Who Built The Doomsday Machine: Star Trek (TOS) 

This is my favorite Star Trek episode, and one of the things I like is that the doomsday machine looks so alien, and almost organic.

One of the best episodes of all Star Trek. Not just the original series.

William Windom justly deserved an Emmy for his performance of Commodore Matt Decker. The anguish that he managed to call up from somewhere deep inside of his soul was one of the most dynamic portrayals of a man mentally & emotionally broken by the loss of his entire crew, plus his inability to save them. Edit: I really wish that the writers had found a better way to deal with the issue of Decker's self-torment, (although I understand just how much it must of shattered him), to have to literally listen to all of his crew be slaughtered & being thoroughly helpless to do ANYTHING to rectify a cataclysmic error in judgement. Which in turn, finally caused him to sacrifice himself by running that pitiable little shuttlecraft into the machine in both a vain attempt to destroy the machine & in his own mind & soul, he might hopefully atone for the deaths of his entire command. He would have made for a FANTASTIC recurring character to write scripts for, and IMHO, the addition of the character of Commodore Decker just might have saved Star Trek from cancellation a year & a half later. RIP to one of my all-time favorite character actors, William Windom

I got to meet James Doohan at a convention and I asked him what his favorite episode was and he said it was this one because of everything he got to do 👍👍

I like the fact that we may never know what alien race created the Doomsday Machine and for what purpose, it is now agreed that it was created in an ancient war probably millions of years ago and that its creators are now extinct, the actual mystery of it and it’s origins has a a great mystique and that adds to its appeal today. I think some mysteries should remain mysteries.

The performance for Commadore Decker will live through the ages, the actor's voice is amazing.

The budgetary restrictions resulted in an infinitely better depiction of the doomsday machine than what Spinrad envisioned. It only makes sense that a neutronium hull would be too dense to shape into a normal space ship. And it looked ten times more menacing too.

My summary on this episode, which, by the way, is my favorite TOS episode of Star Trek: The Doomsday Machine was a miles long weapon of last resort built by an unknown alien race from outside our galaxy that obviously destroyed both sides of the war it was built to fight in. Made up of a neutronium shell, it was built to withstand any and all attacks around it and programmed to defend itself with a pure anti-proton beam radiated from its open maw. It refueled itself by consuming planetary material through said maw using its attack beam, cutting it down and tractor it inside to fuel itself, which allows it to keep on going indefinitely or until it consumes every last source of planetary material, then it either moves on to find more targets to consume or possibly shut down to conserve power and drift until it discovers another planetary body. Spock mentioned that this machine was, in fact, a robot programmed to attack anyone who got too close to it. Another thing I noticed about this episode was the scene where the Enterprise was being pulled into the machine. Everyone looked around oddly because they were supposed to hear a humming sound from the machine, which we did not hear because it was cut from the production, despite the scene still being there. Also, in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the character of Captain William Decker (Stephen Collins) was the son of Commodore Matt Decker. I believe the name William was a reference to William Windom, but I may be wrong. That's all I got!

Everyone seems to list "City at the edge of forever" as their favorite episode,and it is great but the tension and drama exhibited in THIS episode puts it head in my view. Windom,who was a character actor on TV for the most part puts in a bravura performance as Decker and all the regulars rise to the occasion as well. Captain Ahab meets Horatio Hornblower in space.

I feel that part of the appeal of that particular episode is the fact that the machine's origins are not revealed. Even though it's destroyed it remains a mystery. And people love a good mystery even if it's not solvable. That being said, I prefer to go with Captain Kirk's speculation that it was a weapon used in a war in some other Galaxy eons ago. It sounds a bit more exotic and mysterious that way.

One of my favorite episodes. When it originally aired I was around 10 or 11 yrs old. I thought it was terrifying. I also remember thinking of the machine as a sort of killer cornucopia. It's still the first thing that pops into my head when I hear the term doomsday.

*Kirk:* What could have destroyed an entire planet? *Spock:* Captain, I believe it was a giant wind sock. *Kirk:* But there's no wind in space! *Spock:* Tell that to the sock.

This has to be my favorite Trek episode. William Windom had a great performance.

I have personally heard Spinrad say, "When Gene asked me to design it, I knew he was a pilot, so I said it looks like a windsock dipped in concrete. He wanted me to think about something more complicated and I spent hours, DAYS, coming up with ideas. As it turned out, when they got around to shooting it, there wasn't any budget left, so we went with a windsock dipped in concrete."

The episode was a mini-opera. Each character including the device had a musical motif in a brilliant score.

Here's a theory. The Doomsday Machine was created during the time of the Slaver Empire, one billion years ago, and was simply inactive until recently. The neutronium hull acted like a piezoelectric cell that, every time it was hit with micrometeors and space dust, would translate the impact into electric energy and eventually was able to go back online with its programming. Must a theory.

“Gentleman, I suggest you beam me aboard” The most stressed Captain Kirk has ever been.

This thing and the concept behind it was truly terrifying. Great episode, top ten of TOS.

In the original episode "The Doomsday Machine", it was thought that the Planet Killer was millions of years old and its trajectory indicated it came from outside the Galaxy. So, the question arises: why did the Planet Killer leave its original galaxy? One chilling supposition is that it had destroyed most, if not all, of the planetary systems in its original galaxy, and so moved out for further "prey". If built millions of years ago, it would have had time to do so. The implication of this would be that hundreds of thousands of civilizations in the other galaxy were destroyed; the galaxy now barren of life. That the crew of the Enterprise was able to destroy the Planet Killer (and the Constellation not being completely destroyed but only damaged) may indicate that the Planet Killer's computer intelligence may have deteriorated with age, compromising its defensive capabilities. Otherwise, the Planet Killer would have immediately destroyed any threat, no matter how slight.

Doomsday Machine is number one in my list of TOS episodes... "Don't you think I know that!" LOL.

The fight between Decker and his security escort is most realistic fight in the Star Trek series. I could feel the rage and blows delivered by two men. The unlucky redshirt was against a man in full blown psychotic rage . A man who could not be stopped. Very realistic and scary.

A windsock filled with foam. Sometimes great things come from small budgets. A great episode!

I always preferred Spock's conjecture on its origins. It's more interesting and there are just somethings that humans will never know or understand.

The one thing that I have always liked abut Trek, is that the universe is a mysterious place.

This was one of the first Star Trek episode I watched as a kid in the 1970s. When Kirk tells Decker "there is no third planet!" I thought he was referring to Earth!

My favorite episode of EVERYTHING. As a kid, I always referred to the Doomsday Machine as, "The Giant Ice-Cream Cone".

O.K., you got me. I made that machine. It got loose during a thunderstorm and I thought it would eventually come home.

The Cornucopia of Destruction ep. Always been a fav of mine since I was very young. Some truly haunting lines and scenes in this one.

My favorite episode in TOS. Even the cinematography was superb.

I always assumed that it was a damaged piece of engineering equipment used to disassemble planets and use the material to build new planets or mega structures. My thought was that the damage caused it to continuously search for material to consume.

There's actually no evidence outside of Norman Spinrad's comment about the model being a "windsock dipped in cement" as a number of the model builders and collectors on various boards have closely examined the footage and determined it is not concrete, but plastic or perhaps even heavy gaffer's foil. Perhaps some kind of other gaffer's kit material in the form of colored gels. It's the opinion of many of these people that a windsock dipped in concrete was just Spinrad being facetious, rather than factual, and that *literal* concrete would be far too heavy to be practical. Others have thought it to be not quite literal, but close to the truth in that it could mean the model's "cement" was actually... well... adhesive glue. In either case, another interesting feature of the episode is the USS Constellation herself, an AMT model pressed into service for the episode, which is another prop that apparently no longer survives. However, Matt Jefferies had originally wanted Richard C. Datin, who built the original models, most especially THE original 33-inch Enterprise studio model, to come back and build a replica of it and damage it for use as the Constellation. Unfortunately, Datin was apparently unavailable to do the work due to commitments to other TV series, and in the desperation and tight budgets, they lucked out with the AMT model kit being available for use instead. Jefferies would go on to use another modified AMT model to represent the Enterprise in "The Trouble With Tribbles" for the shots of the model orbiting in the far distance around Space Station K-7 in exterior shots and was the little Enterprise seen outside office window set on the station itself. That model at least is still with us and is on display at the Seattle Pop Culture Museum.

From the text of the episode, the planet killer was built a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. That could only be one other franchise! 😁

There's something fundamentally important that the writers of the show and many of the fans forget to take into account and it always makes me laugh because the fact of it is so plain that it just slaps me in the face: the machine is said to have been constructed of neutronium, a hypothetical material consisting of the degenerate material of a neutron star. The material is so dense that a star only about the size of New York City has a mass dozens of times of that of the sun. If the machine were as big as depicted, that much mass concentrated into an object that large would form an absolutely enormous gravitational effect due to the warping of spacetime that much mass would create. The machine wouldn't even need a primary weapon, its could disrupt planetary orbits from parsecs away with merely its presence.

There are a good deal of storage containers on the paramount lot(s). A few years back, property brothers renovated the Brady Bunch house. That is the home you would see from the outside at the beginning of each episode. The home was purchased and renovated to the exact set from the BB show. Some of the original living room decorations were found in a storage container on a Paramount lot. So, one never knows if the model of the Doomsday Machine may still exist.

The doomsday machine still exists. She’s my ex wife.

I remember watching this as a kid when the series was it on network television and how I couldn’t wait for the commercials to end to see what happened throughout the episode. William Windom went from victim to goat to villain to hero. One of the top 3 episodes in my opinion.

I subscribed because of your 57 year spoiler alert. 🤣

I have watched this episode so many times I could quote you every bit of dialogue word for word. I like the new SFX. This episode aired back in October of 1967 one day before I was born

At the time it was pretty obvious the machine is based on "Berserkers" a series of stories published in the first half of the 60s by Fred Saberhagen. The only difference was his Berserkers could be defeated with trickery or logic

My head cannon: it wasn’t even a weapon. It was just a mining machine. The race was probably one of the ancient AI robot races, maybe from andromeda galaxy. It just drifted for so long the exterior was just the resources it picked up while mining, it grows over time because it picks up more material waiting for its owners to pick it up. It would play into the Idea that the galactic barrier is there to keep stuff like that out. Until “we” are ready.

The person that created it was a woman named Delcara. She was a survivor of the destruction of her planet Penzatti by the Borg in the outer rim of the galaxy, near where the Borg originated from and near Guinan's home planet. She built the first prototype Doomsday Machine which malfunctioned and went off on it's own, which was battled by Captain Kirk. Later she built a larger final version and used Neutronium for constructing the hull and set off to complete her revenge of totally destroying the Borg.

I read SciFi for a decade before Trek, and often referred to the Doomsday Machine as a Berserker. I had also been familiar with William Windom from the series My World And Welcome To It, based on James Thurber's writings, so his performance showed a nice change and wider range.

IMO, the giant novel 'Vendetta' is my headcanon for the origin of the Doomsday Machine, less than 2,000 years before its climactic engagement with the Enterprise and Constellation. However, in my ideas for ST: Legacy, I have drafted an ideat that addresses the same idea: Whilst surveying a newly-opened sector, the Enterprise-G is suddenly struck by a uranium sabot travelling close to the speed of light. When the shocked crew track it back and use uranium decay dating, they determine that this was an anti-ship weapon fired from a gravitational railgun possibly tens of millions of years ago and millions of light-years away that, having missed its target, had continued to travel in between galaxies before finally running into the Enterprise. The ship comes close to being destroyed by a weapon fired by a long-extinct civilisation in a *different galaxy*. A chilling reminder of the size, age and and intrinsic unpredictability of the universe.

Hands down one of my favorite episodes. Just so many elements and layers to the whole story, not to mention the brilliant direction and camera work. The machine came from outside the galaxy, based on Spock's backtracking of destroyed solar systems. Interesting information about Robert Ryan, whom I happen to like his acting abilities. Nice video, Pretty cool.

VENDETTA was an awesome book. it was one of the few times that someone was able to write a story that involved the original series and the next generation without it feeling like they shoehorned one into the other. Picard reacted, much more believably to the reappearance of the BORG then he did in the later episode DECENT.

As you notice the doomsday device as a child I noticed it almost looks like a cornucopia around Thanksgiving interesting isn't it

I used to run Cat 988 log hauler at a Sawmill and when i got behind i would chant the music score to the doomsday machine. DUH duh DUH duh ...ya

Why didn't the Federation harvest all of that neutronium and take the thing apart for its technologies? Was that a Section 31 operation?

Love the illustrations! Death Star getting carved up by the Doomsday Machine at 17:50! 🤣

The idea that it was created as a Borg killer was also used in the TNG novel Before Dishonor, written by the same author as Vendetta.

One of my favorite episodes, along with Balance of Terror, and The Ultimate Computer. The fact that the Constellation was 'broadcasting black death' really creeped me out at the time, and still gives me chills!

I'm with you on that one,This episode and any similar would continue to be great if it were just left alone once it was over,The residual mystery after-the-fact is what makes this episode and any like it so good.

I have indeed been a lifelong member of the SciFi family you speak of!

What if it isn't a Doomsday machine, But instead, just a garbage disposal machine ? It just roams freely and cleans the universe, til the Enterprise destroyed it.

William Windom gave the greatest performance in Trek history. Just imagine an ancient race created the Doomsday weapon to fight Vger

My favourite episode!!

I always liked the theory that the Doomsday Machine was built to fight the Borg, but it was deployed too late and the Borg just let it go on its way, and that the big emptiness in the Delta Quadrant was where it started, and after that it just chased big power signatures thinking they were cubes.

That episode was, in my opinion, the best episode of the original series, AND, at the very least, a top contender for the best Star Trek episode of all time. The writing, the pacing, the originality, the acting, and the more philosophical implications all came together with impeccable delivery. It is a per force example of the art of storytelling at its best- an art we sadly seem to have in short supply despite having the technological and budgetary means to make the wildest stories come to life. If ever there was an episode deserving of an award, this would be it. Stepping aside from the impeccable narrative prowess of the story and examining the more scientific elements of the tale, we find almost the exact opposite situation. The entire Doomsday Machine is made of "solid neutronium" which is what neutron stars are made of. An entire neutron star is only about 12 miles across, and a mere teaspoon of it would have the equivalent mass of an entire mountain. The Doomsday Machine is described as miles long, and its hull is clearly thicker than the width of the saucer section of the USS Constellation. A quick off-the-cuff analysis would suggest that it possesses a mass that would dwarf entire planets, and depending on whether the hull is solid neutronium or simply plated in the stuff, it may outmass entire planetary systems if you omit their parent star. There is simply no force in the universe- except possibly a White Hole- that could resist the crushing gravity of the Doomsday Machine to prevent it from collapsing in on itself. Of course this assumes that neutronium is a stable substance outside of the crushing gravity of a neutron star, which is unknown. Something that massive a dense wouldn't need a weapon to destroy planets. It could just fly straight through them, its insane density allowing it to slide through the planet as if it wasn't there at all. Or if could just perform a flyby that destabilizes the planet's orbit resulting in it either falling into its host star or being ejected into deep space. Of course, this isn't even its biggest science problem. That would be its energy. The energy required to overcome the gravity of a planet and cause it to explode is beyond astronomical. The energy needed to do so would absolutely exceed any energy it could harvest from consuming the planetary debris by any means- exception possibly by an equal mass of antimatter. This isn't just a matter of engineering. It's thermodynamics and entropy. If one can bend those laws to perform the impossible, the Doomsday Machine itself would seem quaint. Only the Q Continuum would be more powerful, and even that isn't certain. So ultimately, it makes for an amazing story and I will always count it among my favorites of all time. But the science half of the science fiction is sadly less impressive. Fortunately, that's not a deal-breaker for good storytelling.

This was a nice tribute to Saberhagen's Berzerker. A machine at war with the infestation of Life in the Universe.

Prototype Borg Busting Machine. Peter David covered this in depth in the novel Vendetta. David excelled at character work and wrote several Trek novels at the time.

where did v'ger and the whale probe go after the events in the movies?

Years ago, I heard that the Doomsday Machine had been built as a prototype of an anti-Borg weapon. Because the one Kirk destroyed was only a prototype, it lacked armor and secondary weapons. The race that built it decided it was easier to build one more in their fleet of fully functional ones than to retrofit the prototype, so they abandoned the prototype. That is why the prototype survived even after the Borg wiped them out.

The story of those scripts is very important to keep in mind. I remember when somebody pulled an original model of the enterprise out of a storage unit that he had acquired a bunch of people were saying that that belongs to Jean Roddenberry‘s estate, it belongs to the holders of Desi Studios, it belongs to Paramont. I pointed out that a lot of props and costumes sets and what not are are just tossed when a series is complete. That’s quite possible you know random janitor guy who would make sure there was coffee brewed for Gean when he got there said hey you know I always liked that and Jean said well it’s just gonna get thrown out. Go ahead take it.

I get where Spinrad was coming from with his original conception of an alien ship wallpapered with death-ray turrets and such, but what we got was _so_ much cooler. Not only does it look genuinely alien, but there's something about the scarred, pitted, twisted ruin of the outer hull that makes me think this monster is, for all its terrible power, little more than a barely-functional wreck running on the equivalent of "safe mode". This leviathan has some serious history behind it - and we have NO IDEA what that history is. The scene came much later, both IRL and in-universe, but the mystery of where the Doomsday Machine came from and what titanic battles had left it in its nearly-ruined state made me think of Q's comment to Picard in "Q Who?" about the "terrors to freeze your soul" waiting out there in the unexplored stretches of the galaxy. Obviously the Borg he introduced the Enterprise to are enough of a threat to be going on with, but the implications of the Doomsday Machine's existence and battered condition make for some truly frightening speculations.

I would like to argue that the DDM was not "wondering through space". I believe after it's initial destruction of it's parent galaxy, it went into a hibernation mode to conserve power. This caused it to be ejected from it's parent galaxy were it could have traveled for innumerable years, decades, centuries, millennia before it was captured by our galaxy. Upon capture by our galaxy, it came online and started it's mission all over again. I think we severely underestimate exactly how old this object is. In fact, our galaxy might not have been the first galaxy this rouge weapon happened upon. We just happened to be the galaxy that could fight back. Perhaps a silver lining in the object being so old. It was inevitable it would be out classed, it was just going to take a small eternity before that happened.

One of my favorite episodes I just subscribed to this channel I love SCI FI.

As a fan of Frank Herbert's Dune series, I always regarded the Doomsday Machine as a "sort of Sandworm", adapted for survival in space rather than in a terrestrial environment. The battered appearance could also be accounted for by numerous attempts at destroying it (un successfully) from previous space-faring civilisations. One wonders how it might fare against later Federation weapons: Probably a single transphasic torpedo would completely obliterate it.

This is my favorite Star Trek TOS episode.

My favorite episode ,will windom great proformance , your art work is fantastic thank you so much

This is my dad’s favorite episode. He always watches it whenever he gets a chance.

FASA had a module for their Star Trek Role-playing Game called A Doomsday Like Any Other. The premise was a distress call from a free trader freighter. The distress was it was being chased by a Planet Killer in the edge of the Romulan Neutral Zone. Seems they had inadvertently activated it by picking up the Killer's key. So the task is to stop, capture, or destroy it. Hampered by the hijinks and hilarity of the arrival of a Romulan task force.

It once was taught that they were only four basic conflicts in literature, i.e. man against man, against nature, fate or self. I argue that "The Doomsday Machine" adds a fifth fundamental, man against legacy. Whether you argue pollution, resource depletion, the consequences of nuclear technology or the damage done by mass communication, we are the worst enemy we have ever faced.

Surprised you didn't mention Star Trek Online's theory... an ancient Iconian weapon. :)

I like the theory that Spock put forth stating that the machine's path seems to have come from out of our galaxy.

Shatner sporting a particularly good hairpiece in this one.

No matter what Roddenberry told Spinrad, the model of the Doomday machine was NOT a aviation sock dipped in concrete. It was a wire armature rapped in the Jeffries favorite construction material--Reyolds Aluminum foil. The result was a light, easy to work with model that was also very fragile. That's why it disappeared immediately after it was used.

I liked the Star Trek episode, "The Changeling". A probe, Nomad, damaged and reconstructed by another advanced race became a threat to all life when it's programming was inadvertently changed. Not visually monstrous, just a simple machine but with monstrous power but the story line and dialogue of that episode was great! Vic Perrin was the voice of Nomad. He also appeared in some of the other episodes and was the "Control Voice" of "Outer Limits" TOS. New subscriber enjoyed the video!

I can just imagine the Borg's reaction to the Doomsday's Machine, considering it is a marvel of technology to be assimilated.

I seem to recall one of the books explained the reason the thing looks like it does is because it has been in space for so long. Initially it was kitted out like a much more conventional ship with turrets and emplacements on its exterior. However the passage of however many millions of years and contacts with enemies had destroyed most of the superstructure, only leaving the underlying impenetrable armour and its primary weapon--the planet killer. I suspect it was closely based on Saberhagen's 'Berserker' stories, as was Mass Effect for that matter.

Theory: an advance society built the machine as an asteroid and meteor defensive system than could also be use to clear space debris. It was successful but something happen to it the society and over time the programming was corrupted, now it identifies everything in it path as a target.

Would love too see a back story about the Doomsday machine, in an episode of Star Trek

My three favorite ST:TOS episodes are this one, "Obsession," and "The Enterprise Incident."

I covered this in a fanfiction... A very, very long time ago, the Engineers and the Predators were at war. Knowing that they were not going to win, the Engineers built the Doomsday Machine and when they were externinated, they turned it loose on the Predator species via a "dead hand" device. This explains why neither species is seen or mentioned in the Alien universe. Since the Federation is an outgrowth of the Alien universe, it was just a matter of time before the DM began affecting the populated worlds.

🖖😎👍The Doomsday Machine has always been one of my all time favorite Startrek episodes along with about 20 other episodes as well and I myself own all 3 seasons of TOS as well as the animated series on DVD, Any ways a job very nicely greatly well done and informatively explained and executed in every detail way shape and format provided on the Doomsday Machine indeed Sir!👌.

This was an excellent video. The pictures and artwork shown were impressive. My number one OST has always been "The Corbomite Maneuver."The Doomsday Machine" is in my top five.

I remember reading ST TNG Vendetta! The Doomsday machine was built to fight the Borg to defend the Preservers just outside of our galaxy, but was finished & launched too late to save their society!

It was me. I built it in my garage but someone stole it and it got loose. Sorry about that.

I think there's a very simple explanation. The Doomsday Machine was a planet harvesting machine used by the species that built the Dyson Sphere, but they "forgot" to shut it off when they went extinct. That's why it doesn't have warp drive -- it's industrial equipment and was never intended for interstellar operations.

This is worthy of a new startrek series or a movie just to find out who made the doomsday machine, and find out if they are still around or what's happened to them.

I remember watching this around the age of 6 or 7 (which would have made it 73 or 74) and being terrified by the shots of the machine’s giant, gaping, orange maw looming upon the Enterprise, and being slightly disturbed by the sense of impending doom and hopelessness.

Best episode.

Built by the Acme Doomsday Company, of course.

The design of the smooth surface with the gaping maw captured the vibe of; *_a man-eating shark_* . *Perfect!*

They were French pastry chefs, that's why the doomsday machine look like a cosmic cream horn.

It always surprises me that in all the spin-off shows a sequel was never done to officially answer this question. Maybe a rights issue?

Definitely a favorite.

Intergalactic Death Burrito is what we called it as kids in the '70's. The 'Doomsday Machine' looked utterly different from all the other spacecraft used on Star Trek. If they had the budget and additional seasons more episodes involving the 'Doomsday Machine' would have been interesting. Or some 'Official Canon' books or graphic novels to fill in the backstory on it's origin.

For me one of the best episodes of TOS!

My all time favorite episode! Terrified me as a child. I've been kind blown they never followed up with a movie to fulfill the storyline.

Great episode. I never understood why they didn't throw an antimatter torpedo into the core.