10 Things You Never Knew About Star Trek: The Animated Series

6. The First Episode Was Written By A Cast Member

As already mentioned, when casting the show, the character of Chekov was completely left out. Actor Walter Koenig only discovered this at a convention due to a mix-up between DC Fontana and Gene Roddenberry with believing that the other had informed him of this.

Even though he was not going to be part of the show as an actor, he was given the opportunity to write for it. We have seen Star Trek actors being involved in the writing of some of the movies, but this was the first time an actor would pen an episode.

In the episode, Enterprise is exploring a newly discovered planet. While there, Sulu is poisoned by a native plant and is then saved by a sentient plant (according to Koenig – Roddenberry wanted talking plants).

It turns out the sentient plants are trying to abduct Spock, as their master (a human exile from the Eugenics war) wants to clone Spock for the purposes of creating a perfect race. Did we mention that this human, Stavos Keniclius, is the fifth clone and stands at 50 feet tall?

And what’s better than that? A 50-foot Spock - because there’s also one of those thrown in for good measure!

Though he was offered, it was a one-time thing only, with Koenig citing all the rewrites and revisions, which he didn’t feel added to the episode. He also tried to include Chekov in the episode but there was no budget for this.