10 MORE Notorious Star Trek Urban Legends
1. There Was Only One Gene
Gene L. Coon was brought on board during the first season of Star Trek, helping in the day to day running of the show along with editing scripts as well. He wrote several episodes, and under his tenure, as associate producer, several long-term facets of Star Trek were established.
The United Federation of Planets received its name in Arena, while the Klingons were introduced in Errand of Mercy. Starfleet Command was established and Zefram Cochrane was introduced as the inventor of Warp Drive. Khan Noonian Singh and his augments appeared for the first time in Space Seed and the Prime Directive was created for the episode Return of the Archons. William Shatner has attributed every one of these to Coon in his novel Star Trek Memories.
He left the show as a producer during the second season, citing exhaustion and constant bickering with Roddenberry as his main reasons. However, he did return to write several episodes using the pseudonym Lee Cronin, although 'Cronin' was responsible for the episode Spock's Brain, so it's not entirely clear if this was a good thing or not!
Coon died in 1973, long before Star Trek became the franchise it is today. It is however crucial to remember that there were two Genes that created the franchise as it stands.