Trivia / Star Trek S1 E22 "Space Seed"

• Creator's Favorite Episode: Gene Roddenberry listed this as one of his ten favourite episodes.
• Deleted Role: Barbara Baldavin was to reprise her recurring role as Angela Martine in two scenes but they were deleted from the finished episode.
• Deleted Scene:
  • Marla McGivers and her friend Yeoman Baker discuss a crewman who wishes to ask Marla out for a date. She tells Baker that she prefers a man who is able to ask out a woman himself.
  • A large portion was cut from the scene which featured Khan and his Augments on board the Botany Bay, reportedly due to concerns by NBC Broadcast Standards over the highly revealing outfits worn by Khan's athletic female followers. This is most likely the reason why Kathy Ahart (Kati) is featured in the end credits, as she probably had a speaking part which was cut.
  • McCoy confronts Khan while being held captive in the briefing room and is stunned by one of Khan's henchmen. Khan assures Spock that McCoy has only been stunned, as he wants to avoid bloodshed when possible. To the question of whether he does approve, Spock tells Khan he only approves of the logic with which he took over the Enterprise, which was done "brilliantly."
• Executive Meddling: Scenes shot on the Botany Bay were cut as executives felt the costumes worn by the newly awakened crew were too revealing.
• Fake Nationality: Khan Noonien Singh is an Indian Sikh, played by Spanish-Mexican actor Ricardo Montalbán.
• Recycled Script: Carey Wilber's script was based on "Odyssey into Peril," an episode he wrote for Captain Video. His work on that show featured Ancient Greece-era humans transported in suspended animation through space, with the people of the future finding that they have mythological powers. He replaced these mythological powers with abilities that were enhanced due to genetic engineering.
• What Could Have Been:
  • There are scenes in the Second Revised Final Draft, dated December 13, 1966, that were filmed but cut for time: Lieutenant Marla McGivers has a scene with Yeoman Baker in which Baker informs her that Lieutenant Hanson wants to go to a ship's dance with her. McGivers tells her to tell Hanson to get lost, that she is waiting for a man who will "knock down my door and carry me to where he wants me". This Yeoman Baker then has a couple lines of dialog as the court recorder at Khan's trial. Baker would be cast with the same actress who played Angela Martine in "Balance of Terror" (Barbara Baldavin) and her character was renamed accordingly.
  • In Carey Wilber's first proposal, dated August 29, 1966 (shortly before the first episode aired) the villain was Harold Erickson, an ordinary criminal exiled into space. He sought to free his gang from Botany Bay, seize the Enterprise, and become a pirate. Parts of the story were inspired by the use of penal colonies in the 18th century (such as Australia's Botany Bay), and characterizations were based on descriptions from the series' writer's bible. As a result, several elements of the draft differed from how the characters behaved in the series; for example, the draft includes a scene where Spock defeats Kirk at chess by cheating.

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