Plot

Capt. Pike is held prisoner and tested by aliens who have the power to project incredibly lifelike illusions.

This is the pilot to the series that would star William Shatner. Only in this version there is different Captain, Christopher Pike, and with the exception of Mr. Spock, an entirely different crew. Now it begins when the Enterprise receives what appears to be a distress message. But when they get to the planet where the message was sent from, they discover that the supposed survivors were nothing more than illusions created by the inhabitants of the planet, for the purpose of capturing a mate for the one genuine surviving human, and Captain Pike is the lucky winner. While Captain Pike tries to cope with the experiments and tests that the aliens are conducting on him, his crew tries to find a way to rescue him. But the aliens' illusions are too powerful and deceptive (at first).—<rcs0411@yahoo.com>

Capt. Christopher Pike and the crew of the USS Enterprise travel through the far reaches of space. When they receive a distress signal from the distant planet Talos IV, they proceed to investigate. What they find are the survivors of a Federation expedition that disappeared 18 years earlier. Most of the survivors are now quite elderly except for one, the beautiful Vina, who they claim was born at the time of the crash. It's all an illusion, however, and the planet's super-intelligent inhabitants take the Captain prisoner. While the ship's First Officer, Number One, and the Science Officer, Mr. Spock, try to locate and rescue their commander, Pike is alternately subjected to temptation and torture for reasons that his captors will not explain to him.—garykmcd

On the first voyage of the Starship Enterprise, Kirk's predecessor, Captain Christopher Pike, tries to rescue an Earth crew that disappeared eighteen years earlier. But it's a trap! Pike is imprisoned in a zoo-like cage and studied by mysterious higher life forms.—Robert Lynch <docrlynch@yahoo.com>

The USS Enterprise, under the command of Captain Christopher Pike (Jeffrey Hunter), receives a radio distress call from the fourth planet in the Talos star group. A survey expedition on the ship SS Columbia had been reported missing from Talos system 18 yrs ago. Spock (Lenord Nemoy) argues that the crew of the ship may have survived on the 4th planet (which is a class M with an oxygen atmosphere) even after 18 yrs. A message from Talos indicates that there are 11 survivors. The Enterprise has a crew of 203. Pike is tired of making life and death decisions for his crew on a daily basis. He considers resigning from his post. A landing party is assembled and beamed down to investigate. Tracking the distress signal to its source, the landing party discovers a camp of survivors from a scientific expedition that has been missing for eighteen years. Amongst the survivors is a beautiful young woman named Vina (Susan Oliver).

Captivated by her beauty, Pike is caught off guard and is captured by the Talosians, a race of humanoids with bulbous heads who live beneath the planet's surface. Vina and the survivors suddenly disappear after Pike is lured away from the rest of his landing party. Pike is captured and taken underground, while the landing party is stranded on the surface of the planet. The landing party's weapons are not able to cut through the alien metal guarding the entry door. It is revealed that the distress call, and the crash survivors, except for Vina, are just illusions created by the Talosians to lure the Enterprise to the planet. The Talosians communicate telepathically and can read the primitive human minds. While imprisoned, Pike uncovers the Talosians' plans to repopulate their ravaged planet using him and Vina as breeding stock for a race of slaves.

The Enterprise uses power cannons to blast through the metal, but it wont budge. The crew knows that the survivors were illusions and thus are not sure now if the metal they see in front of them are illusions or not.

The Talosians use their power of illusion to try to interest Pike in Vina, and present her in various guises and settings, first as a Rigellian princess, a loving compassionate farm girl, then a seductive, green-skinned Orion. Pike resists all forms. Vina is punished when she communicates to Pike and answers some of his questions.

After an earlier landing party failed to gain entry from the surface, six members of the Enterprise crew prepare to beam into the Talosians' underground complex, but only Pike's first officer and yeoman-both women-materialize in Pike's cell to offer further temptation. Vina is angry at her captors as she did everything they asked her. The first officer says that the Vina listed on the crashed spaceship was an adult and that was 18 yrs ago. By then, however, Pike has discovered that primitive human emotions can block the Talosians' ability to read his mind, and he manages to escape to the surface of the planet along with the two members of his landing party. Pike captures one Talosian, when he tries to sneak into the cell to pick Pike's phasers. Pike guesses correctly that the phasers are working but the Talosians have created an illusion that they are not. Pike threatens the Talosian with death, if he doesn't help them escape. The first officer finds that they not being able blast through metal was also an illusion.

The Talosians confront Pike and his companions before they can transport back to the Enterprise. The captain tries to negotiate, but the first officer (Majel Barrett) sets her weapon on a build-up to overload. Pike and Vina move closer to her, agreeing with her preference for death rather than captivity. After all, as Vina explains, if the Talosians have even one human being, they might try again. This demonstration of fatal resolve confirms what the Talosians have been gleaning from the records they've accessed from the Enterprise's computers: The human race despises captivity far too much to be useful.

Despite their last hope having been proven unsuitable, the Talosians are not vengeful. They let the humans go. The first officer and yeoman beam up immediately, but Pike remains behind with Vina, urging her to leave with him. Vina explains that she cannot leave. An expedition had indeed crash-landed on Talos IV; Vina was the sole survivor, but was badly injured. The Talosians were able to save her, but as they had no understanding of human physiology or aesthetics at the time, she was left horribly disfigured. With the aid of the Talosians' illusions, she is able to appear beautiful and in good health, as much to herself as to any others.

Realizing that the continued Talosian illusion of health and beauty is necessary for Vina, Pike is ready to return to the Enterprise without her. In an act of goodwill, the aliens show him that Vina sees an image of Pike next to her, and they walk up to the entrance that takes them into the Talosian habitat. Pike then beams up after the Keeper's closing words: "She has an illusion and you have reality. May you find your way as pleasant."