Daniels famous that the primary draft of the “Spock’s Mind” teleplay left Spock on the Enterprise whereas the opposite characters situated his lacking mind. Daniels was the one who determined to show Spock right into a mechanical zombie who got here alongside. “Then the priority was whether or not or not he would seem like a zombie strolling round. Fortunately Leonard was in a position to pull it off.” And, sure, Nimoy wasn’t a stiff-armed zombie, though he did nonetheless look a little bit foolish.
And, based on Gerrold, the silliness might need been the purpose. Gerrold suspected that the episode’s author, Gene L. Coon (credited as Lee Cronin) was attempting to confront Gene Roddenberry’s tendency to take “Star Trek” critically to the purpose of it being no enjoyable. Gerrold posited:
“I believe […] that ‘Spock’s Mind’ was Gene L. Coon’s approach of thumbing his nostril at Roddenberry or one thing. If not Roddenberry, he was thumbing his nostril at how critically the present was taking itself. I believe what had occurred is that they have been a little bit panic-stricken as a result of there weren’t a variety of scripts to shoot. The historical past of ‘Star Trek’ is administration by disaster. I feel someone known as up Gene L. Coon and mentioned, ‘We want a script in a rush, are you able to do it?’ And he did it beneath a pen identify, and I do not assume he intentionally got down to write that present critically.”
As such, Gerrold laid out what he suspected was Coon’s thought course of: “I do not assume there’s any approach you’ll be able to take that episode critically. You have to take it as a joke. What is the stupidest science fiction thought to do? What if someone stole Spock’s mind?” This was a premise that would have been cribbed from a low-budget sci-fi horror thriller from 1953.
