To go back to The Cage/The Menagerie for a minute, I love The Cage, and I love the idea and most of the execution of The Menagerie, but the frame story as a whole, or at least upon getting to part 2... sucks.

Everything before the courtroom malarkey starts is pure gold. You have a mystery, intrigue, confusion. It's a clip show that REALLY makes you WANT to see the clips rather than dread them. Unfortunately, as soon as you get to the clips, the frame acts like, "Oh, well, here we are. I guess my job is done," and then just wanders off and gets incoherently drunk only to stagger back on to the set and piss itself.

"How do you plead?" "Guilty." "Okay, then, that should be the end of it, but I'll let you show clips now."

*clips*

*return from clips*

"I'm really angry! You're going to jail now!"

*commercial break*

"I forgot why I was angry! Keep showing the clips!"

And it just goes on and on like that, with the frame only coming back to make it look like Spock is in really deep poop so the cliffhanger seems tense... only for them to come back and act like nothing ever happened. And then it wraps itself up by the antagonist being in on the plan the whole time. You know, the one who spent the entire episode trying to STOP the proceedings and thereby jeopardize his entire plan?

Eh. I chalk up The Menagerie as Kirk falling asleep watching old Starfleet log tapes and hallucinating the whole thing.