June 27th to July 5th, 1967
This week, the cast and crew of Star Trek were filming “Wolf in the Fold.” It was a rare occurrence where an episode was built around the character of Scotty, and we have NBC to thank for that. Why and which cast member was originally supposed to be the suspected killer?
The script for “Wolf in the Fold” had originally been written to feature Sulu as the one suspected of murdering numerous women while on shore leave. The network’s Program Manager assigned to Star Trek was Stan Robertson. After reading the script, he wrote to producer Gene Coon:
“The crux of how successful this most intriguing storyline is as a screenplay is how simplified and believable the writer can convert the quasi-scientific philosophy of the existence of a Jack the Ripper in the era of our series. We must play this story as a mystery, involving our crewman from the Enterprise in it as a prime suspect until as late as possible, possibly until the Tag of the Third Act… [and] it would seem more feasible from a practical standpoint to utilize Mr. Scott as our suspect rather than Sulu, since not only is the former a more proficient actor but a person in our series who I believe has not been given the exposure in our stories that his prominence on the crew denotes.” |
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Robert Justman agreed. He had written a memo to Gene Coon at the same time, saying the same thing.
