So, how well do you know your Star Trek: The Original Series? Have you memorized every line of every available script? Not anymore you haven’t, because an unfilmed, lost Trek script has just shown up online.
The script was originally meant as a vehicle for guest star Milton Berle. Milton who you say? Let’s just say he’s one of those guys, along with Jerry Lewis and Al Jolson, who people found the funniest thing ever for a short time, but is painfully unfunny when seen through modern eyes. Basically he was the Jim Carrey of the 50s.
The original script written for Berle was pretty much a straight-ahead serious Star Trek episode, but then head writer Gene Coon got hold of it and decided to make it a showcase for Berle’s style of humor, which was already considered horribly hacky and outdated by the mid-60s. The script’s original writer, Norman Spinrad, begged Gene Roddenberry to kill the episode rather than commit a crime against both Trek and comedy, and so Star Trek guest starring Milton Berle never happened.
For years Spinrad thought his original version of the script was lost forever, with only the mutilated version remaining, but recently it resurfaced. The script, titled “He Walked Among Us” has since been converted into PDF, and you can download it for only nine bucks from Amazon. Get memorizing fellas.
via The Mary Sue
Kirk perusing his script via the pretty awesome Star Trek Prop Authority