The films as TOS episodes....

TMP has long been tagged as Where Nomad Has Gone Before because of the basic story idea of an ancient Earth probe disappearing only to return centuries later reprogrammed and threatening all life on Earth.

This can lead one to wonder how any of the other films could have played out as TOS episodes set in a hypothetical fourth or fifth season of TOS.

"The Wrath Of Khan" (or something else somewhat more poetic) - Some of the elements could remain the same. An old flame of Kirk's has become an established scientist developing a truly advanced scientific device thats ready to be tested full scale. Khan and his people have been marooned for only three years at this point but they're faced with the same circumstances as in the film. The Reliant comes along not knowing anything about the Botany Bay and the Ceti Alpha system. A big difference would be that unless Chekov had since been reassigned then he couldn't be the one to recognize Khan. It really isn't necessary, but a past semi regular crewman could be used in Chekov's place--maybe DeSalle or someone else. At this point there'd be no David Marcus and possibly no Saavik unless in a later season another young Vulcan were introduced and possibly only in a guest appearing role.

Assuming Ricardo Montalban could return to reprise the role it would be only the second time a major guest character would return in TOS (the other being Harry Mudd). There's also the fact that Spock likely wouldn't be written in to be killed.

Hmm, but if you want a two-part episode with a cliffhanger of sorts...

"The Search For Spock" - In this case you'd need an entirely new story unless this episode were indeed a second parter to the previous story. In that case maybe you could call the whole thing "The Undiscovered Country" Parts I & II. (as I understand it The Undiscovered Country was the original title for what became TWOK until they opted for a title somewhat less vague). Even so a lot of elements would have to be rewitten to make this work for TOS. For one thing you certainly aren't going to destroy the Enterprise during the series.

"The Voyage Home" - I can't imagine how this could have been written as a TOS episode. So if we insist on another time travel story you have to come up with something completely different.

"The Final Frontier" - I think this could easily have been written as a TOS episode without having to change all that much. By necessity you drop all the forced humour and ship as lemon crap. You also cut all the Kirk, Spock and McCoy camping stuff. This basically is somewhat similar to "Thw Way To Eden," but you could still do something interesting with it. The question is whether TOS would have had enough nerve to actually show how people create God in their own image back in the day.

"The Undiscovered Country" - This really isn't that far removed from "Journey To Babel" in which the Enterprise is part of a peace conference that someone is hellbent on disrupting. Would the writers of the time have been willing to show Starfleet personnel conspiring with a faction of Klingons (or Romulans or someone else) to start a war?

 

I imagine if TUC was written as a TOS episode then the conspirators would be reimagined as surgically altered Klingons in the vein of Arne Darvin. Somewhat lessens the impact, but it could still work as an episode.

 

It would also be more affordable in terms of makeup. Then again the makeup used for Kor, Kang, Mara and one or two others wasn't that elaborate.

 

I'd be curious to see how TOS might have evolved if they had done a TUC episode and going forward the Klingons were, while not an ally, at least a group Our Heroes needed to try to work with. Perhaps they could have taken a page from DS9's "To the Death" and done an episode where Our Heroes had to team up with Klingons to defeat a rogue group of Klingons. Could have been a good opportunity to bring back some of those we'd seen before, on either side really.

 

Isn't that basically what happens though in "Day of the Dove" ?

 

Well it's the situation at the end of "Day Of The Dove." But that was dealing with just one small group of Klingons and not the Klingon people in general or the Klingon High command.

 

So the answer, on a basic level, is ... "yes."

 

Why stop at TUC? I'd be interested in what you or others come up with for the TNG movies (as re imagined as TOS episodes)

I'm a bit tired (it's 3 AM here) but I can give it a try

Generations: Same basic story but they team up with an even older Starfleet Captain. Pike?

First Contact: Of course the borg would be introduced here. Would be interesting to see them with 60s effects. Put Spock in the place of Data. Perhaps they wouldn't even have turned Cochrane into a drunken hobo.

Insurrection: It actually sounds stupid enough to be a third season episode, right up there with Spock's Brain and the Children Shall Lead. Magical immortality planet, why not? Uhura and Chapel get to talk about their boobs.

Nemesis: We get to see the Emma Peel-esque Romulan lady from "The Enterprise Incident" again .

 

Generations - You retitle this and boil it down more simply. A scientist has discovered another dimension or realm and desperately wants to get back there no matter what the cost. You don't really need two generations of crews to tell this story. It could happen that Kirk (or Spock) gets pulled into this realm and learns there is someone else there who might be able to help him defeat the scientist.

Or more simply Kirk (or Spock) learns of a way out of the realm after they learn it's all illusionary (of sorts) and they race to stop the scientist before he fulfills his plan.


First Contact - You don't need the Borg. For all the run-and-jump of FC it's not much different in the basics from "The City On The Edge Of Forever." Essentially someone goes back in time to change a pivotal moment in history. It could be the Klingons or the Romulans or someone else who wants to sabotage Earth's first contact with aliens or the founding of the Federation or something else.

You could turn this around. Instead of a FC type of story you do a version "Yesterday's Enterprise" for TOS. A ship from the past is flung into the future and it has to go back to restore/maintain the timeline. One wrinkle could be Kirk and company not telling the other ship's crew the whole truth. The Enterprise crew know the other ship has to go back even though they will be destroyed, but our heroes can't tell them that foreknowledge at the risk of affecting history. And on the off chance the "past" crew remember anything of the future that knowledge will be lost when they're destroyed.

Another variation could be the Enterprise flung back in time to find itself in the midst of a pivotal engagement during the Earth/Romulan war. The Enterprise has the advance knowledge and the firepower to easily save an Earth outpost the Romulans will destroy, but doing so will change history. This would be similar to the 1970's film The Final Countdown.

Insurrection - Wasn't this basically a misguided Starfleet Admiral gets involved in trying to learn the secret of a fountain of youth? Maybe someone could clarify this for me. But it doesn't seem much different from "The Omega Glory" only told in a different way.

 

As a massive fan of John M Ford's "Final Reflection", I would have loved to have seen TUC at least partly told from (his) Klingon's side of things.

Interesting that a Klingon moon exploding in TUC, causing a paradigm shift in their society. In the FASA Klingon background (which JMF partially authored) Kahless explodes a Klingon home system moon to start his Empire!

Maybe the old and much slated version of Klingons gave at least a little inspiration here?

 

The Voyage Home.

No probe, but a lethal disease that's spreading across the Federation. Its source is tracked down to Earth, and researching, McCoy can't find a cure, but Spock discovers anecdotal historical texts that some Amazonian tribes suffered from something similar, but were able to cure it. The Enterprise has to go back in time to find out how, and it turns out that it was a plant that went extinct (with no DNA record) in the mid-twentieth century down to overuse of DDT (or just pesticides if you don't want to use a trade name). When people were spraying this stuff, they were wiping out their own future...

Same kind of environmental message, but a 60's problem.

 

And it still sounds less silly than the actual movie's premise.

 

Now that you mention it, I think that would have worked a lot better than the mask moment that everyone seems to hate. They could have just scanned the guy and say he'd been surgically altered to look Klingon, although you wouldn't be able to make the Colonel West connection right then and there. It seems more sci-fi plausible.

 

Honestly, I'm not sure why you couldn't do a pared-down, one-hour version of TVH. An alien probe from a mysterious cetacean species threatens Earth unless the Enterprise can zip back to the 1960s one more time to bring back two humpback whales, with the the help of a pretty blonde marine biologist played by Goldie Hawn or whoever. Chekov gets injured, complicating the mission, but, in the end, the Enterprise makes it back to the 23rd century in time to stop the probe.

It's not like endangered wildlife wasn't on people's radar back in the late sixties, or that the Enterprise hadn't time-traveled back to the 20th century before. And marine parks with whales are nothing new. (Anybody else remember Namu?)

All you really have to cut are the the loose ends from TSFS, with the crew being fugitives and the Enterprise destroyed and all that. Just replace the stolen Klingon ship with the Enterprise, which stays in orbit, and drop the bookends relating to the crew's legal woes and trial, Spock's recent resurrection, etc.

Or you could just do a Star Trek/Flipper crossover.

 

I'm not ready for that.
TVH as an episode is an interesting notion, but I think a lot of the subtleties that make the movie better would be lost in the process. Spock and the ship both not being at their best, for instance, and "It is the human thing to do."
Then again, in the context of a TOS episode those things are probably above-and-beyond anyhow.

 

A big hurdle with TVH as an episode is cost. It sounds like an expensive story to film unless one can manage to be really, really clever.

 

ISTR someone on here once doing some really good photoshops along these lines.

 

More so than the other films? The bulk of it would consist of the Enterprise crew running around modern-day America, like in "Tomorrow is Yesterday" or "Assignment: Earth."

No alien landscapes. No expensive makeups or creatures. No space battles. Just lots of fish-out-of-water bits, and Kirk having pizza with Gillian, and Chekov getting injured at a military base and needing to rescued from a hospital set, etc.

You don't need to show the whale probe attacking Earth, any more than you needed to show all those outposts being attacked in "Balance of Terror" or entire planets being wiped out in "Operation--Annihilate!" Make a model probe. Show some guy on a view screen with lots of smoke and falling debris in the background.

"Warning! Earth is under attack!"

Find some stock footage of SeaWorld and humpback whales, have the crew beam down to the park--or maybe take a shuttle--and . . . voila.

And, since you're not using the Klingon ship, you're not going to have the Enterprise crashing into the bay at the end . . . .

 

The only "back to Earth" episodes I really enjoyed were "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" and "The City On The Edge Of Forever." "Assignment: Earth" was meh. And "Assignment: Earth" was the only one where they diliberately go back.

Indeed after the first two time travel stories (I'm not really counting the ending of "The Naked Time") I never cared much for any of Trek's time travel stories no matter the film or series.

 

Nah, just film most of it on the back lot with a dozen odd extras.

Some of the movies would work better as two episodes if cut into their component pieces. First Contact would be two separate episodes, the time travel story with Cochrane (who isn't the man Kirk through him to be), and the Borg trying to take over the ship story, which wouldn't have to be in the past. The Borg could have been introduced previously, I think Best of Both Worlds would have made for a great TOS story.

Nemesis, the big Romulan doomsday ship heading for Earth, a Romulan commander helps the Enterprise battle the ship. Maybe we could keep the ramming, and one of the Enterprise secondary characters beams Kirk back and fires their phaser in the gizmo blowing up the doomsday ship. Lose the plot of the Kirk clone who needs his blood.

Insurrection would be a problem, Kirk during TOS was a professional follows orders officer and it's difficult to see him in the Picard role here. Maybe have Kirk in the role of Dougherty, and a guest star as the naive Starfleet captain in the role of Picard.