Should TMP Have Been Recast Young?

[2takesfrakes]

Should TMP have been recast & rebooted, entirely (?) is the question.

I love TMP and am a huge fan of it. However, an opportunity existed to do what STAR TREK 2009 had done so successfully. Would it have worked, though? Personally, putting an aging TOS cast back in their accustomed roles on this project would not have worked for me, had I been an executive in charge, at Paramount. I would've simply recast TOS for this movie as young, rather than tacking on young guest stars, as TMP ended up doing.

 

[Firebird]

Wasn't the whole reason the fans wanted a Star Trek film in the 70's was to see the original cast together again? I don't think recasting would have done anything to help TMP, and might well have hurt it.

 

[Tenacity]

If a recast, then simply do a disconnected general sci-fi movie. Paramount did the Star Trek movie to ride the Star Wars popularity, but they only did Star Trek(instead of something else) because they had it sitting on their shelf, and they though they would be able to go cheap and use the concepts of the Star Trek TV series that was in the works.

 

[Relayer1]

Wasn't the whole reason the fans wanted a Star Trek film in the 70's was to see the original cast together again? I don't think recasting would have done anything to help TMP, and might well have hurt it.

Exactly.

We wanted to know what happened to 'our crew' next, and that meant casting them again. Recasting would have ruined it, and seeing them older was part of the thrill.

The Kelvin Timeline movies suffer from many issues - plots, writing and not least poor recasting for at least half of the crew.

 

[Kor]

What they could have done was have Kirk and Spock appear briefly as secondary characters in Starfleet Command in mentorship roles to our main characters, namely, Decker, Xon, Ilia, and a few other newbies.

It could have literally been the next generation to take the Enterprise out on amazing adventures.

Kor

 

[uniderth]

I'm glad the didn't recast and were able to get Nimoy back for Spock. Poor Xon.

We wanted to know what happened to 'our crew' next, and that meant casting them again. Recasting would have ruined it, and seeing them older was part of the thrill.

Which is why I have no interest in watching the JJTrek films. I don't care what happens to a parallel alternative version of our crew.

 

[Maurice]

No they didn't do it because they would be able to go "cheap". The first announced budget for TMP was several million higher than Star Wars ended up costing. They did it because they had this super popular property and it would have been foolish not to exploit its brand recognition and built-in audience. AND they'd been trying to do something with it for years, and Star Wars proved you could make dumptrucks full of money on scifi, so why not?

 

[ralfy]

There would have been probably no need for a recast given the argument that the events depicted in the movie are set around a decade or so after the end of the original show.

 

[Vger23]

No

 

[Khan 2.0]

remember reading in the pages of Return to Tomorrow Making TMP in its early stages a director suggested killing off he 'TV cast' in the opening then having a new movie crew (imagining the likes of Paul Newman, Robert Shaw, Christopher Reeve in the TMP uniforms taking on Vger)

 

[Herbert]

The Kelvin Timeline movies suffer from many issues - plots, writing and not least poor recasting for at least half of the crew.

I've watched two of the three Kelvin timeline films and I like them for what they are, which for me is the equivalent of an imaginary story. I don't consider them to be true Star Trek though. (Yarrr! Nerd rage!!)

As far as recasting TMP with new actors? yeah, I'm sure that was never even a consideration and why would it be? There had been talk throughout the 70s about bringing back Star Trek, finally culminating in the first movie. Fans were clamoring for what was familiar and what they liked. It would have made zero sense to recast for the movie. Besides, it's not like the actors were old and decrepit in 1979. Sure, Doohan and Kelley were 58/59 but that's hardly out to pasture.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Definitely not. The draw of TMP would have been seeing characters people loved played by actors that fans had come to associate so much with them. Recasting at that stage would've made a mockery of the fans at a time when the PTB were trying to build Trek into something more than TOS/TAS. It is just such a shame that they never made more of Decker and Ilia (or even included Xon in some way).

 

[Brennyren]

No way! A major draw -- at that point, THE major draw -- for most of the audience was seeing the familiar actors in their beloved roles. There was no groundswell of interest for bringing in a new cast; indeed, as one of the fans around at the time of TMP I can promise you that replacing the original cast would have been considered a major dis to them, the originals, and to us, the fans. And at the time, Trek did not have a vast degree of popularity beyond that base.

 

[Kor]

Poor Xon.

If you're referring to the transporter accident, the Vulcan character was actually Commander Sonak, not Xon.

Kor

 

[uniderth]

If you're referring to the transporter accident, the Vulcan character was actually Commander Sonak, not Xon.

Kor

I'll just go ahead and leave my reference intentionally ambiguous.

 

[Takeru]

No recasts but they should have dropped Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov.
Star Trek was really only about Kirk and Spock with a bit of McCoy, those three back for nostalgia and new supporting characters would have been best.

 

[Tenacity]

^ Would have made Sulu's appearance in TUC really special, it being the first we saw of him since TOS.

If TPTB still had him as captain of the Excelsior in the opening scene.

Coming up with the right mix of new supporting actors to back up the main players might have resulting in the TOS movie series surviving the eventual withdrawal of Shatner and Nimoy.

 

[omnirad]

They could have got by with just the Big Three original actors, since the secondary characters are just pushing buttons and staring at the view screen. Replacing them with younger actors wouldn't add anything. They killed off the new younger characters that were important to the story. So back to square one.

Wrath of Khan tried to set up Saavik and David as younger replacements, but dumped them, as the Original Family of 7 became the main appeal of the movie series.

In some alternate reality the movie crew could have been headed by Decker, Illia, Xon, Saavik, David, Cadet Preston, Demora Sulu, and Christian Slater...

 

[Khan 2.0]

In some alternate reality the movie crew could have been headed by Decker, Illia, Xon, Saavik, David, Cadet Preston, Demora Sulu, and Christian Slater...

and Gillian

 

[BillJ]

No.