What if ST XI came out 10 years ago?

Here's the scenario: after Insurrection, Paramount tells Rick Berman, "We think you're a great TV guy but we're giving the movies to someone else", and they hand it over to a red hot director/producer of the time. Whoever this is still decides it's going to be a reboot and decides to use the TOS characters, but how would it be different?

I imagine more militaristic-looking uniforms and gross-out humor.

 

What I would be interested in concerning your scenario are the consequences for the franchise, e.g. the fate of the TV incarnations if STXI would have been released ten years earlier.

 

Trek was in a different place back in 2000--it was still owned by one company and Trek's movie division was essentially an extension of its TV division with generally the same people working on both.

We probably would have got a reboot of TNG rather than TOS back then, IMO...

 

Didn't they almost reboot Star Trek in 1992? Harve Bennett's Star Trek: The Academy Years. There's a review of the script at AICN. I reckon they would have resurrected and made that.

 

There is precedent for having different production teams on the movies and series at the same time. Look at the period when Harve Bennett and Leonard Nimoy produced ST V and VI respectively while Gene Roddenberry and Rick Berman produced TNG.

To go in a tangent, I wonder if Harve Bennett was ever approached to produce the second series?

Anyway, the motivation Paramount would have in this scenario would be to have Star Trek become more competitive with Star Wars (and The Matrix), even if they knew they couldn't match it.

 

Okay, here's my take: script-wise, everything might have proceeded identically right up to the destruction of Vulcan. Ten years ago, a kinder, gentler, pre-9/11 outlook on life would, I hope, have led to a different conclusion: Kirk and Young Spock would have duplicated the time-travel stunt that put Nero in their way to start with, and UN-HAPPENED the loss of Vulcan. In the next movie, maybe that will happen.
SAVE THE VULCAN 6,000,000,000!
That's a snappy bumper-sticker-ish credo, innit? Movies can do anything they want!
(And I confess: it is my heart's desire, to reverse Vulcan's end, as Romulus's was.)

 

People were already tired of Voyager's overuse of the "reset" button making anyone's sacrifice cheap. . . doing it again in a movie probably would have put another nail in Star Trek's coffin; besides, the restoring the time line plot point is too much like First Contact. . .

~FS

 

I'm aware of that, but that wasn't the case ten or even fifteen years ago. Starting with Star Trek VII, the movies and TV shows were essentially working out of the same office at Paramount, with Berman and his team often doing double duty. Berman was still a favorite with the studio back then because of his ability to get things done on schedule and within the relatively modest budgets Paramount was allowing for Trek movies at the time.

I think they would have tried to do something with less than half the budget that they would later give Abrams...

 

It would have starred Rob Schneider

 

Re-watching Voyager's "Caretaker" a few days ago gave me a vision: Robert Duncan McNeil as James T. Kirk

 

Who was popular (or at least predicted to be popular) 10 years ago?

KIRK: Josh Hartnett
SPOCK: Keanu Reeves
MCCOY: Josh Lucas
SCOTTY: Dougray Scott
UHURA: Gabrielle Union
CHEKOV: Nick Stahl
SULU: John Cho

 

If that image doesn't make you wanna puke, nothing will.

 

Then we could have such memorable lines as
Spock: "Woah, I know Pon Farr"
Kirk: "Show Me"

 

Thank god that didn't happen. Well, mostly didn't happen.

 

I would have been quite disappointed with such an outcome, particularly on the heels of First Contact. One of my favourite aspects of the new movie was the fact it did NOT use the "reset button". Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, etc. (the reset button is more cliched than the "been there…" phrase).

 

I think we would not have gotten a reboot but since this is a theoretical thread it would not have been JJ Abrams directing as he hadn't done Alias series or MI:III big Hollywood film yet.
Alias really put him on the map.

It would have felt a lot like the other TNG films for sure.

 

^ Then 10 years ago they would've given it to Michael Bay. Ben Affleck as Kirk, Bruce Willis as Pike, Joe Pantoliano as the villain, Orion Slave Girls stripclub, Aerosmith sings the theme song, and the most pyrotechnics in the history of space movies.

 

Spock: "Duuuuuude... fascinating!"
Gabrielle Union should be in the next movie as another young upstart Starfleet Captain that Kirk crosses paths with, and trips on his tongue.

 

Ten years ago Paul Verhoeven would still be fresh off Starship Troopers (.. or maybe in this alternate universe that movie was never made). He makes the Federation a cold militaristic fascist dystopia. And to be topical, the plot's villain is a genocidal dictator modelled after Slobodan Milosevic. To capitalize on The Matrix, the starfleet uniforms are made of black leather and rubber. With Good Will Hunting just a couple years ago, its stars Matt Damon and Ben Affleck play Kirk and Spock. Because its Verhoeven, there's lots of political satire, violence, and gore, as well as nude scenes and a co-ed shower.

Mirroring the behind-the-scenes shitstorm of 1995's Waterworld and 2000's Supernova (starring Angela Basset and James Spader) Verhoeven goes way over budget and refuses to change the film to meet executive demands. He is fired and the more studio friendly Brett Ratner is brought in to completly reshoot the film. He casts Jackie Chan as Sulu who takes center stage over the rest of the cast despite being barley able to speak english, and a 'cute' CGI alien is added to the main cast ala that annoying furrball in Lost in Space or Jar Jar Binks.

The movie is a medium success at the box office but doesn't make back its enormous budget. Several books and magazine articles are written about the backstage drama and it kills Star Trek on the big screen for good.

 

FOR. THE. WIN.