I found this episode curious for a couple of reasons. For starters, noted criminal attorney Melvin Belli appears as a demonic influence on the orphaned kids of a planet whose parents all died in a case of mass suicide. I wonder why that was. Belli had a single handful of casting credits during his legal career, and this was his first one. Is it possible he did some attorney work for one of the series principals and this was a form of payment? Not only that, but his son appeared as the leader of the kids, Steve, fist pumping his evil spell on the Enterprise crew. I'd be interested in finding out the story behind this casting call.
The other interesting point, and I noted it even when I saw this for the first time many years ago. Out of the blue, without any prior mention of Belli's character name, Captain Kirk calls him the Gorgan. How did he come up with that? I was waiting for some explanation having to do with the type of evil influence that the specter represented, but nothing ever came of it. Then, as I was thinking about THAT, I had to chuckle over an old sci-fi flick from a decade earlier, 1959's "Teenagers From Outer Space". In that picture, aliens land on Earth in search of a planet on which they can graze their livestock, which are these goofy silhouetted lobsters that crawl across the screen. Those lobsters were called Gargons!
The notable contribution this story makes to the Star Trek canon is the idea that mind control leading to herd mentality can be a poison to a culture - "Without followers, evil cannot spread". It's always easiest to get young minds to follow a charismatic leader when they're at their most vulnerable, particularly following a tragedy. That these kids helped produce the tragedy was taking it a step further, and was something of a daring idea for Roddenberry and his crew.
The other interesting point, and I noted it even when I saw this for the first time many years ago. Out of the blue, without any prior mention of Belli's character name, Captain Kirk calls him the Gorgan. How did he come up with that? I was waiting for some explanation having to do with the type of evil influence that the specter represented, but nothing ever came of it. Then, as I was thinking about THAT, I had to chuckle over an old sci-fi flick from a decade earlier, 1959's "Teenagers From Outer Space". In that picture, aliens land on Earth in search of a planet on which they can graze their livestock, which are these goofy silhouetted lobsters that crawl across the screen. Those lobsters were called Gargons!
The notable contribution this story makes to the Star Trek canon is the idea that mind control leading to herd mentality can be a poison to a culture - "Without followers, evil cannot spread". It's always easiest to get young minds to follow a charismatic leader when they're at their most vulnerable, particularly following a tragedy. That these kids helped produce the tragedy was taking it a step further, and was something of a daring idea for Roddenberry and his crew.