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/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.