his book Star Trek Creator: The Authorised Biography of Gene Roddenberry, suggested that Koenig was hired to write "The Infinite Vulcan" because Roddenberry felt "bad" about Koenig's exclusion from the series. Koenig asked to play the part of Dr. Keniclius. Roddenberry and Fontana approved, and the show's producers allowed him to audition, but he said later that he suspected it was "a very token gesture" and they were not seriously considering him. He included a reference to himself in the episode, as the walking plant is called a Retlaw – Walter spelled backwards. This was a reference to aliens in the 1940s comic book Planet Comics who spoke backwards. He later used a similar idea in "The Stranger", a Land of the Lost episode he wrote, in which Koenig introduced the character Enik. This character was originally called Eneg, backwards for Gene as a reference to Gene Roddenberry. Koenig felt that "The Infinite Vulcan" turned out "OK", and had heard a number of opinions on it ranging from it being the best episode of The Animated Series to it being the very worst. He felt overall that it was "an interesting take and certainly a little different." Fellow cast member George Takei felt the episode showed that Koenig was "enterprising". The producers liked the episode so much that they wanted Koenig to write another, but he turned them down. Koenig later explained that he was still upset at the time over not appearing as Chekov in the series. Keniclius later appeared in Kevin Lauderdale's story "The Rules of War," which takes place during the Eugenics Wars, in the anthology Strange New Worlds IX. Reception and home media release "The Infinite Vulcan" was first broadcast on NBC on October 20, 1973. James Van Hise wrote in his book The Man Who Created Star Trek: Gene Roddenberry, that "some of the writing on the series", specifically that on "The Infinite Vulcan", "left much to be desired". In James Rundle's retrospective of the episodes for SciFiNow, he gave "The Infinite Vulcan" a rating of three out of five. "The Infinite Vulcan" was included in best of/recommend lists by some reviewers. In Wired magazine's list of episodes of the series to watch after they became available for free on the official Star Trek website, "The Infinite Vulcan" was included specifically because it was the first episode of the franchise to be written by one