The final scene of “Requiem for Methuselah” sees Kirk, back on board the Enterprise, sulking in his quarters. He was deeply in love with Reyna, and mourns that her love for him was what destroyed her brain. McCoy and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) visit Kirk to tell him that the disease has been cured. McCoy takes the opportunity to explain love to the emotionless Spock, bitter that his Vulcan co-worker has deliberately chosen to eschew the glories — and the pains — of love:
“Considering his opponent’s longevity, truly an eternal triangle. You wouldn’t understand that would you, Spock? You see, I feel sorrier for you than I do for him. Because you’ll never know the things that love can drive a man to. The ecstasies, the miseries. The broken rules, the desperate chances. The glorious failures and the glorious victories. All of these things you’ll never know, simply because the word ‘love’ isn’t written into your book.”
That speech was originally much longer. Bixby envisioned a scene where Kelley would give an extended monologue about the glories of love and Spock’s emotional ignorance. But as he recalls, Kelley took one look at the script and turned it all down:
“Some of my dialogue near the end between Spock and McCoy where McCoy is really coming down on Spock and saying, ‘You poor schmuck. You have no emotions. You can’t live. You’ll never know what love is like. That hope doesn’t exist for you,’ etc. I pulled out all the stops and wrote about 15 pages of dialogue that De Kelley absolutely refused to utter.”
Kelley thought it was way too poetic, and Bixby agreed; it was inspired by T.S. Eliot. The scene was cut.
