In "A Private Little War," everybody was calling the white ape a Mugatu, but the credits say Gumato: http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/2x19hd/aprivatelittlewarhd1469.jpg I think the credit was based on a prior draft of the script or something. There's a third variant also: imdb.com lists it as Mugato.
There's someone on another forum where we're discussing the coming series who insists on using "Uhuru." He's been corrected a half-dozen times, but keeps doing it (by now it's likely trolling, of course, since he knows it annoys others). Chapters-Indigo sells some kind of "Dr. Spock" action figure thing, and I have to wonder why they would stock something that is so obviously wrong (it says "Dr." right on the package). Does CBS (or whoever holds the rights to this stuff) let such errors get past them? Or is it some cheap knockoff thing that Chapters-Indigo decided to carry and to hell with whether or not it's really authorized? I've seen that in print, as well as "Star Treck." His name is a lot easier to pronounce than spell! A stroll across the Sahara Desert? Or the oilsands in northern Alberta? Both of those would be stark treks. I read in one of the behind-the-scenes books about a time when Shatner and Nimoy were co-parade marshals. The announcer introduced them as "William Shatner and Leonard Nimsy." There was a villain in the kids' game show "Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?" called "Knee-moi."
^ Reminds me of this episode of Super Friends (my favorite show when I was a kid!) when an evil genius threatens the world with nuclear missiles and kidnaps several of the Super Friends, which he replaces with android duplicates. Apparently the writers gave him this name as a reference to Captain Nemo, so they added an extra vowel to the end of his name - which became "Captain Nimoy".
The shooting script said Gumato, but Shatner refused to say it as written, and because he was the star, everyone said it the way he did. Or so the story goes.
I don't blame him. I'd be willing to bet there were some people there who insisted on rhyming it with "tomato."
(laughing) And then there was Anton Chekhov, who was an honest-to-goodness, and rather famous, Russian playwright. He wrote The Cherry Orchard (timber! ) among other things. As literate as the TOS writing was, I'm surprised Chekov didn't make an in-universe reference to it. While writing my novella, I did routine checks for Smock and Sock. Thankfully, neither materialized.
I've never heard that version. What I heard was that DeForest Kelley kept accidentally saying "Mugato" instead of "Gumato" while they were on location, so they ended up just changing it. Time is money & all. http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Mugato I find the Kelley version a lot easier to believe, considering how he pronounced "Sehlat" differently than everyone else in "Journey to Babel." Things like this happen when you're on a show with a lot of made-up words and everyone memorizes their scripts on their own time.
Indeed. And in my estimation, "Mugato" looks and sounds more natural than "Gumato." I'd say Kelley had the right idea there.
I suppose, but you'd think that, when it came to a legendary conqueror from the past, people would make the association with Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, etc. Not "Kahn" as in Madeleine Kahn.
I don't think it was a conscious idea so much as it just kept coming out of his mouth that way. But I agree that "Mugato" just rolls off the tongue better. It's twue! It's twue!
In my world, the latter is more noteworthy. Flames ... on the side of my face ... breathing ... heaving breaths ...
In the initial airing of either TNG: The Enemy or TNG: The Masterpiece Society, guest star John Snyder's name was misspelled in the onscreen credits as John Synder. It was corrected by time of rebroadcast.
Agreed. Gumato sounds like a healthy, but likely less than delicious, health food drink one whips up in a blender.