Type Episode
Date 1969-02-28
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The Cloud Minders

Star Trek: The Original Series 3x76

Gerrold describes his original intentions for the story:

I came in with what I thought was a near-perfect Star Trek story, which is we find a culture that isn't working for everybody and fix it. But my original ending was that, as they're flying off, Kirk says, "Well, we solved another one." Spock says, "Well, actually, it'll take years and years and years for all of these changes to be put in place." And McCoy says, "I wonder how many children are going to die in the meantime." So the idea was, "Let's get gritty. We're not going to change things overnight, but we can put changes in place that will have long-term effects." There was also more to the story that was about the social issue, and there was no magical zenite gas that was causing the problem. Freddy Freiberger and Margaret Armen came in and changed it to a "Let's solve it all in the last five minutes with gas masks" (ending). And I thought, "That's really not a very good story. It doesn't do what Gene Roddenberry or Gene L. Coon would have been willing to do." So I was disappointed.

Name Role
David Gerrold Author
Jud Taylor Director
Margaret Armen Screenwriter
Oliver Crawford Author

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