A Lost Star Trek episode starring Milton Berle

Captain Kirk and his team soon discover their advanced technology is due to cultural interference by a Federation scientist named Bayne. Bayne was to be played by star and celebrity Milton Berle.

Posted by Saralyn Smith | Published 22 seconds ago

Norman Spinrad thought his 1967 script “Wahamba Ptakhti Kwethu” was lost until he was spotted by a fan asking for an autograph at a convention. A fan scanned the blurry script and emailed it to Spinrad, who published it as an e-book.

Captain Kirk Versus Milton Berle

The script had the Enterprise encounter an ancient race called the Jugali, who were using technology that was supposed to be beyond their ability to develop. Captain Kirk and his team soon discover their advanced technology is due to cultural interference by a Federation scientist named Bayne. Bayne was to be played by star and celebrity Milton Berle.

Bayne had good intentions, but as things often do in science fiction, those good intentions lead to unintended consequences. Because of his interference, the Jugals began to worship Bayne as a god. Captain Kirk’s job is to get him out of there without harming the Jugali.

The whole Bayne god mess would have ended up being funny, if the script had made it to the screen. But that’s not what the script writer, Conrad Spinrad, intended. So he set out to destroy his own episode of Star Trek.

How Conrad Spinrad Killed His Star Trek Script

By Spinrad’s own account, the screen fell victim to one of the worst but most important aspects of big and small screen productions: rewriting. Roddenberry originally pitched a dramatic script from Spinrad that would feature Milton Berle (and an “extended town set” that Roddenberry apparently loved). Berle – who was often referred to as “Mr. Television” – was arguably the greatest television star in the medium’s history and was best known for his comedy.

I Star Trek The line producer didn’t know that Berle could also do drama, though, and rewrote Spinrad’s script to “make it a funny comedy.” Spinrad was so disgusted and embarrassed by the rewritten script that he campaigned for its production: “This is terrible, Gene. [Roddenberry]to kill him!” I told him. “You can’t, you shouldn’t shoot this! Read it and cry!”

His requests were successful, and the text was not recorded, but that also meant that he never found any remains that could match the piece produced. Finally, Spinard makes at least a little money from his work by publishing the script for fans to read.