"The Menagerie Part II" picks up Spock's court martial only briefly before launching again into the forbidden Talosian transmissions detailing the events of Enterprise and Captain Pike on their planet years ago. In this manner the action from "The Cage" winds up climactically even as the sporadic transmissions sabotage the Kirk-era story to stall with interstitial irrelevance lacking any "modern day" dramatic tension. Spock is not going to be put to death no matter what, so only the mystery of Pike remains and consequently deserves the screentime it dominates. (Of course it's nice to get a throw-away line at the end suspending General Order 7, expunging the Vulcan from his conviction of mutiny!)

The resolution with Pike is all fine and good, but then there's the disconcerting disappearance of Commodore Mendez from the court, his presence throughout the proceedings revealed as a long distance Talosian illusion. (AND in the shuttlecraft, AND beaming the transmissions all the way back to Starbase 11. Hmmm, AND informing the viewers of the nature of green Orion animal women, vicious and seductive, irresistible to human males!) Is there any limit at all to their range in such things? What possible protection could a minor planetary proscription avail in the face of such power?

No doubt as a natural telepath Spock was in contact with the Talosians while calculating every potentiality regarding Pike's abduction and the short trip to his future home. They really could have done anything, even telepathically tampered with Pike in his chair at the Starbase had they so chosen. No, the ruse of the trial was apparently considered important enough to demonstrate for Kirk (and Starfleet) that the big-brains reserve no ulterior designs on humanity and that they are actually motivated by "the advanced trait of mercy." In fact it's no less than impressive how the heart-tugging mercy the Talosians show towards Vina (in "The Cage") is seamlessly integrated into the final hand-in-hand stroll of the reunited lovers up the rock ramp concluding this episode.

Such mercy calls into question our own race, abandoning those two kindred wrecks to an otherwise human-less world, though perhaps it just says more about Vina and Pike. (As the Keeper says, may we all find our way as pleasant, with illusion or reality.) And like those two joined at last we are treated with this unparalleled episode, a union of not one but two engaging stories in which a promising beginning is brought to fruition in a fantastic final act. Truly the wellspring of Star Trek.