Starship Exeter—The Atlantis Invaders: Annotated

I've been meaning to put this out for a few years (and shared it with one or two people), but here's the abandoned script for the planned 3rd episode of Starship Exeter, titled "The Atlantis Invaders".

From my intro:

[...]even though “Atlantis” was shelved, never to be filmed, enough people have asked about it that I finally queried Jimm as to if I could release my script and he said he didn’t mind. I was a tad concerned that the script was in my 2nd-And-A-Halfth draft state (officially draft 4, revised) with shipboard scenes finalized but all the off-Exeter stuff awaiting another pass.

Then it occurred to me that the script’s unfinished state could be more interesting than a polished draft, as some future fanfilm makers might find it valuable to see a script in the middle of its evolution, especially if fully annotated so they could understand what was planned, why it's in the shape it's in, and how a lot of the story and structural concerns were addressed or not yet addressed. Heck, if it wasn’t educational it might at least a serve as a warning that writing screenplays is not as simple as it looks.​

Director Scott Cummins wrote a nice foreword about why no part of the episode got filmed, and gives some insight on how tight a race it was to get even @Serveaux 's "The Tressaurian Intersection" in the can.

It was planned that Executive Producer Jimm Johnson would give me an afterword before I put this out there, but he's busy with some life things at the moment. So when he gets that to me I'll update the document to give him the last word.

So for what it's worth... here's the script, complete with concept sketches, deleted material, experiments, et al. A look at a might've-been.

STARSHIP EXETER
"The [annotated] Atlantis Invaders"
A Work In Progress
(link)

NOTE: the original file was over 30mb, so I posted one 6x smaller.
But it's still too big to embed. Sorry!

Sample pages
​

 

You remember wrongly. That was just a test shoot for a possible location. Nothing of the episode was shot.

 

I don't know what the original intent was. It was shot well before I got involved and features no dialog related to that story. But once I saw it I thought it was ideal for one scene I was writing. That's covered in some footnotes in the annotated doc.

 

Thanks for sharing this!

 

Just started to read this on the commute. I'm guessing the Johnsons wanted you to mention bits like Tangaro and Quincy's uncle in the script, which would be a TNG thing to do (or a usual fanfilm crutch?). But if Kirk could have his Kodos the Executioner and this never gets mentioned again, then Garrovick can also have his Tangaro that doesn't need to be brought up.
Was Callahan meant to be his Finnegan? (though a more ruthless version)

 

The Appendices reproduce the Teaser of the script that existed before my rewrite and the treasure chest belonging to Garrovick’s uncle was there but as a throwaway. I just kept that bit of connection because the whole Tangaro thing was a good reason to explain why these two guys never really got to be close again.

Callahan was maybe more Finnegan-like originally, but in my draft he’s a composite of several characters because I needed to streamline things.

 

Maurice, did you ever finished that final draft you wanted to polish? Cutty interrogation included I hope.

 

I never intended to touch it again once we knew we weren't going to make it. What would be the point?

BTW, for anyone interested in the scene it's on the Starship Exeter group on Facebook here (link).

On that page TTI's director posted:

Scott Cummins If memory serves, this was done as a test for the just-built bridge portions, and for Harris' "bun" hair appliance (which is why the hair colors don't jive). They also thought the location setting was particular to TOS so they shot the brief scene there, I guess, "just because." I don't remember the sequence being tied to any particular script, though.​

 

When I originally introduced myself to you, you shared an itch of completing it but that was from 2014. I get the point. It'll never be shot, but what I found interesting about your Annotation was how much fun you had writing the script and developing your ideas. I also appreciated your take on making Cutty a 3 dimensional character and making his role on the Exeter as important as the Captain and the "Army Brat" First Officer.

 

Oh I dunno that I was itching to complete it. It was the proposed replacement "The Eagle and the Serpent" that I really liked and will someday write as some other thing. I've done a lot of screenwriting since then and I'd have approached it completely differently by 2014. Anyway, frozen in amber now, and unless John Hammond comes along and gets DNA out of it to make clones I think it's safely dead along with the dinosaurs.

And thanks for the note on Cutty. He and Harris are my two fave Exeter characters, and that "Eagle and the Serpent" script was going to trap them together for a whole episode...held captive on a Romulan ship.

 

I'd love to read that script, I can imagine the trouble those two (Cutty and Harris) could do on a Romulan ship. I'm guessing you would have opened the doors on both of their history and finally unleash the "Elephant in the room". Cutty was hurt he wasn't first officer of the Exeter, and held a grudge towards her, while Harris would share what her past was living up and under her father's legacy.

 

Something like that. I probably wrote about half of it. Their conflict was going to be used as a metaphor to illustrate the theme of the misuse of science for political aims.

 

I'm a HUGE fan. Would love to read it someday... with some annotations included? I appreciate your take on the subject and educating me (the reader) at the same time.

 

I appreciate your enthusiasm. There's not enough of it to share. It's fragmentary scenes because I was still noodling around with what the story was and how to express the themes. So "half" doesn't mean from beginning to middle, but like bits of lots of scenes.

 

Interesting, all of this... even the bits and pieces are interesting. Did you at least figure how in blazes our heroes got on that Romulan ship?

 

Oh yeah. I had the broad strokes of the plot mechanics figured out. It was all the character stuff I had to figure out.

 

Thanks for sharing this. I enjoyed reading what you’d written of this back in the day, and the insight into the process. It’s a shame it’ll never be made, it’s a damned good read.

 

Well, thanks. The story was a compromise between what they started with and where I thought it should go. As I say in the intro, I hope the annotations give aspiring or beginner fanfilm writers a glimpse of how the sausage is made.