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Teleplay writer Oliver Crawford says "The Galileo Seven" was inspired by his viewing of a 1939 film called
Five Came Back. (A catty footnote: David Gerrold, scribe of the famous "Trouble with Tribbles" episode, called "The Galileo Seven" a rip-off of the Jimmy Stewart film
The Flight of the Phoenix. Meow.)
Five Came Back concerned a plane crash in the Andes and the survivors who faced the constant threat of surrounding headhunters. Crawford toyed with the idea and came up with a story line in which Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley), and a couple of other crew members crash on the surface of a hostile planet during a shuttle mission. With communication between the small craft and the
Enterprise disrupted by quasar activity, Spock and the others must defend themselves against a formidable threat with only primitive, handmade weapons. That's the scenario, but the real drama is in the rising conflict between the half-Vulcan Spock's coldly logical approach to survival and the passions of his human crew, who soon come to regard him as a hateful, unfeeling monster. This is an interesting episode, both as a taut action piece and, somewhat indirectly, as a portrait of intolerance (specifically, an intolerance of individual differences) developing under stress.
--Tom Keogh
From the Back Cover
Spock learns the trials of command when Kirk sends him, along with Scotty, McCoy and a shuttlecraft crew, to investigate a quasar-like phenomenon.
TREK TRIVIA
Don Marshall (Lieutenant Boma) later starred in the TV series The Land Of the Giants.
This episode introduced the Galileo shuttlecraft, which has been shown at Star Trek conventions across the United States.
