The Star Trek That Could Have Been

As impressive as Trek has been these last fifty years with five TV series, twelve movies, cartoons, and more the truth is a lot of ideas never got past the idea stage. For instance the first idea for a Star Trek movie which never went anywhere, a fifth season of Enterprise which would never come to pass, not one but two TNG movies which never saw the light of day, a video game called “Secret of Vulcan Fury”, and an IMAX movie which languished in production hell. But some did get past the idea stage and were even in production before something stopped it. And whether we look at rough cuts or scripts, it’s fun to imagine what could have been if these projects had gone through. Here are a few Star Trek productions that could have been but will never be.





The Cage

The Cage of course was the first pilot hey made but what people may forget is that this was supposed to be the series! Maybe its just me, but that’s really weird. Imagine Star Trek with no Kirk, McCoy, or anything we love today. Jeffrey Hunter is a fine actor but would he have been as loved as Shatner? I doubt it. Hunter just didn’t have that appeal Shatner did, I think we would have gotten tired of him fast.  And of course Spock was in it but this one smiled and yelled a lot, not quite the character we would grow to love. The pilot was rejected for being to “cerebral” and I have another word for it. Boring! I’ve seen the episode (it was worked into the TOS episode “The Managerie”) and it’s pretty slow and dull. It’s good but the kind of thing you do in the middle of the series, not as a pilot. It is fun to watch the original opening credits for the series, and why does the theme music sound so much better there than it did in the actual series? The episode was well written with some cool ideas but I have to agree with execs back then, it needed more action.






Assignment:Earth

Trek came close to have a spin-off only once (not counting DS9) when Gary Seven arrived on the Enterprise at the end of Season 2. Honestly the episode isn’t bad, with Robert Lansing and Teri Garr. For whatever reason it didn’t sell which makes for a peculiar if not terrible episode of Star Trek. I think it had potential and it’s to bad it never went past the backdoor pilot stage.







Phase II

The first movie idea was called “Planet of the Titans” and involved the crew competing with The Klingons over the homeworld of the mythical Titans. Then something about the planet being swallowed by a black hole…it sounded very odd. All that came from it were starship models which can be seen in the background in  the movies and episodes of TNG.  When that was rejected attention turned to a new TV series instead. This is one which I’m pretty sure everyone knows the story of. The all new Star Trek series was commissioned by Paramount. Sets were built, the actors were hired (except Leonard Nimoy), screen tests were made, and a pilot was good to go. But the plans for a new Paramount network fell apart and after Star Wars came around, the pilot was re-worked into Star Trek:The Motion Picture. It’s funny to imagine what the series would have been like with Decker and Ilia. Oh and remember that Vulcan who had one line before being killed in the movie? He was supposed to be the new Spock. By the way two episodes written for the new series were re-worked into two episodes of Star Trek-The Next Generation.





Star Trek:The First Adventure

After the disaster of Star Trek V it was decided the next film should go back to the beginning and show how Kirk and Spock first met. Which would mean new actors playing the characters. Yeah think this was hard for people to handle in 2009? It was even worst in 1991. The story would have had an aged McCoy relating the story of a young rebellious Kirk and his first year at the academy. Kirk and Spock would start as rivals and end up friends (why does this all sound familiar?). At first the only original stars in the movie would be McCoy but rewrites had cameos from the others. Harve Bennett decided against it since he couldn’t possibly re-cast the roles and wanted to do something more conventional for the 25th anniversary, not to mention the cast and fans hated the idea, and eventually we got Star Trek VI:The Undiscovered Country. And as you can tell by the pic above, DC comics id their own version of the story in 1991. I don’t remember it.











Federation & The Beginning

The Beginning was the proposed 11th Star Trek film set between Enterprise and the original series. The story would have been about the Romulan wars. Federation was an undeveloped spin-off set in the year 3000. The Federation is in decline when it is attacked, and it’s up to young Alexander Kirk to lead a new Enterprise to fight the aliens. The show was to chronicle a period of decline and rebirth for the Federation. A proposal was written but when Paramount went with JJ Abrams movie, they project  was abandoned. That reminds me, I haven’t talked much about the reboot movies have I? May have to fix that.






Final Frontier (the animated Series that we didn’t get)

I haven’t talked that much about the 70’s animated series. Mostly because I don’t have much to say about it. I didn’t care for it and while I admire things about it like having the original actors as voices, the cartoons were more silly than anything. There have been many attempts to create a new animates series, including one in 1990 which combined characters from Star Trek and The Next Generation. A CGI cartoon was considered later in the 90’s after the success of the video games. And then there was Star Trek:The Lions of the Night which was supposed to a movie era CGI animated adventure. The story would focus on Sulu in command of the Enterprise-B. Finally, there was Star Trek:The Final Frontier which was an animated web series set in Star Trek’s future. Basically they were shorts proposed by Star Trek.com starring the new captain of the Enterprise named Alexander Chase. You don’t have to look any further at what makes Star Trek different from Star Wars past the fact that Wars had a bunch of cartoons and Trek just once. Because Trek was not about action as much as ideas. Anyway the project never went anywhere because of staff issues at Star Trek.com not to mention the new movies, but apparently you can find scripts and storyboard online.







One last thing I should talk about and this is a good a place as any. All of the above were strange ideas which were never made So let’s take a minute to discuss some fan-made Trek productions which really do exist and are worth a look:




Remember my review of “Of Gods and Men”? Well that was a fan made Trek movie featuring several actors from various Trek series. It was OK. Check out my review for more info on that production. The creators of that created a new web movie last year which takes places ten years after Voyager ended. “Star Trek Renegades”. They hope this would become a series of episodes. I took a look at it and while interesting, it was a bit to dark.





There are also fan made web series out there, including Star Trek Continues which my good friends Les and Ghostrek  have already discussed in more detail so I’d check their articles out (guys we gotta talk about that Apollo episode!). There was also Star Trek:New Voyages, or Star Trek:Phase II as it was first called, which is a pretty impressive attempt to continue The Original Series. It’s worth checking out (which I admit I have not done enough) though it seems like the production halted this year, the sets relegated to tours. Both of these try real hard to feel like the original series, with beautifully re-created sets, music,  and even using original actors in many cases. And finally, one of the first of these projects was called Starship Exeter. There are even more of these (much to my surprise) all worth a look.






So with all the old ideas out there that never happened (I only mentioned a few) what new ideas are out there? Well next year we’ve got:




This new series is currently in development and will be a web access show. The word is the pilot will actually appear on CBS and the rest of the of the series will be online. It is set 10 years before the events of the original series (which is dumb but..whatever I’d rather see the future not more pre-quel crap) and is part of the original time line. The premise is following the crew of the Discovery as they explore an event which has been mentioned before in Trek. So far all we’ve seen are teaser promo’s and except for the fact the series will be serialized, we don’t much about it. There is more info online but for now that’s the gist. But 30 years ago we scoffed and TNG and were pleasantly surprised.  So who knows, maybe this will be the new Trek series we’ve all been waiting for. Don’t worry I am sure I will have more to say about this down the road.





I’ll be back to continue my look at the Trek we did get, but in the meantime it’s always to sit back and wonder what could have been.