July 6 to July 14, 1967
This week 48 years ago (July 6 – 14, 1967), Star Trek was filming “The Changeling.” Did you know there were two versions of that episodes special “guest star” -- Nomad. One was lightweight and hung by a thin wire. second, which was heavier, and loaded up with more internal flashing lights, was mounted on a camera dolly (sans the camera), and rolled from room to room as they were filming. It is pictured here, when the anti-gravity devices were attached to it so that Kirk and Spock could carry it to the transporter room to be beamed into deep space. Seen with Nomad are Star Trek prop man Irving Feinberg and special effects wizard Jim Rug, as they carry Nomad from the transporter platform after the final shot had been taken.
As the script for “The Changeling” was being written, associate producer Robert H. Justman and executive producer Gene Roddenberry were thinking ahead, as to how Nomad (or “Altair” as the little trouble maker was called in the earlier drafts of the script) would be realized.
On April 17, 1967, Justman, unhappy with the written material thus far, did not want to also be unhappy with the crucial prop needed to realize the menace in this episode. He wrote to producer Gene Coon:
On April 17, 1967, Justman, unhappy with the written material thus far, did not want to also be unhappy with the crucial prop needed to realize the menace in this episode. He wrote to producer Gene Coon:
We had better be very clever and have Mr. [Matt] Jefferies design a spaceship that can be built out of Styrofoam, so that it will not have too much weight and so that we will be able to use very thin threads to suspend the ship with. The thicker the threads, the easier it is to see them and the more difficult it is for us to conceal them.
Gene Roddenberry disagreed about the Styrofoam. In a memo from May 8, he suggested to Coon that “Altair” would have to be “mostly supported from underneath so that it should look heavy, complex, capable of doing everything we say it does.” He continued:
It is most important that we build an excellent and totally believable “Altair.” This is our guest role! I know that it will cost something and take a little time to have it glide around the vessel and do the various things it does, but I think you will agree with me that to do any less would be as bad as trusting an “extra” in a guest star role. |
By June 1, Robert Justman was finally happy with the script -- as rewritten by Dorothy Fontana, without credit. Altair was now named Nomad. Justman anxiously wrote Gene Coon:
If we could get the “Nomad” built and functioning in time, this script could very well follow “Amok Time” on our shooting schedule.
“Amok Time” was already planned as the episode which would open the second season on NBC. Justman was now hoping it could follow as the second episode to air in the new Friday night time slot. That honor would end up going to “Who Mourns for Adonais?”, an episode Gene Roddenberry was especially fond of. “The Changeling,” a favorite among Roddenberry, Justman, Coon and Fontana, would be the third to air.
Read more about the writing and making of “The Changeling,” and all of the second season episodes of Star Trek: TOS [The Original Series], in Marc Cushman’s Saturn Award winning book, These Are the Voyages, TOS: Season Two, available here.