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From: tom@utcsri.UUCP (Tom Nadas)
Newsgroups: net.startrek
Subject: Re: The Menagerie
Message-ID: <2343@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 17-Mar-86 10:16:06 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsri.2343
Posted: Mon Mar 17 10:16:06 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 17-Mar-86 10:59:40 EST
References: <1677@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Reply-To: tom@utcsri.UUCP (Tom Nadas)
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 48
Summary: 


Whoever posted that Spock was a Martian in THE CAGE was probably
remembering a reference to Roddenberry's original draft of his 
series proposal in which Spock was identified as half-Martian (see
the bowels of THE MAKING OF STAR TREK).  I believe that was changed
well before filming, as was the name of the Captain (originally
Robert T. April, a name eventually used in the animated series),
the name of the starship (Yorktown), and the crew size (203 -- that
figure is used in THE CAGE/MENAGERIE).  The choice of Vulcan isn't
much better than Mars, since Vulcan was a hypothetical 0th planet
in our solar system (I'm talking astronomy history here, not ST), 
orbiting inside the orbit of Mercury (and therefore washed out from
view by its minimal elongation from old Sol).  Anybody know at what
point they decided Vulcan was an extrasolar world?  I have a 
sneeking suspicion that that was James Blish's one real contribution
to Star Trek, since his adaptation (of TOMORROW IS YESTERDAY, I think)
is the earliest source I've been able to find of it categorically NOT
being the mythical solar planet.

I just went and got the book, Star Trek 2.  It was published in 
February 1968, early enough to have had an impact on the series 
(especially since Paramount would have seen the manuscript months
before that).  Interestingly, Blish does make reference to the
mythical planet Vulcan, thus:  

	[CAPT. CHRISTOPHER SPEAKING]  "Mr. Spock here tells me
that he is half Vulcan.  Surely you can reach Vulcan from here.  
That's supposed to be just inside the orbit of Mercury."

	["There is no such solar planet as Vulcan," Kirk said.  
"Mr. Spock's father was a native of The Vulcan, which is a planet
of 40 Eridani."

(Page 34, Bantam paperback edition)

Of course, it could have been in D. C. Fontana's script and edited
out later, but I don't think so.

Cheers
Robert J. Sawyer
in Toronto
c/o
-- 

					Tom Nadas

UUCP:   {decvax,linus,ihnp4,uw-beaver,allegra,utzoo}!utcsri!tom
CSNET:  tom@toronto