I was going through old flash drives last night, and I found I'd downloaded the Strangis treatment and the podcast discussion of it at the time and, while I read the treatment (I gave a quick reaction to it on Facebook at the time) I had not listened to the podcast.
Let me post what I wrote on Facebook in 2018, a couple more comments then I'll get into my reaction to the podcast.
First, a vintage Facebook post:
I'm not sure how widely known it is that Gene Roddenberry was not Paramount's first choice to create Star Trek: The Next Generation. He wasn't even the second. He was the third. Paramount first approached Harve Bennett and Leonard Nimoy, who were at the time making Star Trek IV (probably around the time the two men had fallen out professionally) and who declined the offer.
Paramount then turned to Greg Strangis, who later went on to create the War of the Worlds television series. Though Roddenberry's biographer David Alexander didn't describe Strangis' pitch to the Paramount executives in his biography Star Trek Creator, he did quote extensively from Roddenberry's written response to the Paramount execs. With a written pitch, Roddenberry knew that Paramount was serious about making a new Star Trek television series, and he got himself dealt back into the mix.
I've wondered, since I first read Star Trek Creator, what exactly Strangis' vision for a Star Trek series was. Now his written pitch, essentially the Leekley Bible of Star Trek, is publicly available. While it's derivative somewhat of Star Trek II (the hero ship is an Academy training ship, and several main characters are Starfleet cadets), the prototype of Worf (Klingon serving aboard a Federation ship) appears here.
There are some ideas here that I like -- Starfleet returning to a mission of galactic exploration after a decade-long war, the lead character thrown into the role when the ship's captain is killed during the pilot. But there's also a lot that's sketchy and ill-defined, things that need to be worked out and developed further.
I don't see why this couldn't have worked in 1987.
Quick reference explanation: the "Leekley Bible," for people who aren't
Doctor Who fans, was the bible written for Fox's possible
Doctor Who series in the early-90s, which ultimately morphed into the Paul McGann movie. My reference to it is shorthand for "a road not taken," essentially. (For a true
Star Trek comparison, think of the JMS proposal for an Original Series reboot.)
Reading the Strangis treatment two years ago was an interesting experience. I had known about it since the early 90s -- I read the dueling Roddenberry bios at the time, and it's mentioned briefly in Joel Engel's and then David Alexander, as I mentioned on Facebook, quotes from Roddenberry's response to it extensively. From Alexander, I could tell that Strangis's series featured a cadet ship and "space admirals pontificating," but what else? Could anything from Strangis' "Next Generation" have made its way into the series that debuted in September 1987?
It was a tempting thought. Strangis was a creative producer for the first thirteen episodes of
Star Trek: The Next Generation before leaving to work on
The War of the Worlds. Writers recycle their own elements all the time, and Roddenberry's
Next Generation wasn't wholly original, taking ideas from
Phase II and David Gerrold's
The World of Star Trek. Looking at the way episode credits on the first season on
Star Trek: The Next Generation broke down, I wondered if Data's origins as a character could be found in Strangis' treatment. I mentioned this to then-Pocket Books editor Marco Palmieri some years ago; he scoffed and said he thought it was obvious that Data came from
The Questor Tapes.
I didn't expect to find what appears to be the prototype of Worf instead. I use the words "appears to be" deliberately for two reasons. First, given how late Worf was added to the series I doubt that Strangis' Lt. Commander Mynk was in the forefront of anyone's mind. And second, rereading the treatment last night, Mynk reminded me far more of Konom, the Klingon defector serving aboard the
Enterprise and
Excelsior in the movie era in the comic books published by DC Comics at the time. Honestly, the whole thing reads like it was inspired by Mike W. Barr's
Star Trek comics -- a war with the Klingons, the Organians, a hero ship full of cadets and junior officers, and a Klingon.
There's nothing in the treatment I find truly unworkable, and this isn't the final form of what would have appeared on our television screens in 1987 had Roddenberry not dealt himself back in to the project. Even the broadcast
Next Generation went through serious evolution: "Farpoint" was worked and reworked, characters and relationships develop in different ways on screen than the bible suggests, etc. Strangis' treatment would have undergone the same evolution. "Alien Cadet," for example, needs serious work. If I were giving notes on Strangis' treatment, they would be simple: redo some of the names (especially the Vulcans), drop the whole Academy cadets angle (just make the characters junior officers), and I could go either way on the holographic Captian Rhon (maybe a little too much like a technological Obi-Wan Kenobi Force ghost). But I do like Kincaid taking command when Captain Rhon dies in battle; that's a very Hornblower-esque thing. The ideas presented broadly have potential. What matters is how they would have been developed, and that would have depended on the writers Strangis and Rick Berman would have surrounded themselves with. Certainly, the production would have been a less toxic environment than Roddenberry and Leonard Maizlish fostered in the first two years of
Next Generation.
So, that's my reaction to the treatment. It's a fascinating historial document, a look at the pre-history of
Star Trek: The Next Generation, that has interesting ideas and potential. It's not the crime against
Star Trek that David Alexander suggests in
Star Trek Creator.
Now, the podcast.
I didn't really like it. The discussion of the contents of Strangis' treatment was insightful. They drew some parallels to
Discovery that I hadn't considered. The production values were quality. But there was an incredulous attitude from Larry Nemecek and his guest, especially in the early going, that rubbed me the wrong way.
All of that said, I'm glad this document has surfaced, and I'm glad that I was finally able to read it. I don't know if Strangis' "Next Generation" would have been better or worse than Roddenberry's was, nor whether it would have run as long and led to multiple spin-offs. All I can say is that
Star Trek history would have been vastly different had Strangis' series been put into production in 1987.
