Production
Episode writer Norman Spinrad based the script on a novelette "The Planet Eater" that had been rejected by a number of publishers. He revived the idea when he had a chance to pitch it to Executive Producer Gene Roddenberry. Spinrad had written the script with actor Robert Ryan in mind to play Commodore Decker, but Ryan was unavailable owing to prior commitments.
According to one source the model for the USS Constellation was an off-the-shelf model while other sources claim that the smallest and least detailed Enterprise professional model was altered for the episode. It has also been stated that the Constellation's somewhat incongruous hull ID number of 1017 (all other ships of this class having been numbered 17xx) came from simply switching the digits of an Enterprise model's 1701 hull numbers.
The episode was written as a "bottle" show i.e., one that could use existing ship sets to save time and money. According to Spinrad the episode was so well received by Roddenberry that he commissioned him to write another for comedian Milton Berle who planned to do a dramatic turn on the show entitled "He Who Walks Among Us".
Read more about this topic: The Doomsday Machine (Star Trek: The Original Series)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The growing of food and the growing of children are both vital to the family’s survival.... Who would dare make the judgment that holding your youngest baby on your lap is less important than weeding a few more yards in the maize field? Yet this is the judgment our society makes constantly. Production of autos, canned soup, advertising copy is important. Housework—cleaning, feeding, and caring—is unimportant.”
—Debbie Taylor (20th century)
“I really know nothing more criminal, more mean, and more ridiculous than lying. It is the production either of malice, cowardice, or vanity; and generally misses of its aim in every one of these views; for lies are always detected, sooner or later.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“In the production of the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to assist man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)