Trivia / Star Trek S1 E5 "The Enemy Within"

• Acting for Two: William Shatner plays both Good Kirk and Evil Kirk.
• Actor-Inspired Element/Wag the Director: The original script called for Spock to karate chop Kirk to subdue him. Leonard Nimoy felt that this would be an uncharacteristically violent act for a peace-loving species like the Vulcans so he came up with a pincer-like grasp on the neck that has since become known as the Vulcan Nerve Pinch and become one of the character's most famous gimmicks. The episode's director, Leo Penn, notably had trouble understanding what Nimoy was describing but allowed it after Shatner completely understood the context of the nerve pinch.
  • Mundane Made Awesome: While Nimoy came up with the Nerve Pinch, he gave credit to William Shatner's acting, which Nimoy felt made it look so effective. (Kirk cries out in agony before collapsing; nearly all subsequent victims of the pinch would merely lose consciousness immediately.)
• Creator Backlash:
  • While Grace Lee Whitney liked the episode, she hated the final scene, in which Spock asks Yeoman Rand, if "the impostor had some very interesting qualities, wouldn't you say, yeoman?". In her autobiography, she wrote:
    "I can't imagine any more cruel and insensitive comment a man (or Vulcan) could make to a woman who has just been through a sexual assault! But then, some men really do think that women want to be raped. So the writer of the script (ostensibly Richard Matheson - although the line could have been added by Gene Roddenberry or an assistant scribe) gives us a leering Mr. Spock who suggests that Yeoman Rand enjoyed being raped and found the evil Kirk attractive!"
  • The subplot of Sulu and three crewmembers stranded on the freezing planet was not in Richard Matheson's original script but was added by staff writers. Matheson did not like that this was done, and declined to contribute any further scripts or stories to the show as a result.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Gene Roddenberry named this as one of his ten favorite episodes.
• Deleted Role: Frank da Vinci and Ron Veto together had a deleted scene in this episode.
• Edited for Syndication: During the syndication run, the following scenes were typically cut from broadcast:
  • Extended scene of Scott preparing to beam Kirk up to the ship.
  • A longer conversation between Spock and Good Kirk about Evil Kirk demanding brandy from McCoy.
  • Extended scene of Evil Kirk in Rand's quarters.
  • Additional segments of discussion with Rand and Fisher in sickbay.
  • Extra dialogue between Good Kirk and Spock, followed by another scene showing the two entering engineering to look for Evil Kirk.
  • Longer reports from Sulu on the surface of the planet, including a split scene of Sulu speaking to Kirk, then a shot of the Enterprise in orbit, followed by Kirk's reply.
• Enforced Method Acting: According to Grace Lee Whitney, while shooting the scene when a distraught, tearful Janice Rand accuses Captain Kirk of trying to rape her, William Shatner slapped her across the face to get her to register the proper emotion. As they shot the rape scene days earlier, Whitney couldn't get into the same emotion successfully, and it was Shatner's "solution" to the problem.
• Executive Veto: The executives very reluctantly approved the episode, anxious that Kirk's intentionally written flaws, including the first Attempted Rape scene on NBC, would make the audience hate him.
• Prop Recycling: The gauzy, red-bordered triangular set piece behind which the evil Kirk emerges briefly in engineering during the hunt scene appears to have been left over from the early briefing room as seen in "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before".
• What Could Have Been:
  • The last two scenes of Act One are switched in order from what appears in the script. In the teleplay, Kirk and Spock learn about the assault of Janice in sickbay, then head to the transporter room, where they are faced with the discovery that the transporter is creating duplicates. The act ends with Scotty suggesting, "We don't dare beam up the landing party. If this should happen to a man…" and Kirk exclaiming, "Oh, my God!" In the episode itself, the sickbay scene follows the one in the transporter room, and the act ends with Spock declaring, "There's only one conclusion – we have an impostor aboard." Director Leo Penn was known to reorganize scenes when he deemed them to be more dramatic in a different order from what was scripted.
  • In the final draft and the revised final draft of this episode's script, McCoy mused that part of "the Human condition" was having "an enemy within".
• You Look Familiar: Edward Madden previously played an Enterprise geologist in "The Cage".

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