Star Trek: The Original Series was pitched an episode about Hitler’s father

Star Trek: The Original Series didn’t mind wading into mirky waters. 

Star Trek: The Original Series had its fair share of controversial episodes that even resulted in several being banned in the UK, and Patterns of Force being banned in Germany. But one episode that was pitched back in 1966 would have stirred up all kinds of controversy. The premise was that a physicist aboard the Enterprise had been doing some work in time travel, and he ends up materializing a human from the19th century…a human who, in the future, would father Adolph Hitler.

The man’s appearance and the resulting information as to his future would have presented Captain Kirk and the crew with a difficult decision to make. Returning the man, who was known as Alois Schicklgruber before he adopted his stepfather’s last name of Hitler, to his current time and leaving things to go on as planned meant they knew Hitler would be born and the horrifying events that took place in history would remain. Otherwise, they could forcibly sterilize Alois as the Nazis had done in the past. This would have been a dilemna of epic proportions, and even Spock’s logic wouldn’t have helped.

This Star Trek: The Original Series episode never developed beyond the original pitch.

Captain Kirk had to make tough decisions throughout the three seasons of the series, like in The Taste of Armageddon where he had to show the true cost of war. But in this episode, this would have been an impossible choice. The pitch had included a historian aboard Enterprise who shared that Alois had died young, and therefore, didn’t have the opportunity to be any kind of influence over his young son. Therefore, Alois wasn’t responsible for how his son turned out. Even so, returning Alois to his time period would be allowing the birth of a monster.

It isn’t surprising that this episode didn’t make it past the pitch. It had only been a couple of decades since World War II ended, and this would have ripped the bandages off of wounds that were still incredibly painful. Gene Roddenberry (and others) made a wise decision in passing on this one.