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Was the Star Trek episode Catspaw originally intended as a Halloween episode or was it just coincidence?

Did Gene Rodenberry or network executives specifically request an episode be written with scary elements to show during Halloween?

Or was there a story that a writer had submitted that had some scary Halloween related elements that they ended up showing during Halloween?

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    Wikipedia says the episode was delayed to coincide with Halloween, but offers no references and there's no indication that beyond rescheduling that it was deliberately planned.
    – iandotkelly ♦
    Commented Oct 31, 2017 at 18:04

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Or was there a story that a writer had submitted that had some scary Halloween related elements that they ended up showing during Halloween?

Mostly..but the timing was deliberate.

Information can be found in These Are The Voyages: Season Two by Marc Daniels..

In there he quotes the writer, Robert Bloch..

“They wanted a Halloween story,” Bloch told Starlog magazine in 1986. “I wanted to do something that would involve changes in appearances. So, I decided that instead of having the usual Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation, I’ll have a female who was capable of chameleon-like adaptations. And the rest just fell into place.”

and further...

“Catspaw” aired four days before Halloween, 1967. Talking to this author [Daniels], Dorothy Fontana said, “That was planned all along to be like a Halloween show. When Bob [Bloch] pitched it, we said, ‘That’s got to be the Halloween show for sure!’ I liked it. I thought it was pretty good.”

So basically, it was pitched as a scary story and the producers & other writers grabbed it and made it a Halloween show.

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  • Thanks. I've been wondering about this for a while. I had read that it was delayed to coincide with Halloween which seemed to indicate that it wasn't planned out much.
    – Hannover Fist
    Commented Nov 1, 2017 at 17:53

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