Hypothetically... could "Phase II" have ever been a success?

[Warped9]

^^^TMP's official budget was in the 45 million range. There's no way the Phase II and other aborted Trek projects amounted to tens of millions.

The film had an official budget (which it blew through, and blew out again in post) and the earlier projects were added to that as the total cost to Paramount for bringing Star Trek back.

If you are trying to remodel a house and do an addition, if you pay architects for plans and proposals and you pay for permits, and you pay to start construction, but as you go you change the plans, and tear down some partial construction, all that money is still going to the same project and you're going to count it as such. TMP wasn't just TMP, it was the completed product of a plan to bring Star Trek back.

Except television projects and film projects are two separate things and often handled by different divisions. When TPTB finally settled on a feature film and Robert Wise was brought in most everything made for Phase II was redone because Wise felt it all unsuitable for a feature film. All the miniatures had to be redone from scratch. The sets had to be either revamped or redone from scratch. The costumes redone from scratch. During TMP's production all the initial f/x done by Abel & Associates were scrapped and redone by ILM. They also had to get Nimoy inboard. And the script needed more work. And on and on and on.

 

[Maurice]

"We paid A to write a script, but we didn't like it, so we paid B to write a new script, and we didn't like that, so we paid C to write a third script, which we used, but since we didn't use A or B's scripts we can't charge the expenses of that work to this project."

Wrong.

 

[Bixby]

The original Phase 2 would not have succeeded in my opinion because it lacked the most important element in ALL of Star Trek:

Gene Coon

 

[2takesfrakes]

I did not care for anything I've seen still-surviving from "Phase II." It's so funny how it works out, sometimes. How close this was to happening, before someone woke up and realized that STAR TREK should get a shot at the big screen, for the first time. Sometimes, you have to be thankful for unanswered prayers.

 

[Maurice]

Anyway, the whole TMP budget thing doesn't really have any bearing on this discussion, since TMP wouldn't have happened if Phase II had been produced. Sorry to get dragged off into that whole sideline.

 

[Warped9]

Anyway, the whole TMP budget thing doesn't really have any bearing on this discussion, since TMP wouldn't have happened if Phase II had been produced. Sorry to get dragged off into that whole sideline.

Well it is tangental.

I know there were test shots of Ilia and Xon in TOS uniforms, but I don't know of any surviving footage of the TMP sets. There are some surviving stills of the unfinished Phase II refit miniature, and who knows what happened to it. We can only guess on what it all could have looked like onscreen.

More recently individual fans have made 3D models of the Phase II refit, most notably the Phase II fan production. It's interesting to see it realized, but I still prefer the TOS design or the TMP refit. The Phase II version just doesn't look really integrated to my eyes.

The funny thing is all productions usually date themselves in some way or other. Whenever I look back at older productions I watched as a kid I'm reminded that I thought nothing of it at the time only now some things stand out like hair styles, clothing, aesthetics and even music. In that light we might have accepted Phase II assuming the stories were engaging enough. I recently rewatched the pilot movie for the Six Million Dollar Man. It is a very good and very well made production with very little to really date it. The writing and performances are spot on. The whole overall sensibility is pitch perfect and a lot of that has to do with it's generally lowkey approach. The way it's presented you could use that script nearly exactly as is today and it would still work with more contemporary production values. The only moment when it seems a bit off are the climatic action scenes where it might be a bit too lowkey. Otherwise it's a gem.

Would Phase II have succeeded? We'll never know.

 

[Melakon]

During TMP's production all the initial f/x done by Abel & Associates were scrapped and redone by ILM.

Douglas Trumbull took over from Abel, based on everything I've read. I think they tried to get ILM, but they were busy with other projects. ILM did handle the effects for TWOK.

 

[Warped9]

During TMP's production all the initial f/x done by Abel & Associates were scrapped and redone by ILM.

Douglas Trumbull took over from Abel, based on everything I've read. I think they tried to get ILM, but they were busy with other projects. ILM did handle the effects for TWOK.

Yes, I stand corrected.

 

[Maurice]

Sorry, wrong about ILM.

The first ILM under John Dykstra did Star Wars and after that was over Dykstra did Galactica. Lucas shut down that ILM and moved gear and key people north to Marin County to re-found ILM in order to do Empire. They had to build the facility during Empire's production and were in no position to do outside work. In fact, they only started taking outside work post-Empire as a way to keep the facility from having to be shut down and restarted and to keep people employed between Lucas's own pictures.

Dykstra founded Apogee based in the wake of ILM leaving. Apogee worked on TMP.

Actually, I believe Trumbull bid on TWOK and claims he was turned down despite having a lower bid because Paramount wanted the relationship with Lucasfilm. (Too bad for the poor Enterprise model, given what ILM did to it.)

As to RA&A (Abel) the streaking effects in the bridge during the wormhole are all their work. I've never seen anyone produce any other RA&A work for the film other than concepts and tests.

 

[Delta Vega]

Early TNG with 70s hair and sets. It would have been glorious . . . ly cheesy!

Was thinking the same thing


All the bridge crew with Neil Young haircuts and bushy sideburns, not for me

 

[trevanian]

As to RA&A (Abel) the streaking effects in the bridge during the wormhole are all their work. I've never seen anyone produce any other RA&A work for the film other than concepts and tests.

You'd have a very different movie if there was actual film of the Abel concepts for the various parts of VGER and its transformation at the end, going by the artwork by Kline and all those others.

It's actually a shame that nobody has found much in the way of tests (the pyro on the little klingon models are the only things I can recall offhand), because the bridge probe Con Pederson worked on sounded like, from what his assistant Steve Slocumb said, a really cool kind of animated light sculpture. I don't know how it would have comped with the live-action, but since I've always hated the actual version, which due to all the generational loss looks like it was shot in Super8, I've got to figure the unseen original concept might have been a noteworthy improvement.

 

[Maurice]

Oh, no denying that the RA&A stuff was conceptually interesting. Question was could they have done it in the time they had? I know a lot of politics were involved around TMP that obviously impacted various decisions beyond the actual ability of RA&A to complete the work.

I've recently figured out how to do TMP like slot mask animation, like the probe in the finished film, and it's a fun technique, but, yeah, too much generational loss in the final result, which certainly doesn't look so great and Con Pederson's idea sounded cool.

 

[trevanian]

The sets had to be either revamped or redone from scratch.

Look at the published costs on the sets. They just have the reworked costs on the bridge, which I think was something like 200 grand. That's the reworking, which is the ceiling, Chekov's station, probably new or altered chairs, and perhaps the costs of all those damn projectors. The p2 bridge cost some insane amount -- CFQ claimed 7 mil, which is no doubt horseshit, but maybe Lee Cole might hazard a guess -- and ALL of that should be charged to TMP.

 

[Maurice]

I have been trying to find Lee Cole for years and had no luck, event through her Guild and former co-workers.

7 mil is an impossibly high figure for that set even with the TMP modifications. Heck, the Rec Deck only cost a quarter mil. I can't imagine why the damned thing would cost so much money, aside from casting the sections instead of building the set from wood.

 

[Ronald Held]

Who was next in command after Decker and how would it have affected the dynamics of the stories?

 

[Noname Given]

One thing though. I do recall see some film test footage for 'Phase II' (it's not on You Tube, but it's been discussed); and the uniforms and sets in that footage are more akin to the original 1960ies uniforms and sets - then what they did for TMP; so there's also the fact that the 1970ies TV "Phase II" would have had more in common with the original 1960ies series look then what ultimately was done for TMP.

That MAY have helped get original Star Trek series fans back into the new Phase II, and might have gotten the show a bigger following considering how popular the original Star Trek was in syndication during that period.

 

[Lance]

One thing though. I do recall see some film test footage for 'Phase II' (it's not on You Tube, but it's been discussed); and the uniforms and sets in that footage are more akin to the original 1960ies uniforms and sets - then what they did for TMP; so there's also the fact that the 1970ies TV "Phase II" would have had more in common with the original 1960ies series look then what ultimately was done for TMP.

That MAY have helped get original Star Trek series fans back into the new Phase II, and might have gotten the show a bigger following considering how popular the original Star Trek was in syndication during that period.

While the audition footage and the bridge test footage used the original TOS costumes exactly as they appeared in TOS, the most intriguing footage IMO is the engineering test stuff. It's identifiably the same set as used in TMP, but the details are a little rougher, a little more like TOS (the doors are painted in primary colors for example). The two actors in this footage are also using different uniforms to anything seen elsewhere: the guy is wearing some kind of jumpsuit thing without sleeves and with no undershirt, while the girl is seen wearing what appears to be a female TOS Starfleet uniform which has nevertheless been altered to remove her sleeves and lower the neckline even further (this sleeveless look makes her outfit look eerily prescient of what Uhura wore in the two JJ Abrams movies). Of course, they could only be engineering outfits rather than actual uniforms. But I still find this footage interesting because it's the only piece of Phase II test footage that even suggests that the uniforms might have been given an upgrade if Phase II had gone to series. The rest of the audition footage gives the impression instead that the standard TOS uniform would be used, 'un-altered'.

 

[Maurice]

Costumes were made for Phase II, and many were slightly altered versions of those from the original show while others were cut from wholly new cloth. The Phase II fanfilm series features several of these.

 

[publiusr]

I know it was for Planet of the Titans, but I actually liked the triangular ship. Ken Adam's iteration would have had a bridge module rising like a tower, with a landing platform--with the saucer making planetfall.

That I would have liked to see.

Wasn't Redford to have played Kirk in TMP according to some?

 

[trevanian]

I know it was for Planet of the Titans, but I actually liked the triangular ship. Ken Adam's iteration would have had a bridge module rising like a tower, with a landing platform--with the saucer making planetfall.

That I would have liked to see.

Wasn't Redford to have played Kirk in TMP according to some?

I think the GR joke-casting mentioned in STARLOG was Clint Walker as Kirk and Redford as Spock. Maybe he was coked out when he said it and he meant Clint Eastwood, Walker was pretty much already a non-entity at that point.

Thinking of Eastwood, has anybody seen those old TREK roleplaying games from the early 80s? We got a couple in at Goodwill several years ago, and I was shocked to see that on the covers were mildly touched up artworks of Eastwood and George C. Scott, done up as aliens.