noticed a lot in TNG and, tho
not quite as much, in DS9 is the idea that what's "real" is inherently
good.The first thing that Caprain Picard Carol Freeman
Piker doesn't like about his whole situation is that nothing he's seeing
is real. Not that it's creepy as fuck. That it's not real.
I've got more to say about this, but I'm not sure what yet, and this is already pretty long.
I'm still not entirely sure how I want to structure these, nor what I want to say in these exactly. Like, do I wanna focus more on story stuff? Social stuff? Do I wanna do something like name these as Cpt. Logs? Eh, I'll probably figure it out.