 The "Vulcan mind meld", introduced in this episode, was originally a  way of working around a warning from NBCs "Standards and Practices"  department. In an earlier draft of the script, the plan had been to  have Spock hypnotize Van Gelder, but writers were told that they  must have hypnotism performed "by DOCTOR McCoy rather than MISTER  Spock" unless they could establish that Spock had been specially  trained to do this.