10 More Classic Star Trek Episodes Based On Real-Life Events

With the Third Season, Star Trek began going to the well more often with real-life inspired stories. Unfortunately, many of these efforts suffered from a severe lack of subtlety.

First up is Spectre of the Gun. Kirk tries to make contact with a race of beings that asked him very politely NOT to try to make contact with them. To punish the intrusion, the aliens imprison the landing party in a fantasy pulled from Kirk's subconscious. Fortunately, this involves forcing Kirk and the others to re-enact the 1881 Gunfight at the OK Corral from the loser's side, rather than any of the more embarrassing scenarios undoubtedly rattling around in Kirk's head.

Since there was no money for location shooting, the story is played out on a half completed set that looks either really cheap or really surreal, depending on your point of view. Failing to come up with a sane plan, Kirk hits on the idea that since the whole environment is an illusion, then nothing in it can hurt them if they don't believe in it. (Sort of like how Wile E. Coyote never falls unless he looks down and realizes that he's standing on thin air.) Spock can turn his own beliefs off and on, and after a few Vulcan mind melds, the others can too. The aliens, impressed by Kirk's refusal to kill their Wyatt Earp doppelganger, decide that maybe the Federation isn't so bad after all.

Although this episode is nominally based on the actual Gunfight at the OK Corral, it's equally based on the proliferation of TV Westerns in early television. At one point in 1959 there were as many as 30 Westerns on the air at once. The massive popularity of Westerns caused many non-Western shows, even science fiction shows, such as Lost in Space, Dr. Who, My Favorite Martian, The Prisoner, and of course Star Trek, to do Western-themed episodes. Star Trek itself was originally pitched as “Wagon Train in Space”.