Trivia / Star Trek S2 E6 "The Doomsday Machine"

• Creator's Favorite Episode: James Doohan named this as his favourite episode for its highlighting of the engineering aspects of the Star Trek world.
• Dolled-Up Installment: Writer Norman Spinrad recycled a short story of his called The Planet Eater which had been roundly rejected by publishing houses, despite being heavily influenced by Moby-Dick. He was able to convince Gene Roddenberry that it would make a viable subject for an episode.
• Hostility on the Set: William Windom didn't enjoy working on the show. He said that William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy weren't getting along at the time which made the set's atmosphere tense.
• Inspiration for the Work: Some sources hold that the episode was influenced by Fred Saberhagen's series of Berserker stories, about a series of robotic killing machines built as a doomsday device by a now-vanished race to wipe out their rivals. However, author Norman Spinrad denies the influence:
  I wasn't conscious of the Saberhagen stuff when I was doing this, but I was certainly conscious of Moby-Dick. And, actually, my unpublished novelette, which was the genesis of ("The Doomsday Machine"), was written before the Saberhagen stuff.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: Although the episode usually places very highly in fan polls and best-of lists, certain members of the production staff were (and are) a good deal less enthused. Writer Norman Spinrad disliked the end result, complaining about the casting (he wanted Robert Ryan for Decker) and the underwhelming depiction of the planet killer (which he envisioned as having been "bristling with weapons"). In an interview for the Archive of American Television, D. C. Fontana actually named it as her least favourite episode.
• Recycled Set: This was one of several episodes produced using only preexisting sets in an effort to save money.
• Science Marches On: The air pressure aboard the Constellation is measured in Pounds per Square Inch. kPa (kilopascal) is currently the preferred measure of pressure.
• What Could Have Been: The role of Decker was originally meant for Robert Ryan, but he was unavailable.

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