Movies - TV
Star Trek Shamelessly Ripped Off Lucille Ball For A Classic TOS Episode
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
In the book "Captains' Logs," "Star Trek" screenwriter Oliver Crawford shares that "The Galileo Seven" was a direct ripoff of the 1939 film "Five Came Back," starring Lucille Ball.
In the film, Ball plays Peggy, a woman with a mysterious past. Following a plane crash somewhere in northern Brazil, her and the other passengers have to learn to survive.
In the early days of "Star Trek," a lot of Crawford’s approach as a writer "had been to look at old movies and say, 'Gee, this would make a good "Star Trek" [...] story.'"
Crawford admitted to being a fan of "Five Came Back," and knowingly used the film as the basis of "The Galileo Seven." "It was such a dramatic gimmick, a very tight one," he adds.
The film is more of a traditional Hollywood melodrama, while "The Galileo Seven" was more action-forward and survival-focused, which might have been the result of re-writes.
As Trek writer David Gerrold noted, "The Galileo Seven" is a classic "Star Trek" in that it isn’t the heady, more sci-fi-oriented series that it would eventually become.