Trivia / Star Trek S1 E24 "This Side of Paradise"

• Alan Smithee: Jerry Sohl was unhappy with D. C. Fontana's rewrites of his script and credited himself under his pseudonym "Nathan Butler".
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Leonard Nimoy named this as one of his favourite episodes.
• Deleted Scene:
  • Spock and Leila walk and romanticize by a stream.
  • After Kirk beams up, McCoy claims, "A stubborn man that Jimmy-boy is," to which Leila replies, "He will join us. No-one has ever resisted".
  • Spock explains to Kirk that the spores communicate with the people they infected telepathically, and that that's how he learned that the pod plants are from the different planet and were not on Omicron Ceti III when the first two, failed expeditions came.
• Hey, It's That Place!:
  • The large open meadow seen in several sequences is in Malibu State Park in southern California. It is the same spot where the hunt in the corn field took place in Planet of the Apes (1968), and also extensively used in Gunsmoke.
  • The barn Kelowitz and Sulu investigate can be seen in several episodes of Kung Fu (1972).
• What Could Have Been:
  • The spores, in the early drafts, were a communal intelligence; when someone was possessed by them, that individual was granted telepathic abilities to link up with other possessed minds. The abilities of the spores to restore health were complete enough to enable them to return the dead to life. The antidotes for the spores were either the possession of a certain blood type or the introduction of alcohol into the affected person. Originally, Kirk leaped onto Spock and forced liquor down his throat to restore him to normal. In a surprise ending, the spores were revealed to be benevolent, conscious entities who never intended to act against anyone's will.
  • In Jerry Sohl's original draft, it was Sulu who was infected by the spores and was able to fall in love with the Eurasian beauty Leila. McCoy discovered an internal condition that would have necessitated Sulu's resignation from Starfleet service, had the spores not cured his condition. His illness gave Sulu a will to develop a relationship with Leila just as similar circumstances would later affect McCoy's judgment in "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky".
  • In the script, Kirk first spots Spock and Leila kissing passionately by the stream. There is no scene of Spock hanging off the tree limb. That facet of the episode may have been made up on the spot. Indeed, director Ralph Senensky came up with the idea of Spock hanging from the tree on location, when he found the tree and the spot close to Bronson Canyon. Originally the scene was to be shot on a clearing. Evidence taken from a deleted scene, of Spock and Leila's presence near the stream, appears in the episode's preview trailer.
• Working Title: Scandoval's Planet, Power Play, The Way of The Spores.

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