A pregnancy was deleted in Star Trek: TOS

Throughout seventy-nine episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series, there weren’t any pregnancies that involved any of the crew members unlike the series that followed. The Next Generation had Keiko’s pregnancy and Troi’s pregnancy that didn’t last very long. Deep Space Nine had Keiko pregnant again before the baby was transferred to Major Kira, and Voyager had two pregnancies, Ensign Wildman and B’Elanna Torres. Okay, three if you really want to include Seska. But, originally, a scene was written in TOS that would have introduced a pregnancy with one of the crew members.

In Who Mourns for Adonais? Lt. Carolyn Palamas (portrayed by Leslie Parrish) had a brief romantic interlude with Apollo, played by Michael Forest. Of course, nothing is shown on screen, and there is little reason to believe anything beyond a few kisses happened. However, a scene that was ultimately deleted would have changed all of that.

Dr. McCoy was going to discover that Lt. Palamas was carrying Apollo’s child. On the bridge, in an ending scene, McCoy shares the information with Captain Kirk and then asks “”What will the child be… man or God?” as the final lines of the scene. According to Star Trek: The Original Series – The Roddenberry Vault, These Are the Voyages: TOS Season Two, NBC Broadcast Standards asked that the scene be removed.

Had it been allowed to air, it does beg the question: would the pregnancy have been written into the series? Perhaps that’s why NBC wanted it to be removed. Wouldn’t viewers have wanted to know more about Lt. Palamas and Apollo’s child? Star Trek: TOS never really followed through on situations that occurred in an episode, (See The City on the Edge of Forever and Operation: Annihilate) and it would have been difficult to just ignore a crew member who was pregnant by a god.