Star Trek (1966) - 277 mistakes in entire show

Deliberate "mistake": Special effects of the ship in space were very expensive in the 60s and couldn't be wasted. So when a larger model was built with slightly different nacelles, shots of both versions became common, even within the same episode. This is why the Enterprise sometimes had red needle-tipped nacelles and sometimes lighted "spinning" ones, and in aft views she had either round white balls or perforated vents at the nacelles' ends.

Visible crew/equipment: "The Cage": When the doctor is mixing the drink and Pike gets up off the bed to accept it, an equipment shadow sweeps across the left side of the screen.

Plot hole: "The Cage": Pike says he doesn't want women on his bridge, Number One being the one and only exception, and he keeps ordering Colt off it. His apology to Number One indicates that A)he doesn't think of her as female, and B)she's the only exception to his rule. So how does he overlook the very female crew-woman seated at the science station?

Revealing: "The Cage": When the laser cannon starts firing at the Talosian rockface, a styrofoam block falls and rolls away on the left side of the screen. After a brief shot of the crew, we see the cannon still firing, and the exact same block falls and rolls off screen on the left again.

Revealing: While the interior sets for the shuttle craft provided adequate room for the actors to stand, the mock-up built for exterior shots was undersized, and too short to stand up in by several inches. So when entering or exiting the shuttle, the actors always had to duck.

Revealing: "The Cage": In the first illusion, Vina runs down the path from the fortress to Pike. When we cut to close-ups, they're both suddenly standing much closer to the building than before, and the fortress has changed color from brownish orange to white.

Revealing: "The Cage": Due to a poor edit, there's an odd jump cut and a change of lighting just as the Keeper comes out of the elevator on his way to an attempt to steal the laser pistols from the cell.

Continuity: When Rand brings Sulu the plate of food, it has a bowl of colored cubes on it. Then there's a cut to a close-up of Sulu eating the cubes and the bowl is now a plate. Then in the long shot it's a bowl again.

Continuity: When they first arrive on the planet, the tricorder Kirk is holding for McCoy starts on his left shoulder, disappears in the next shot, then in the next shot after that reappears in his right hand.

Other: Spock and McCoy have a brief argument over whether Charlie could have survived on his own all those years. Because they're talking at the same time, Spock saying "Doctor" as McCoy says "Mr. Spock," the closed captioner apparently misunderstood McCoy's line. The caption has him calling Spock "Dr. Spock."

Continuity: When Capt. Kirk and Charlie enter the turbolift heading for the bridge, Kirk is wearing one style of tunic and when the turbolift arrives on the bridge, Kirk is wearing a completely different tunic.

Continuity: Kirk first says the Antares is a cargo vessel, but after it explodes he calls it a science probe vessel.

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene where Dr. Dehnar is talking to Gary Mitchell in sick bay, when he grabs her arm you can see the shadow of the boom mike on the door and adjacent wall.

Continuity: When Kirk is fighting Gary Mitchell, his tombstone reads James R. Kirk. Kirk's middle name is Tiberius. Mitchell is a friend of long standing and would not have got it wrong.

Continuity: Lt. Joey said to Lt. Sulu "You don't outrank me and you don't have pointed ears" but Joey is a junior grade lieutenant so Sulu would outrank him.

Continuity: As the bridge crew monitors Psi 2000 on the view screen, a glitch in the special effects matte makes the planet vanish briefly and then reappear - twice.

Continuity: Initially, the Enterprise orbits Psi 2000 as the planet turns westward. But in later shots, on the bridge view screen, the planet has reversed directions and now turns eastward.

Revealing: When Kirk beams up from the planet, the insignia on his shirt is not there.

Continuity: Near the end, when the evil Kirk is confronting the good Kirk on the bridge and we see him in a close-up, the scratches on his face are on his right cheek. This is wrong because Yeoman Janice Rand had scratched him on the left cheek.

Continuity: All during the episode there are scratches on the left cheek of the "evil" Kirk. When the "Good" Kirk and the evil Kirk confront each other on the bridge, there's a shot where the scratches are on the right cheek of the evil Kirk.

Continuity: Spock records a log entry as the "second officer". It appears they got "first officer" confused with "second in command."

Continuity: As the women are beaming aboard in the transporter room, McCoy's uniform switches from the standard blue tunic to his short-sleeved medical smock and back again between shots.

Continuity: Kirk's says that it is Stardate 1329.8 in his opening log entry when the ship is in pursuit of Mudd's vessel. But after Mudd and the women have been brought aboard, Kirk's next log entry says that it is Stardate 1329.1.

Continuity: When the android Kirk boards the Enterprise and takes a "command pack," he walks out and down to the transporter, but he doesn't have the pack in his hand.

Continuity: When the android Kirk is created from the oddly short-legged blank, the turntable rotates to show Chapel the new Kirk - and the indentation on the other side suddenly disappears.

Continuity: The landing party is out of contact with the Enterprise for two days because of the missing communicators. Wouldn't the Enterprise notice at some point and beam down some more, or make some other attempt to contact Kirk & Co.?

Continuity: The ropes tying Yeoman Rand to the chair keep changing positions (above her elbows or below her elbows) between shots.

Continuity: The dust smudging both Spock's uniform and that of the older security guard instantly vanishes when they walk out of the building to go look for the onlies.

Factual error: If Miri's planet is a "duplicate" (meaning identical) Earth, it should have clouds. It doesn't. This remains a mistake because "duplicate" means "exactly the same," and thus the clouds should be there. The special effects crew forgot to put them in. Noteworthy: the very first thing fixed in the digitally enhanced version of this episode was the duplicate Earth. It has clouds now.

Continuity: For a penal colony, Tantalus V has really poor security. Van Gelder manages to escape with ease, by hiding a box - the only box - beamed up to the Enterprise.

Continuity: As Balok's 10 minutes are counting down, McCoy comes onto the bridge wearing a standard blue velour uniform. A few minutes later, when Spock says he can bring up Balok's image, McCoy is suddenly wearing his medical tunic with the different fabric and collar. Then when Bailey starts losing it, McCoy is back in the regular velour costume again.

Continuity: Spock states that the Fesarius (Balok's ship) "must be a mile in diameter". Yet any one of the small spheres that make up the Fesarius dwarfs the Enterprise. If the Enterprise is about 300m long, the Fesarius would have to be around 6 km in diameter - considerably larger than a mile.

Continuity: After they've blasted the cube, Kirk and Spock are discussing repairs on the bridge. Spock's earpiece is in place one minute, but vanishes the next when the camera angle changes.

Continuity: The landing party beams down in daylight, but the window inside Mendez's office shows that it's night outside. In the next exterior shot, it's day again. Next shot back in the office: night.

Continuity: Kirk introduced Spock as "Lieutenant Commander" instead of "Commander".

Continuity: When Spock takes Captain Pike out of the briefing room, Pike appears, via the viewscreen, on Talos IV in the very next shot. There is no possible way Spock could have gotten Pike to the transporter room that fast.

Continuity: On the map of the area, in the Romulan Star Empire, the 2 planets where Romulus and Remus, but the map read Romulus and Rom II.

Visible crew/equipment: You can see the shadow of a boom mike on a tree just after the Caretaker appears.

Revealing: Stock footage turns the single plane strafing Rodriguez and Angela into two attacking planes for a moment. It becomes one plane again when it flies over Kirk and company.

Factual error: When Spock beams down after calculating there was just enough energy left for him to do so, Sulu and Kirk watch him materialize, and Sulu says, "Someone beaming down from the bridge." From the bridge? Shouldn't he have said "from the ship"? No one ever beamed down directly from the bridge, but even if they could, how would Sulu know that's where they'd come from?

Continuity: Don Juan tears Yeoman Barrows' tunic at the right shoulder. Near the end, when she changes from the fairy tale dress back into the tunic, the torn right shoulder is suddenly mended. They're cut off from the ship by the power drain, so she couldn't have beamed up for a new one. She emerges from the bushes after changing, and now her tunic is torn at the left shoulder.

Revealing: Near the end of the episode, the heavy chains restraining the "loose" tiger are visible both around his neck and running across the rocks to the right of the shot.

Revealing: During the scene with Sulu shortly after the samurai incident he casts three shadows, if he where illuminated by natural sunlight he would cast only one.

Factual error: In a scene where Kirk and McCoy are examining the tracks left by the White Rabbit and Alice, in the background behind some trees can be seen a white building (the shoot was done at Africa, USA, an animal theme park).

Continuity: Finnegan flips Kirk over his shoulder near the end of their fight. When Kirk lands, his uniform is still completely intact, but when we cut to a close-up, his shirt is suddenly shredded.

Plot hole: Trelane says he studied Earth images that travelled to him at light speed, and earlier they establish Gothos is 900 years from Earth. But Trelane references Napoleon and Hamilton, who weren't around until 1800 or so. That would put this episode in 2700, but the original Trek episodes are set in the 2200's.

Continuity: The giant rock sitting on the promontory, in long shot, is much larger than the Kirk stand-in stunt man who climbs the rock face to reach it. Next shot, when Kirk pushes the boulder over the edge, it's suddenly much smaller than he is. When it lands on the Gorn, the rock is even smaller - now less than half its original size.

Other: Kirk's voice-over log entry says he's been "placed on the surface of an asteroid." The Metrons earlier referred to it as a planet prepared for them with a suitable atmosphere. How and why does Kirk suddenly assume that it's an asteroid rather than a full sized planet? As an experienced space veteran, Kirk, who has already been told that it's a planet, would never make such a mistake.

Continuity: When Kirk and Spock are chatting in Kirk's quarters, they finish their discussion and as they head out Kirk orders the ship to red alert. Then after the commercial break, they're on the bridge, the Gorn ship is at a dead halt, and Kirk orders the ship to red alert again. With a hostile ship in the vicinity, Kirk, a highly experienced captain, would hardly have taken the ship off red alert.

Continuity: During the attack on the outpost, as Spock arrives in his foxhole, Kirk puts down the box of ammunition and positions the grenade launcher. We cut to a higher angle as Spock scrambles around to the Captain's left, and Kirk is putting the box down and positioning the launcher all over again. As the action was supposedly continuous, there wasn't time for Kirk to pick the items up and set them down a second time.

Revealing: At different points during the Metrons' transmission to the Enterprise, both Kirk and the Gorn pop into the picture a few seconds after the rocky landscape appears.

Other: In the end credits the character of Captain Christopher is credited as Major Christopher.

Continuity: When Kirk and Sulu enter the records room, they pick the lock. Later when they beam the officer back down, he enters the room without unlocking the door. The room should be locked since they beamed him down in the "past" erasing their having been on Earth and in the records room.

Factual error: When they are searching for Finney hidden somewhere in the ship, all ship noises are deadened, and the heartbeats of those on the bridge are muffled by McCoy. In order to locate Finney's heartbeat the ship's auditory sensors are magnified by "one to the fourth power". That's 1x1x1x1 = 1, ie no magnification.

Continuity: McCoy uses a "masking device" to block out the bridge personnel's heartbeats. When McCoy masks Spock's heartbeat, he holds the microphone, err, masking device over the wrong part of Spock's anatomy. We'd already established that Spock's heart wasn't in the same place as a human.

Continuity: They said that engineering was "B" deck which is deck 2, but engineering is deck 7 which would be "G" deck.

Continuity: As Captain Kirk talks to Dr. McCoy, the background changes from stone to a red background in a closeup of Kirk's face.

Continuity: The lawgivers' robes that Kirk and Spock take off and drop on the floor just inside the doorway disappear after they phaser the wall to reveal Landru. The robes reappear a few minutes later, but have now migrated several feet to one side, bunched up against the wall where they are no longer in tripping range of the actors about to enter the scene.

Continuity: As Kirk and co. carries O'Neil out of the alley, the supposedly unconscious woman in the black dress moves her foot out of the way as they pass.

Continuity: In the exterior shot, the double front doors of Reger's house have large curtained windows in them. After the Enterprise landing party rushes inside and closes the doors, however, they're suddenly solid wood with no windows.

Continuity: The U.S.S. Archon wasn't violating the prime directive, the prime directive was formed in 2253.

Continuity: At the hearing in the final scene, there are two bits of debris of some sort (small, black and roundish) littering the floor at the bottom left of the screen. Whatever it was disappears when Scott, Spock, Kirk and McCoy get up to leave the room.

Continuity: When the landing party beams over at the beginning, the transporting officer is wearing a blue jumpsuit, but when they go to the closeup of his hands, they have a red uniform, two braid stripes, and are the standard shot they use when Scotty does the transporting.

Plot hole: It is stated during the episode that Khan was, at one time, the ruler of over 1/4th the Earth's population, during a very key moment in the planet's history (The "Eugenics" Wars). Such a personage undoubtedly would be very well known to 23rd century Earth people, at a level of infamy approximating Julius Caeser or Adolf Hitler. Yet it is only 2/3rds the way through the episode, thanks to a computer search by Spock, that the crew divines his identity. Lt. McGivers at the very least should have almost instantly recognized him.

Continuity: The landing party had been apprehended and placed in a locked room under the supervision of a single guard. Spock manages to free them and Kirk knocks out this guard, leaving him in the locked room. Later on in the episode, they return to this very room and somehow this guard is gone. He could not have woken up and walked out because it is a locked room and Kirk took his key.

Plot hole: The ambassador and his aide beam down to the planet. This would not be possible because earlier on Scotty refused to lower the screens/shields until the Captain told him to do so. It had already been established in an earlier episode titled "Arena" that transporters don't work with screens up.

Continuity: Just after the ship is first attacked, Scotty tells McCoy, "We can't fire full phasers with our screens up." Say what? The Enterprise couldn't operate transporters with the shields up, but it fired its phasers, full or otherwise, with the screens up every time it went into battle, and always had. If they'd been forced to shut their shields down every time they fired, the Enterprise would have been history long before this.

Factual error: How do the Eminiarians fire a weapon based on sound ("Decibels - 18 to the 12th power") up into the vacuum of space at the Enterprise?

Other: Spock is wearing his normal blue uniform when shot with the "happy spores" from the strange plant. The next scene is with Kirk inquiring about Spock's location to which he is told nobody has seen him. Spock somehow manages to find some green overalls out in the meadows when we switch back to him.

Continuity: As Spock beams up from the planet, Kirk, who is manning the transporter controls suddenly pulls a steel pipe from nowhere.

Continuity: Kirk threw a "spore flower" across the bridge and it landed towards the front of the bridge. Later on, Kirk returns to the bridge and despite all the crew being on the planet the flower is gone.

Continuity: When Spock and Kirk pursue the Horta, they come to a fork in the tunnel. Kirk points right and tells Spock to go left. Then he points left and says he'll go right.

Continuity: After his initial mind meld with the horta, Spock tells Kirk, "That's all I got, Captain: waves and waves of searing pain." A minute later, he says that it's "a highly intelligent, extremely sophisticated animal" that calls itself a horta. Apparently, waves of searing pain were not all that he got after all. Unlike Spock to be so imprecise.

Deliberate "mistake": Here, as in nearly every other ST episode featuring caves, caverns or mines, all the floors are perfectly flat and the lighting adequate-to-see-by or even brilliant. These configurations are easily found on soundstage sets - but not in nature.

Revealing: The Horta's round tunnels have perfectly even striations and are obviously factory-manufactured tubes. Acid secreted by an elliptical creature burning through solid rock would not create a perfect circle. The Horta is visibly not chewing, sculpting or smoothing the sides. No acid burning method would leave patterned stripes on the walls, either.

Revealing: Shatner fluffs his line when asking the mining engineers whether they've posted sentries. He asks if they've posted "centuries" instead.

Plot hole: Spock has absolutely no way to know, yet, that the horta only secretes her corrosive substance when tunneling: he hasn't had time to examine her or to do more than determine that she does indeed secrete a substance that cuts the tunnels. So he should at the very least scan the piece of her that falls off before he picks it up with his bare hands. Major lapse of logic, which given his character goes beyond a character mistake.

Continuity: When Kirk orders the crew to fire phasers; the exterior shots show the ship firing torpedoes, and torpedo explosions flashing out in space.

Visible crew/equipment: When Kirk is thrown into jail with Spock you can see the mat used to break his fall.

Continuity: Kirk and Spock stun two Klingon guards, yet despite being unconscious, the guard on the left jumps from the balcony and lands feet first on the ground. If he were really unconscious he would have simply tumbled down.

Continuity: The Organians cause all the weapons to overheat, and everyone drops them to the floor. When Kor moves to the desk to call his ship, though, he's wearing his disruptor. It's gone again when he returns.

Continuity: Lazarus had knocked out the transporter technician, but when Kirk arrives he is fine and operating the transporter.

Continuity: Both the positive and negative versions of Lazarus have a long mustache and a fairly full "waterfall" beard - until the scene in the briefing room, when inexplicably, the mustache and beard are both suddenly so thin they're barely visible. As soon as they beam down to the planet, however, the much thicker facial hair is restored.

Continuity: Mad Lazarus has just put a black-and-white hatch cover over the stolen dilithium crystal in his time ship. It's in place when Kirk arrives to confront him. But a moment later, when Kirk leans in and is accidentally transported to the negative universe, the cover has disappeared. It's still missing when Kirk returns to push Lazarus through the portal.

Continuity: Kirk keeps referring to Masters as "Lieutenant", even though she has no braid on her sleeve - all Enterprise lieutenants have a single gold braid on each sleeve.

Plot hole: Kirk knows that Lazarus is insane and that he wants the Enterprise dilithium crystals. Yet he's not restrained in sickbay and is, in fact, given free run of the ship so that he can knock out the crew in engineering and steal the crystals. Other than to further a woefully weak plotline, this makes no sense whatsoever.

Continuity: As Kirk and Spock prepare to enter the time portal, Spock deliberately places the tricorder at his left side, holding it there with his left hand. As they appear in 1930 earth, he is holding the tricorder with his right hand and his left hand is free.

Continuity: After Edith stumbles and nearly falls down the stairs, she still has both her shoes on. But after the kiss, she proceeds up the stairs and is now carrying one shoe. She had no time to take it off, as she was, er, busy with Kirk the whole time.

Factual error: Edith Keeler says to McCoy, "My young man is taking me to see a Clark Gable movie." In 1930, Clark Gable was an uncredited bit player who had last made a film in 1926 - Edith, a New York charity worker, would not even have encountered his name.

Continuity: While he and Kirk discuss the history tapes in their room, Spock's shirt collar is turned up on the left side in close-ups, but straightened out in the full shots.

Continuity: When they put the satellites in orbit, Sulu announces they are in place. Then Kirk says "Energize" and the next shot shows the helmsman station and Sulu is absent - some guy in a red shirt is there instead.

Character mistake: When Spock tries and fails to beam down to the the planet, Kirk claimed to have ordered Spock to stay in sickbay, yet he never ordered it: he simply requested Spock to stay in sickbay. There is a difference between a request and an order.

Revealing: When Kirk and company beam down, the trees are brown. In the next shot, the trees are green. Most probably a different camera lens was used for the shots.

Plot hole: Spock presents himself to Dr. McCoy in sickbay to be relieved of duty for "killing" Captain Kirk. (It's done, of course, so Kirk can walk out of the room and surprise Spock by being alive) But Bones has no command authority since this is a legal/military matter. If Spock believes he should be relieved for breaking regulations and committing murder, and thus confined until court-martial, Scotty would be the one to do it, as he is the next senior officer. And this is not a character mistake, Spock quotes regulations regularly, there is no way he'd ignore chain of command.

Revealing: In the middle of the episode Spock goes to Plack Tao to meditate. We see a shot of him and then we see some other people. At this moment look directly behind all of them and you will see Spock waiting for his next shot.

Continuity: When Spock and Captain Kirk are fighting with the spears, watch Kirk closely after he has been slashed by Spock and his shirt ripped. Both the ripped shirt and scar appear and disappear throughout the rest of the fight.

Continuity: Just before T'Pring calls for the challenge, there's a wide shot of her going toward the gong. Then they cut to a closeup and she is standing beside Stonn, and then she starts moving toward the gong again.

Continuity: Kyle reports the landing party's whereabouts on the surface, and Spock asks, "And Apollo?" Kirk had no chance to call the ship after Apollo revealed his name - so Spock should not have known it.

Continuity: The fruit bowl disappears from the table altogether just before the Enterprise fires on the temple. The small statue that's been there from the start vanishes as well.

Factual error: Spock says they've only managed to punch holes in the force field large enough to fire through. But when the Enterprise fires, the force field (in the shape of Apollo's hand) is no longer there at all.

Revealing: When Apollo first grows large, the shimmering edge of the special effects matte is visible in the sky just above his right shoulder.

Continuity: Apollo's lightning bolt throws Scotty across the table and dislodges a big bunch of green grapes from the fruit bowl. They fall onto the table. But when Kirk's crew later assemble at the table, the green grapes aren't there, or in the bowl, or anywhere in the temple. They magically reappear in the bowl just after Spock gets through to Kirk on the communicator.

Continuity: When Nomad initially attacks the Enterprise, Uhura appears/disappears in subsequent shots of the bridge.

Revealing: When the Enterprise is attacked in the prologue, some of the crew grab onto the central console (that Sulu and Chekov usually sit at). The console noticeably lifts up from the stage surface, almost falling over. Twice.

Continuity: After Spock mind melds with Nomad, Kirk hustles him out into the corridor. In the shots taken from behind Kirk, the Captain's left hand is high on Spock's shoulder. In the reverse angles, his hand is several inches lower on Spock's arm.

Revealing: When Nomad's bolt sends Scotty flying across the bridge, you can see the two rubber mats placed on the floor for the stunt man to land on.

Continuity: When Kirk sits down to consult the computer, the big green potted plant on the shelf behind him is there in full shots and missing in close-ups. It's much too large to be completely hidden behind him: if it shows up behind his head in full shot, it should show in close-ups, too, but it doesn't. It's not there.

Continuity: A subtle mistake, but when Spock is lying on the table in sick bay and recovers, the readings on the monitor are in the normal range. However Spock, as a Vulcan, produces very unusual readings on the monitors in other episodes.

Revealing: During the fist fight between the transported crew and Spock, the use of stunt doubles in the wide shot is quite obvious.

Continuity: Kirk punches the Imperial crewman that helps him in the face, but when the guy falls on the ground he's holding his side.

Revealing: Kirk orders Marple to cut around a rock to the right and make a noise to distract their observer. But the actor appears to slightly screw up his cue: Marple promptly traverses the rock to the left instead of the right.

Continuity: Throughout the entire episode the planet's sky is red, yet during the scenes where the clouds come and lightning strikes, it becomes obvious that they simply used stock footage of Earth's clouds, since the sky is blue.

Visible crew/equipment: When Vaal is not fed and he starts spewing smoke everywhere, you can see a volcano type firework going off just inside his mouth.

Continuity: Spock was knocked unconscious by the lightning strike, yet when Kirk pulls him up it is obvious that Spock was assisting him with his legs.

Continuity: When the giant cat breaks down the cell door, Korob falls beneath it face down with his head toward the door. In the very next shot, he's in a completely different position - face up with his feet toward the door.

Continuity: Korob uses his wand to put a feast on the table and light the candles. Only, in the very next, close-up shot of him, the feast is gone and the candles are unlit again. Next wide shot, everything is back.

Continuity: After Korob fails to get information, he tells Scott and Sulu to take them out. They escort Spock and Kirk over to the door past McCoy, but don't stop (apparently DeForrest missed his cue.)

Continuity: When Sylvia angrily upbraids Korob for talking too much, an inserted reaction close-up of him makes the table and chairs change from in front of him to behind him and back between shots.

Revealing: Near the end of the episode, after Kirk has destroyed the orb, we see Korob and Sylvia in their true form. As they move, you can see the black strings used to manipulate the puppets.

Continuity: Norman is behind Uhura and Chekhov, but when Harry Mudd walks up to Spock, Norman is now behind android 2 and Spock.

Continuity: The shiny gold blanket covering the dying Commissioner Hedford is tucked up to her neck in close-ups, but only reaches her upper waist in full shots.

Continuity: In one scene the Enterprise's phasers were pink instead of blue.

Continuity: After their life threatening surgery, Spock and Sarek somehow manage to switch beds between being in surgery and recovering.

Continuity: During the fight with the Andorian Kirk was stabbed in his lower kidney region, he even holds his hand there to stop the bleeding. In sickbay later on, he has a bandage around his chest and McCoy says he has a punctured lung.

Continuity: Just before Kirk kicks his attacker for the final time during the fight in the corridor, the Andorian picks the knife up off the deck with his left hand. In the very next shot, the knife has instantly switched to his right hand.

Continuity: When Sarek enters the banquet room to take his medication, the Tellarite sitting at the table holds a glass in his right hand. In all the full shots with Sarek in the foreground, the glass switches to the Tellarite's left hand. In all the close-ups of him, it's back in his right again.

Continuity: Mr. Sulu's equipment comes up to aid him at red alert, yet shortly after it is gone.

Continuity: During the coup attempt, one Capellan fights with the leader and gets stabbed. Before and after he is stabbed, the man's outfit changes entirely (look at the fur scarf, which goes from white to red.)

Revealing: In McCoy's video of the Capellans, the weapon thrown at the sapling actually misses it and nails a nearby bush instead. The tree, however, obediently breaks in half and falls over anyway.

Continuity: Kirk's arrow strikes the Klingon in the knee. But a few shots later, the shaft is protruding from his thigh, several inches above its original position. Still later, he's holding one hand to his calf just below the knee, which isn't where the arrow was either time.

Continuity: Before the Capellans reach him, the Klingon's body moves into a completely different position, and to a different spot on the ground, than it was in when he first fell.

Deliberate "mistake": When the decoyed Enterprise heads back to Capella, the special effects shot is reversed to indicate that it's going back in the other direction. Unfortunately, this gives us two brief shots of the ship with the registration numbers backwards.

Continuity: When the Klingon shoots Maab with a hand phaser, the beam is yellow as he fires, but red when it strikes Maab.

Continuity: Mr Checkov has a rather unfortunate hair styling during the beginning of his role in Season 2. In this episode his hair is normal until the end, where in between being given an order and carrying it out he somehow manages to go and have his hair professionally done and made all bouffant.

Continuity: The aging Kirk's hairline has receded considerably. When he ages still more and goes completely gray, however, the receding process inexplicably reverses itself, and he suddenly has much more hair on his forehead than before.

Continuity: The Romulan vessels fire plasma weapons (as seen in "Balance of Terror"), but when they hit the Enterprise they become photon torpedoes.

Continuity: At the end, when Kirk and Garrovick are beamed up seconds before the explosion, Kirk is holding his communicator up to his mouth with both hands. But when they finally materialize on the Enterprise, Kirk's hands are down at his sides: no communicator in sight.

Continuity: Dr. McCoy's medical tunic had an engineering patch on it instead of the science patch it should have.

Continuity: In the briefing room, Hengist and the Prefect are sitting in chairs against the wall at least a foot apart, with bright overhead lighting that casts no shadows on the wall behind them. When we cut to a two-shot of them, however, they're suddenly shoulder-to-shoulder with almost no space between them, and the lighting changes to cast very dark shadows behind them.

Other: In the scene near the end when Kirk orders Kyle to beam Hengist into space, Kirk and Kyle say their lines in the wrong order. Roughly: Kyle: Don't get excited, Captain. I would have done it. Kirk: Spock, you do it.

Continuity: The ID cards Kirk puts into the computer to verify their identity appear/disappear in close/long shots.

Continuity: The tribble-inundated Kirk is holding one of the small fur balls in both hands in some shots, but when the camera angle changes, that tribble vanishes and his hands are no longer even close together.

Continuity: Mr. Leslie appears as one of the guards in the space station, Stardate 45XX.X. Unfortunately, he was killed in 'Obsession,' Stardate 36XX.X. External websites have a variety of excuses for this miraculous reappearance, but he very definitely dies in the show, with no canonical reason for him reappearing beyond it being a mistake.

Continuity: When Kirk is standing in the huge pile of tribbles, he's cradling two large tribbles in his arms in full shots, but only one, and in a different position, in close-ups.

Revealing: When Kirk and Spock answer the intercom in the ship's corridor, Spock's uniform has a large brown coffee stain on the front. (This was digitally removed in the DVD release, but is still visible in the newly-syndicated "computer enhanced" version.).

Continuity: Towards the end of the episode when the Enterprise is moving leaving from the starbase, the ship is at an angle to the camera pointing to the right of the screen. The starbase behind it gets smaller and goes up a little. If the Enterprise were leaving the starbase at that angle, the starbase should have moved to the left and then completely off the screen.

Revealing: When Kirk finds his position on the bridge occupied by the Tribbles, he calls for Dr. McCoy, and as he arrives, Kirk thrusts some of the Tribbles under his nose. In the shots where Kirk's face is seen, one of the Tribbles he is holding features a visible seam.

Continuity: Kirk is holding three large tribbles while talking to Uhura on the bridge. After McCoy enters, the tribbles keep changing positions in Kirk's hands as the shots cut back and forth. (One on top and two underneath, then two on top, etc.).

Continuity: During the scene when the Klingon agent is exposed by the Tribbles, Kirk first holds the two furballs as if they had a handle on the underside (probably for the parts to make them wriggle). As he turns to Spock (the wide-angle shot), he holds the Tribbles cupped in his hands, his thumbs supporting their flanks. But as Kirk approaches Spock (close-up), he has them 'by the handle' again.

Continuity: When Kirk and McCoy dispute about the tribbles on the Enterprise bridge, Kirk holds the two tribbles in his hands at alternate heights. In the shots where McCoy's face is seen, he holds them next under his chins, but when Kirk's face is seen, he holds them at chest level.

Visible crew/equipment: When Chekov's drill thrall sits down and nuzzles up to him in his cell, the boom shadow is visible on the wall at the upper left corner of the screen.

Continuity: At the end, the freed thralls, including Kirk, Chekov and Uhura, remove their collars and throw them onto the game platform. But when Kirk and his crew beam away, the collars have all disappeared.

Continuity: The Providers' representative colors on the game platform and the thralls' collars (all three colors are on Galt's collar) are red, yellow and blue. But when Kirk appears before them, the Providers themselves are red, yellow and green, and so is the gaming symbol inside their glass bubble.

Continuity: Not only do the billiard balls on the pool table keep changing positions between shots, but Bela seems to forget what the cue ball is for, and starts hitting the colored balls directly into the pockets instead.

Continuity: While Kirk and McCoy attack the other two henchmen, Spock shoulder-pinches the card-playing gangster. In the very next shot, Spock's position has jumped from behind the now-unconscious man to several feet away, where he is bending over to retrieve the guns from the floor.

Continuity: After Oxymx gets Spock and McCoy for the second time, Kirk rushes in and turns the tables. Where were Oxymx's guards when Kirk came in? Krako had guards and he was a smaller time gangster than Oxymx.

Continuity: Though the name is spelled "Oxmyx" in the script and pronounced as such in the episode, a poster in Krako's office spells his rival's name as "Okmyx."

Continuity: In the very first scene after the intro, when Bela's goons hold the landing party at gunpoint, Spock's position on the sidewalk shifts back and forth from standing on the other side of a wooden bench to standing alongside Kirk and McCoy with no bench in between. In fact, in the latter shots, the bench has moved all the way across the street.

Revealing: Kirk has just tripped both of Krako's goons with the radio wire strung across the door. He knocks them both out, grabs a gun and then races out the door - right through the space that should still be strung with the trip wire.

Continuity: At the end of act one, the cue stick standing upright against the pool table just in front of Spock disappears when the view cuts to an overhead shot. It's back again after the commercial break.

Continuity: Kirk jumps across the burning hot forge to hide from the people approaching him, only problem is that he actually touches the red hot coals with the palm of his hand. Somehow he managed to avoid serious burns.

Continuity: The gash on Kirk's right cheek disappears between the time he and McCoy fall asleep in the cave and when McCoy wakes up to find Kirk at Nona's side.

Continuity: When Nona is trying to seduce Kirk, we see a close-up of him with nothing on his shoulders. Cut to a two-shot and suddenly Nona's arms are over his shoulders and around his neck.

Revealing: While Nona is struggling with her Villager attackers, the camera tilts just far enough to show, in the distance, a nice (if slightly smoggy) view of buildings, docks and boats in Santa Monica Harbor.

Continuity: Why does Kirk think a being of pure energy is "impossible?" They've encountered several such creatures in the past in "Metamorphosis," "Obsession," and "Wolf in the Fold."

Continuity: Kirk and Spock pretend to be filming Daras so they can enter the building where John Gill will give his speech. Look at the lamp Spock is holding. In the beginning it works, than a couple of scenes later it doesn't, and when they are outside the chamber where John Gill is, his lamp is on again.

Continuity: In a few episode we'll hear about "Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Development," but here Spock claims the odds of a planet developing similar to Earth's Nazi culture are "virtually impossible." Why was it so likely as to be easily accepted there, but impossible here?

Other: In the jail cell scene, when Kirk tears a strap from the bed, his left handcuff is open. It remains open for several seconds, while he tries to conceal it by moving his right hand to block the camera's view.

Continuity: We see our heroes paralysed by the alien belt machines, we then cut to the intro movie. When we go back to them they are being disarmed by the female alien. She takes something from McCoys hand, yet before the intro he had nothing in his hands.

Continuity: When Scotty gets drunk and tosses an empty bottle away, there's a dubbed in sound of glass breaking, but when he collapses, the bottle is unbroken at his feet.

Continuity: Kirk and McCoy are in the Exeter's engineering section when Kirk uses the intercom to ask if anyone is aboard. Several shots of the deserted ship follow as his voice echoes off the walls, including one of engineering - with Kirk and McCoy suddenly, mysteriously absent.

Continuity: At the end, the flag is brought in, and Kirk stands up - but in the next close-up of him, he's sitting down again. Next full shot, he's standing once more.

Continuity: Near the end, when Cloud William opens "The Book," the red bookmark ribbon isn't in the spot he turns to, until the close-up of the page, when it suddenly appears there.

Continuity: The doctor and Spock are facing each other, the camera angle changes and they are suddenly shoulder to shoulder.

Plot hole: When M-5 destroys the ore freighter, Dr. Daystrom says, "Fortunately, it was only a robot ship." But Daystrom wasn't on the bridge yet when Spock announced that fact. He didn't have any way of knowing that the freighter was unmanned.

Revealing: McCoy is knelt down with the rather comically named Flavious Maximus attacking him. On the remastered version it is obvious it is a stunt double doing the part.

Continuity: The sword Spock is carrying disappears between leaving the cell and the group exiting down the corridor. No one else in the shot appears to have taken possession of it.

Continuity: When Isis meows and enters the inner office, the door is open several inches and the lights inside the room are on. When Gary Seven follows her in a few moments later, the door has nearly closed itself and the lights inside are off.

Revealing: Isis the cat was disinclined to hold still for special effects shots. When Gary Seven beams off the Enterprise with the cat in his arms, the position of her head jumps several inches as they're dematerializing.

Continuity: Gary Seven transported down to earth using the enterprise transporter system. Because of this he should re materialise in the same fashion as normal, yet for some unexplained reason he comes from his safe in a cloud of blue gasses.

Continuity: Kirk is talking to Scotty on his monitor, after they have finished talking Kirk goes to switch off the monitor by pressing the button just below it. If you watch very closely you will notice Mr Scotts image fades from the screen before Kirk even touches the button.

Continuity: Gary Seven is talking to his computer, we then switch to Kirk and Co and after a few moments with them we cut back to Gary Seven. Somehow in that time, while talking to his computer he changed his clothes.

Plot hole: Scotty is receiving images of the launch, supposedly from an orbiting satellite. But many of the camera views are obviously from ground level, and couldn't possibly have been taken from orbit. It's not a rebroadcast from a ground camera, either. The implication is clearly that Scotty is is picking up a live satellite feed.

Continuity: Spock claims that history is unchanged at the end of the episode according to the library tapes - how would he know? If history changed, the tapes would change too. And unlike in "City on the Edge of Forever", there's no Guardian around to keep people from being influenced by an altered timeline.

Revealing: "Trek's" new 3rd season uniforms were tighter-fitting than their velour predecessors, presenting a problem for some actors. When the landing party beams down in this episode, the outline of William Shatner's tummy-wrapping girdle is very visibly showing through his costume.

Continuity: When Kara renders the landing party unconscious, Kirk falls with his arms splayed out to each side. But in close-ups, he has one hand folded over his chest.

Factual error: When McCoy is working on putting Spock's brain back it is obvious that his arms are too high up to be doing anything other than fiddling about with Mr Nimoys forehead.

Continuity: After Spock's brain is taken McCoy says he has no idea how long the body can last on life support without the brain. Somehow in the following few moments McCoy has established that Mr Spock's Body will die in exactly 24 earth hours. No explanation is given as to how he came up with this figure.

Revealing: After Kirk and the crew arrive underground, he stuns Kira and removes her bracelet. After he removes it, the unconcious woman quite deliberately lays her hand flat on the ground.

Plot hole: Despite the Romulan ships keeping a close watch on the Enterprise, when they beam the disguised Cpt Kirk over to the Romulan vessel it goes undetected.

Continuity: During the scene where Kirk is talking in the briefing room, the director was obviously not pleased with how James Doohan said his lines. Due to budget constraints, instead of re shooting the scene, they simply replaced Mr Scotts dialogue with another one. You can see it since at one point his lips are completely out of sync, even on the remastered edition.

Factual error: When Kirk is given the medicine badge, it's a stretchy elastic/Spandex headband. This is supposedly a completely pre-industrial culture paralleling the early Native American tribes. They have no fabric, no yarn, no spinning wheels - only hides and animal hair, neither of which can stretch a la Spandex.

Continuity: When Miramanee and her companion first see Kirk at the obelisk, the two women are standing, holding their fruit baskets, just inches from each other. In the very next, reverse angle shot, they're suddenly several feet apart.

Continuity: When Spock orders the phasers to fire, they shoot outward from the ship at an angle from each other, but when they hit the asteroid they converge at a single point.

Continuity: The stardates of Starnes' entries are 5025.3, 5032.4, and 5038.3 But Kirk gives the stardate of when they arrive at the beginning of the episode as 5029.5, so apparently Starnes made two entries after he died.

Visible crew/equipment: When Kirk turns to follow Miranda across the arboretum, the camera shadow is briefly visible on the wall at the lower left of the screen.

Revealing: The colorful nebulae of the energy barrier are showing through the hull of the suddenly-transparent Enterprise as it heads back into the galaxy.

Revealing: During the fight in engineering, Marvick's kick, throwing one of the engineering crewmen violently back against the wall, misses by an obvious mile.

Revealing: In the sickbay scene near the end, someone got their line wrong, resulting in this contradictory bit of dialogue: Kirk: "He'll die. But that's what you want, isn't it?" Miranda: "That's a lie!" Kirk: "Oh yes it is - you want him to die." Miranda's line was supposed to be, "That's not true."

Continuity: At the dinner for Miranda, Kirk drains his glass. No one refills it, but it's nearly full again a few shots later.

Factual error: The Enterprise accidentally travels a short distance outside the galaxy and can't find its way back. But they'd have to travel for months to get so far outside the Milky Way that they couldn't, well, just turn around in the void and see it. Our galaxy is huge. 100,000 light years across. Very huge. And that barrier may surround the galaxy, but even it is big, pink and visible.

Continuity: Kirk aims his phaser at a berserk Spock's head and fires, but the beam hits him in the stomach.

Continuity: When Chekov sits outside the general store chatting with Sylvia, his left arm and her right alternate from entwined to un-entwined and back again as the shots change.

Factual error: Kirk's line, "We're a doomed ship, traveling between galaxies" is the only time original "Trek" committed the scientific blunder of confusing galaxies and solar systems. The Enterprise wasn't capable of intergalactic travel (that's leaving one galaxy and reaching another). Yes, it strayed briefly out of our galaxy several times. But it did not - and could not - cross to another one. That would take a warp 100-plus drive and thousands of years.

Continuity: In the opening scenes, Sulu's retractable viewer isn't there when the Klingon ship approaches on the view screen. But a moment later in a closer shot, the viewer is suddenly in front of him, fully extended.