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Leonard Nimoy beams out
Why not Takei
Takei declined because he sat on the Transportation Board in San Francisco, and the episode is about a monorail being a bad idea. He couldn't do it in good conscience. Then the writers heard that Leonard Nimoy would do it, which they considered better, since Nimoy outranks Sulu.
Nimoy beams out
A group of writers went to meet Nimoy when he recorded his part. At the end of the episode, with everything resolved and nobody dead, Nimoy announces that his work there is done. Barney objects that he didn't do anything, Nimoy answers with a question, and then he beams out.
The writers' room argument
That ending set off an argument in the writers' room. Al Jean held that nothing impossible can happen on the show, so no one can beam out. The reply was that it's Spock, and Spock can beam out. Matt Groening allowed it: if the joke is good enough, the rule bends.
Why did Star Trek invent the transporter?
Gene Roddenberry added the transporter to Star Trek because the budget could not cover landing a shuttlecraft on a new planet in every episode. Beaming crew members down saved the cost of building and filming landing sequences. The device appeared in the first season, which began airing in 1966. The phrase Beam me up, Scotty was never spoken in exactly that form in the original series.
Why does the monorail episode echo Music Man?
The monorail episode, titled Marge vs. the Monorail, was written by Conan O'Brien and parodies the musical The Music Man. In that 1957 Broadway show by Meredith Willson, a traveling salesman named Harold Hill convinces a town it needs a boys' band. In the Simpsons episode, a salesman named Lyle Lanley sells Springfield a monorail with a song and a pitch. Both pitches are delivered as showstopping musical numbers.
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