“The Cage” in its complete original form was not broadcast until 1986, when it was finally aired as a standalone special. By that point, the actors and production team involved in its making were 21 years older, Desilu no longer existed, and *Star Trek* had generated three television series, six films, and a cultural footprint that extended across countries and generations.
The footage that NBC’s sales team had rejected — the “naked green girl,” the assertive woman in command authority, the alien with pointed ears — had, through the improbable sequence of decisions described in this article, become part of the foundation of one of the most commercially successful entertainment franchises in history.
—
## The Television Industry *Star Trek* Helped Create
The significance of *Star Trek’s* survival extends beyond the show itself to its effect on the television industry’s understanding of what science fiction could do.
Before *Star Trek*, science fiction on American television had been primarily a children’s or family genre — serials and adventure shows rather than the kind of dramatic, philosophically ambitious storytelling that Roddenberry was attempting. The show demonstrated that science fiction could function as a vehicle for serious thematic content within the constraints of network television production: that the alien setting, the future date, and the fictional technology could be used to address questions about race, authority, war, justice, and human nature that the network’s standards and practices would not have permitted in a contemporary realistic setting.
This was not simply an observation that television critics made in retrospect. It was a strategy that Roddenberry had developed consciously, drawing on the specific experience of *The Lieutenant* and its conflict with the Department of Defense over civil rights content. If you set the story in space in the future, the story is not about the racial politics of the present — even when it is entirely about the racial politics of the present. The alien frame provides a kind of protective distance that allows the content through.