Let's Face It
The greatest difference between Oliver Crawford’s script and Shimon Wincelberg’s rewrite is that, in the original, Kirk is commanding the shuttlecraft and it is Spock who is left back on the Enterprise searching for the seven missing crew members. Crawford said: “They probably felt that I had run dry on the idea and came as far as I could.” The true reasons were far different. Read the memos from the producers and the network and find out how The Galileo Seven switched from being a Kirk story to a Spock story, and why a switch in writers – from Crawford to Wincelberg -- was made, in These are the Voyages - TOS, Season One.
As for Coon taking over for Shimon Wincelberg, the latter was upset when he started seeing how Gene Roddenberry was rewriting his script for Dagger of the Mind. In a long, colorful letter, he told Roddenberry, in part: “Even though you have in many places improved the script, you have also, carried away by a healthy creative momentum, ‘improved’ a lot of scenes which conceivably could have been left alone, if only to satisfy the poor writer’s vanity.... [The] overall effect, on me, at least, is something of a morale-depressant.... [I] shall resume my labors on ‘Galileo’ with hopefully undiminished enthusiasm as soon as I get my friendly neighborhood quack to Neural Neutralize the image of ‘Dagger’ from my bleeding mind.” A decision was quickly made to Neural Neutralize (a device used in Dagger of the Mind) the image of Wincelberg out of Roddenberry’s bleeding mind. Read Roddenberry’s colorful response to Wincelberg’s note in These are the Voyages - TOS, Season One.
Don Marshall got the part because he had a guest-starring role in Roddenberry’s previous series, The Lieutenant (opposite Nichelle Nichols), and needed a job. In his first print interview ever given about Star Trek, Marshall told writer Marc Cushman, “I didn’t want to be a regular on Daktari. As it turned out, I did three episodes but I really didn’t even want to do one. My agent at the time said, ‘Come on, these are my friends, do the pilot.’ And I said, ‘But I’m playing second to Marshall Thompson and a cross-eyed lion. What would happen to me -- my character?’ And he said, ‘You don’t have to sign a contract, so just do it.’ So we did the pilot and no one said anything about a contract. But in the middle of the third episode, they came in and told me I had to sign one. I called my agent and he told me that if I didn’t do it he’d blacklist me. My own agent! And then the work suddenly stopped coming. I called Gene [Roddenberry] and I said, ‘Something’s going on. Can you check for me and see if I’m being blacklisted?’ He called me the next day and said, ‘Don, I’m afraid you are. Look… I got a part I want you to do.’ And that was for The Galileo Seven. And… after I finished that show, then everybody was hiring me again.” But there were problems on the set while making this episode. Marshall candidly talks about then in These are the Voyages - TOS, Season One.
NBC loved this episode. Network Exec Stan Robertson wrote to Roddenberry, “I personally believe that this is the strongest Star Trek® script that we have received to date…. This is an appealing, exciting, action-adventure story with mounting tension, jeopardy, the alluring mystique of outer space, fine development and emotional conflict with a resolve which can only truly be described in trite terms -- it leaves me breathless.... I would strongly suggest that you and your colleagues make every effort to get this script into production as soon as possible so that it can be scheduled… at the earliest.” But there were problems. Associate Producer Robert Justman wrote to producer Gene Coon, “In recent weeks I have been reading scripts and delivering memos with regard to the amount of Miniatures and Optical Effects contained therein. Please believe me when I say I am not trying to damage or cheapen the show by at times plaintively crying for certain effects to be eliminated from our show. Goodness knows, if we had time to get them in, I would be more than happy to go along with everything that we could possibly afford. However, I am going to make a prediction right now. Unless someone starts paying attention to what I say in my memos about Optical Effects, we are going to start missing Air Dates, one right after another.” Because Coon didn’t listen to Justman, Stan Robertson did not get his wish. The Galileo Seven came in very, very late, and far over budget. How late? How over budget? And how did they pull off making it in the first place? Find out in These are the Voyages - TOS, Season One.
The end results of this ambitious episode were, in the opinion of those who made it, uneven. Even Leonard Nimoy had mixed feelings, leaning toward the negative. He said, “We had a failure. The Spock character had been so successful that somebody said, ‘Let’s do a show where Spock takes command of the vessel.’ I had a tough time with it. I really appreciated the loss of the Kirk character for me to play against [and] to comment on. The Bill Shatner/Kirk performance was the energetic, driving [force] and Spock could kind of slipstream along and make comment and offer advice [and] give another point of view. Being put into a position of being the driving force -- the central character -- was very tough for me, and I perceived it as a failure.” Read more about what those involved had to say in These are the Voyages - TOS, Season One.
As for the face of the alien – a face only a mother could love – NBC was afraid it would be too alarming for the viewing audience and had all shots revealing it removed from the episode. You can be alarmed by it now.
As for Coon taking over for Shimon Wincelberg, the latter was upset when he started seeing how Gene Roddenberry was rewriting his script for Dagger of the Mind. In a long, colorful letter, he told Roddenberry, in part: “Even though you have in many places improved the script, you have also, carried away by a healthy creative momentum, ‘improved’ a lot of scenes which conceivably could have been left alone, if only to satisfy the poor writer’s vanity.... [The] overall effect, on me, at least, is something of a morale-depressant.... [I] shall resume my labors on ‘Galileo’ with hopefully undiminished enthusiasm as soon as I get my friendly neighborhood quack to Neural Neutralize the image of ‘Dagger’ from my bleeding mind.” A decision was quickly made to Neural Neutralize (a device used in Dagger of the Mind) the image of Wincelberg out of Roddenberry’s bleeding mind. Read Roddenberry’s colorful response to Wincelberg’s note in These are the Voyages - TOS, Season One.
Don Marshall got the part because he had a guest-starring role in Roddenberry’s previous series, The Lieutenant (opposite Nichelle Nichols), and needed a job. In his first print interview ever given about Star Trek, Marshall told writer Marc Cushman, “I didn’t want to be a regular on Daktari. As it turned out, I did three episodes but I really didn’t even want to do one. My agent at the time said, ‘Come on, these are my friends, do the pilot.’ And I said, ‘But I’m playing second to Marshall Thompson and a cross-eyed lion. What would happen to me -- my character?’ And he said, ‘You don’t have to sign a contract, so just do it.’ So we did the pilot and no one said anything about a contract. But in the middle of the third episode, they came in and told me I had to sign one. I called my agent and he told me that if I didn’t do it he’d blacklist me. My own agent! And then the work suddenly stopped coming. I called Gene [Roddenberry] and I said, ‘Something’s going on. Can you check for me and see if I’m being blacklisted?’ He called me the next day and said, ‘Don, I’m afraid you are. Look… I got a part I want you to do.’ And that was for The Galileo Seven. And… after I finished that show, then everybody was hiring me again.” But there were problems on the set while making this episode. Marshall candidly talks about then in These are the Voyages - TOS, Season One.
NBC loved this episode. Network Exec Stan Robertson wrote to Roddenberry, “I personally believe that this is the strongest Star Trek® script that we have received to date…. This is an appealing, exciting, action-adventure story with mounting tension, jeopardy, the alluring mystique of outer space, fine development and emotional conflict with a resolve which can only truly be described in trite terms -- it leaves me breathless.... I would strongly suggest that you and your colleagues make every effort to get this script into production as soon as possible so that it can be scheduled… at the earliest.” But there were problems. Associate Producer Robert Justman wrote to producer Gene Coon, “In recent weeks I have been reading scripts and delivering memos with regard to the amount of Miniatures and Optical Effects contained therein. Please believe me when I say I am not trying to damage or cheapen the show by at times plaintively crying for certain effects to be eliminated from our show. Goodness knows, if we had time to get them in, I would be more than happy to go along with everything that we could possibly afford. However, I am going to make a prediction right now. Unless someone starts paying attention to what I say in my memos about Optical Effects, we are going to start missing Air Dates, one right after another.” Because Coon didn’t listen to Justman, Stan Robertson did not get his wish. The Galileo Seven came in very, very late, and far over budget. How late? How over budget? And how did they pull off making it in the first place? Find out in These are the Voyages - TOS, Season One.
The end results of this ambitious episode were, in the opinion of those who made it, uneven. Even Leonard Nimoy had mixed feelings, leaning toward the negative. He said, “We had a failure. The Spock character had been so successful that somebody said, ‘Let’s do a show where Spock takes command of the vessel.’ I had a tough time with it. I really appreciated the loss of the Kirk character for me to play against [and] to comment on. The Bill Shatner/Kirk performance was the energetic, driving [force] and Spock could kind of slipstream along and make comment and offer advice [and] give another point of view. Being put into a position of being the driving force -- the central character -- was very tough for me, and I perceived it as a failure.” Read more about what those involved had to say in These are the Voyages - TOS, Season One.
As for the face of the alien – a face only a mother could love – NBC was afraid it would be too alarming for the viewing audience and had all shots revealing it removed from the episode. You can be alarmed by it now.
These are the short versions of the answers as to why The Galileo Seven came about as it did. What other problems were the creative team and the production crew dealing with? What else got left on the cutting room floor? What was Don Marshall’s opinion of it, and memories regarding its filming? What were the Nielsen ratings?
You can now finally go where no fan has gone before and be in the writers’ room and the producers’ offices while The Galileo Seven is being developed, and on the sidelines on the sound stages during its filming, and in front of your TV sets when it first airs, in – you guessed it -- These are the Voyages - TOS, Season One.
Watch for These are the Voyages — TOS, Seasons Two and Three, set for publication by Jacobs/Brown Press later in 2013.
You can now finally go where no fan has gone before and be in the writers’ room and the producers’ offices while The Galileo Seven is being developed, and on the sidelines on the sound stages during its filming, and in front of your TV sets when it first airs, in – you guessed it -- These are the Voyages - TOS, Season One.
Watch for These are the Voyages — TOS, Seasons Two and Three, set for publication by Jacobs/Brown Press later in 2013.