Star Trek’s Doomsday Machine: The Original Vision [News]

The Doomsday Machine is one of the classic episodes of the original Star Trek series. But there’s one person who was disappointed with it, and that’s Norman Spinrad, the author of the screenplay. Turns out he had a very different vision for the titular spacecraft:

“The original idea, which was complicated, is maybe a machine, but it’s maybe an artificial organism, to serve the same purpose,” said Spinrad. “Then you have the question, ‘When does an artificial organism become a machine and when does a machine become an artificial organism?’

The thing I had in my head was not like the thing that they shot.

“Gene said to me after I finished the script, ‘Look, can you draw the thing for us, please?’ I’m not much of an artist. I paint a little bit now, but I still can’t do it very well. So I really worked on it. I drew the thing. It had complicated tentacle things that had the laser or whatever on the tips. So the thing looked ambiguous; you wondered looking at it, ‘Is this alive or is it a robot?’ Then, when they shot it, they showed me what they’d do it with. I said to Gene, ‘After I went through all the work on this, this is what you shoot? It looks like a wind sock dipped in cement.’ Gene, having been a pilot, said to me, ‘That’s what it is, it’s a wind sock dipped in cement. We didn’t have any money for anything else.’”

As a bonus, here’s a remastered version of a scene from the episode created by PrfMoriarty with updated CGI special effects. Impressive, considering it was done by one guy.

What do you think of the Doomsday Machine? Could the Doomsday Machine have been better?

[Startrek.com via TrekToday]

[Image Source: Startrek.com]