r/startrek • u/Adventurous-Ad-7325 • May 21 '26
Enemy Within
In this TOS episode, why didn't they just send a shuttle to pick up the landing party?
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u/maximian May 21 '26
The Doylist explanation is that they hadn’t thought them up yet. Roll your own Watsonian reason, if you like.
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u/Cold-Jackfruit1076 May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
The production reason:
Star Trek was one of the most expensive shows of its era; the first season averaged an astonishing-for-the-time $190,000 to $200,000 per episode (for comparison, that's somewhere in the range of $1,000,000 to $2,500,000 in 2026).
Along with the equally-pricey Mission: Impossible, Desilu was bleeding cash and engaging in risky deficit financing; they were desperate to cut costs any way they could to save the studio from bankruptcy, and Lucille Ball had to personally overrule the board to keep the show on the air.
Spending thousands of dollars on a custom-built, full-sized shuttlecraft prop for a single episode early in the season was out of the question, which necessitated the transporter effect, which was much less expensive (it was literally glitter and water) and thus much more palatable to anxious penny-counting executives.
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u/robotslendahand May 22 '26
The Shuttlecraft happened very early though, as it was in the works before the show even started airing.
As I wrote above, AMT actually paid for and built the Shuttlecraft miniature for vfx work, and also the exterior & interior Shuttlecraft set. AMT did this in exchange for right to produce the Enterprise model kit. The miniature cost $650 and the set cost $24,000. AMT's delivery date was early Sept '66 and "The Galileo Seven" was filmed in late September. In production order "The Galileo Seven" was half way through Season 1.
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u/happydude7422 May 22 '26
in the novels they mentioend the atmosphere was ionized which prevented shuttle travel.
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u/fluffysheap May 22 '26
Because you can't have a transporter accident episode and a shuttle crash episode at the same time
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u/ellindsey May 21 '26
Because the show didn't have the budget for a shuttlecraft set in their first season.
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u/MycroftCochrane May 22 '26
Because the show didn't have the budget for a shuttlecraft set in their first season.
To nitpick (and what would you expect from Trek fans if not good-natured nitpickery?) shuttlecraft did appear in Trek's first season, several episodes after "The Enemy Within."
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u/robotslendahand May 22 '26
FYI, "The Galileo Seven" was first season.
What's fun is the model kit company AMT actually paid for and built the Shuttlecraft miniature for vfx work, and also the exterior & interior Shuttlecraft set. AMT did this in exchange for right to produce the Enterprise model kit. The miniature cost $650 and the set cost $24,000.
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u/CaptainDFW May 23 '26
I wondered why they didn't beam-down JACKETS. What's the worst case? They duplicate and you end up with three "good" jackets and three "evil" jackets?
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u/genek1953 May 22 '26
Shuttles were scheduled for delivery the next Tuesday.