Sloppy Scripting Put A Massive Plot Hole In Star Trek's And The Children Shall Lead Episode

In the "Star Trek" episode "And the Children Shall Lead" (October 11, 1968), the Enterprise discovers a remote science station where the entire staff seems to have died by their own hands. Chillingly, the children of the staff — all of them under 12 — seem oblivious to the dead bodies scattered around, happily playing and giggling as usual. Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) posits that the kids might have blocked out the horrors as a form of protective amnesia, but soon the real plot is revealed. In private, the children are visited by a ghostly being named Gorgan (star lawyer Melvin Belli, who was referenced in David Fincher's "Zodiac") who imbues them with eerie mental powers and gives them dark instructions.

Gorgan tells the children to take over the Enterprise, which they are able to do by pumping their fists and hypnotizing the crew. Sulu (George Takei) looks at the viewscreen and sees knives and swords. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) looks in a mirror and sees that she is now 100 years old. Gorgan aims to abscond to another planet where he'll have a home base from which he can take over the galaxy. The kids are his mere pawns.

Because Trekkies have a keen eye for details (a polite way of saying "nitpickers"), many have noticed a small error in "And the Children Shall Lead." When the children want to summon Gorgan, they perform a specific invocational chant. Kirk (William Shatner) and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) record the chant and play it back to conjure Gorgan themselves. Partway through the episode — as seen in the script archived on the Orion Press Fanzines website — Kirk requests that Spock "summon up the Gorgan." It won't be until later, however, that Kirk will be told Gorgan's name for the first time.

Oops.

Prior to the "summon up the Gorgan" moment in the fourth act of the episode, Kirk hadn't been told Gorgan's name, and there was no way he could have learned it. Later, when Kirk finally confronts Gorgan, he asks the apparition's name. One of the kids, Tommy (Craig Huxley), informs Kirk for the first time. "He is Gorgan," Tommy says. "He is our friend — and he is all-powerful."

Kirk's use of the name "Gorgan" appears both in the original script and in the final broadcast version of the episode. It was an error that slipped through all the way to production. The Orion Press website posits that the gaffe was the result of an editing error during the scriptwriting phase.

Spotting errors in "Star Trek" is, of course, a robust extracurricular sport commonly played by Trekkies, and is usually done playfully. Indeed, author Phil Farrand assembled several definitive texts of "Star Trek" errors in "The Nitpicker's Guide for Next Generation Trekkers" (1993), "The Nitpicker's Guide for Classic Trekkers" (1994), "The Nitpicker's Guide for Next Generation Trekkers, Volume II" in 1995, and "The Nitpicker's Guide for Deep Space Nine Trekkers" in 1996.

Farrand noted several other conspicuous errors in "And the Children Shall Lead" beyond the mere Gorgan gaffe. For one, Kirk seems to have abandoned a pair of security guards on the planet when the Enterprise left with the children. Oops. In another scene, the children watch archive footage of their parents, and the recording device can be seen in the archive footage. Oops. Later on, Kirk and Spock enter a turbolift, give no voice instructions, yet still arrive at their destination.

Nitpicky? Definitely. Fun to spot? Absolutely. After all, being a Trekkie is a full-contact sport.