Trivia / Star Trek S3 E14 "Whom Gods Destroy"

• Creator Backlash: Leonard Nimoy really wasn't happy with this episode, firstly because he thought it was dumb that Spock would take more than about ten seconds to Spot the Imposter when confronted with two Kirks, and secondly because the director tampered with the script to include more action scenes.
• Hostility on the Set:: Yvonne Craig's turn as Marta is fondly remembered by fans, but she had a hell of a time putting it in - she described William Shatner as a "maddeningly narcissistic human being" and wasn't a fan of his behavior on set, which apparently included him physically moving her around for "the betterment of his profile." Not helping matters is that allegedly, she walked in on him in the dressing room without his toupée. Oops.
• Prop Recycling:
  • The Haz-Mat suits from "The Tholian Web" are seen when Marta is executed.
  • Garth's costume is Commissioner Ferris' outfit from "The Galileo Seven" and Karidian's robe from "The Conscience of the King" put together.
  • The therapy chair is from "Dagger of the Mind" as were the jumpsuits with the applique of a hand freeing a dove to fly toward the sun. That seems to be a general insignia or logo for Federation mental health services.
• Recycled Script: The plot of inmates taking over the asylum and impersonating the warden closely resembles "Dagger of the Mind", right down to the "agony chair" prop which is reused from that episode. Kirk fights a duplicate in "The Enemy Within" as well, and there's another evil-twin duplicate in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?". In his memoir I Am Spock, Leonard Nimoy shares a memo that he wrote to the producers to complain about the similarities. He also shared some choice words about how this depreciated the value of the show with Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath in the 1975 book Star Trek Lives!
• Underage Casting: Fleet Captain Garth of Izar, whose exploits have been studied by Kirk at the academy, is played by a 34-year-old actor (this could be explained as Garth using his shapeshifting powers to appear younger). Steve Ihnat was in fact younger than William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.
• What Could Have Been: In the first draft script Garth of Titan threw the asylum guards out into the poisonous atmosphere. The conditions inside the asylum were also more graphic, with inmates displaying symptoms of various mental illnesses. The original Spot the Imposter scene also had the real Kirk be more concerned with the Enterprise with far less fighting, which Nimoy and fans consider a stupid move to change.
• Fan response to Czech-American actor Steve Ihnat was phenomenal. It was hoped that a future episode might feature Fleet Captain Garth. Three years after playing Garth, he died of a heart attack, a month after his son was born. He was 37 years old. Steve Ihnat Jr. died at 32, a few days before what would have been his father's 70th birthday.
• Garth is an important character in the much-disputed fan film Prelude to Axanar.

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