Which would you have preferred to go into production?
Phase II or the TOS movies?
- Thread starter Admiral Pike
- Start date
I would have liked to see Xon and Illia and some of the planned episodes. Judging from the script in the Phase II book, the Phase II version of The Child would have been a lot better than the TNG one.
RobertScorpio
Pariah
yes...Season Three of TOS and Seasons 1-2 of TNG, some of Voyager and most if not all of Enterprise demonstrate just how good TV TREK can really be...
TOS movies were good, and in Khan's case, GREAT. PHASE TWO, based on what photos I have seen, would have come out about as silly as BUCK ROGERS did. Some of the so called 'script treatments' would have made THE NAKED NOW look like Citizen kane. Not doing Phase two, with GR running it, was what saved TREK; IMO
Rob
RobertScorpio
Pariah
Well, it's my opinion, formed by reading the script and comparing it with the filmed version.
That's pure speculation on your part, I disagree.
Most of the scripts in development for "Phase II" were pretty bad.
RobertScorpio
Pariah
Well, it's my opinion, formed by reading the script and comparing it with the filmed version.
That's pure speculation on your part, I disagree.
I have read that script to. And knowing what I know about TV? That would not have been the final shooting script. The pictures that are in my PHASE TWO book are all the proof I need; that show would have blew chunks. It would have been very much like season 1 of TNG. TNG, despite what some people believe, was just PHASE TWO updated. Either version would have suffered because of who was running them; Gene Roddenberry. And back in 1975, or whatever, Roddenberry would have been younger and would have been given more time to make it work; but he was already the problem.
Harve Benette, Nick Meyer, pretty much saved TREK. The principle actors, Shatner - Nimoy, seem to agree. And TNG was heading down the path of oblivion until Roddenberry gave up control to Berman.
Had there been no 'evil' Harve, then there would not have been the success of VOYAGE HOME which gave TNG birth.
Rob
Agreed, Dennis some of them were awful (Tomorrow and the Stars) springs to mind, but some of them could have been good. Like all seasons of Trek, there's good and bad.
I would agree that Harve Bennet et al saved Trek from TMP (which I also know was born from Phase II). However, as you point out, the stuff in the Phase II book would not have been the final shooting scripts. Who knows how they would have developed.
What about the Phase II pictures suggests to you that the show would blow chunks?
RobertScorpio
Pariah
Phase Two; NO WAY
Every once in a while I pick up the PHASE TWO book that has the cool photos, and great behind the scenes stuff, and the script treatments for the episodes, and the more I read? The more I am glad they didn’t do Phase-Two.
Phase-Two came AFTER All in The Family. For all this talk about how TOS changed the landscape for TV, All in The Family makes Trek’s changes look like candy-store filler. Now, with all that said, I read the story treatments for Phase Two. With all due respect, with very few the exceptions, the stories were not that good. And some of them (Kirk Pearl Harbor story) were outright rip-offs. More importantly? They were far from the cutting edge stories of TOS. Some of the stories would have fit right in with BSG's fluffy stuff, or even worse, BUCK ROGERS,
But, and here is where I will lose most of you, the underlying problem with PHASE TWO would have been Roddenberry. And you can see the proof of this when he took most of his ideas, for PHASE-TWO and brought them to TNG and..well…season 1 of TNG makes TOS’s season-three look like a masterpiece. Roddenberry’s problem was that, IMO, TV had passed his way of telling stories by. It isn’t until (GASP) Berman comes along, and with him Moore-Piller ect, does TNG really start to work. The less control Roddenberry had of TNG (and the TOS movies I might add) the better they got.
PHASE TWO might have worked, I guess, had someone else ran the show; but under Roddenberry, it wouldn’t have lasted past one season (IMO) and STAR TREK would have faded away; for good.
That’s my take on PHASE TWO. It died, got reincarnated as TNG, and flourished, for the most part, the further Roddenberry got away from it. Roddenberry was a man, IMO, who was trapped in the past.
Rob
Scorpio
Every once in a while I pick up the PHASE TWO book that has the cool photos, and great behind the scenes stuff, and the script treatments for the episodes, and the more I read? The more I am glad they didn’t do Phase-Two.
Phase-Two came AFTER All in The Family. For all this talk about how TOS changed the landscape for TV, All in The Family makes Trek’s changes look like candy-store filler. Now, with all that said, I read the story treatments for Phase Two. With all due respect, with very few the exceptions, the stories were not that good. And some of them (Kirk Pearl Harbor story) were outright rip-offs. More importantly? They were far from the cutting edge stories of TOS. Some of the stories would have fit right in with BSG's fluffy stuff, or even worse, BUCK ROGERS,
But, and here is where I will lose most of you, the underlying problem with PHASE TWO would have been Roddenberry. And you can see the proof of this when he took most of his ideas, for PHASE-TWO and brought them to TNG and..well…season 1 of TNG makes TOS’s season-three look like a masterpiece. Roddenberry’s problem was that, IMO, TV had passed his way of telling stories by. It isn’t until (GASP) Berman comes along, and with him Moore-Piller ect, does TNG really start to work. The less control Roddenberry had of TNG (and the TOS movies I might add) the better they got.
PHASE TWO might have worked, I guess, had someone else ran the show; but under Roddenberry, it wouldn’t have lasted past one season (IMO) and STAR TREK would have faded away; for good.
That’s my take on PHASE TWO. It died, got reincarnated as TNG, and flourished, for the most part, the further Roddenberry got away from it. Roddenberry was a man, IMO, who was trapped in the past.
Rob
Scorpio
Re: Phase Two; NO WAY
I'm pretty sure the writer's guide for "Phase Two", supposedly written by Roddenberry, specifically references shows like "All in the Family", "Hill Street Blues" and "M*A*S*H" as shows very much worthy of emulation. He championed the new, more naturalistic style of television, with its ongoing character development, ensemble casts, and the like. Roddenberry had many failings, but not keeping up with modern television storytelling wasn't one of them. In that regard, he was well ahead of the curve. TNG's early reliance on the older style of formulaic storytelling falls firmly at the feet of play-it-safe executives, who tended to cling to older, tried-and-true methods. And who was TNG's official studio bean-counter? Berman. Whose primary job was to keep Gene on a short leash. (Which wasn't necessarily a bad idea.)
That TNG seemed to improve once Gene was no longer at the helm, and Berman held the reins? Well Berman was holding his own leash at that point, and people rarely feel compelled to impose the same strictures on themselves as they do on others. They aren't usually all that distrusting of their own motives. Don't think their own ideas are at all harebrained. Simply put: When Rick was in charge, he gave himself a lot more freedom than he'd ever given Roddenberry. He stopped actively trying to limit production efforts, and finally began to facilitate them.
I'm pretty sure the writer's guide for "Phase Two", supposedly written by Roddenberry, specifically references shows like "All in the Family", "Hill Street Blues" and "M*A*S*H" as shows very much worthy of emulation. He championed the new, more naturalistic style of television, with its ongoing character development, ensemble casts, and the like. Roddenberry had many failings, but not keeping up with modern television storytelling wasn't one of them. In that regard, he was well ahead of the curve. TNG's early reliance on the older style of formulaic storytelling falls firmly at the feet of play-it-safe executives, who tended to cling to older, tried-and-true methods. And who was TNG's official studio bean-counter? Berman. Whose primary job was to keep Gene on a short leash. (Which wasn't necessarily a bad idea.)
That TNG seemed to improve once Gene was no longer at the helm, and Berman held the reins? Well Berman was holding his own leash at that point, and people rarely feel compelled to impose the same strictures on themselves as they do on others. They aren't usually all that distrusting of their own motives. Don't think their own ideas are at all harebrained. Simply put: When Rick was in charge, he gave himself a lot more freedom than he'd ever given Roddenberry. He stopped actively trying to limit production efforts, and finally began to facilitate them.
Re: Phase Two; NO WAY
Very few series find their "legs" the first season...sometimes not until the third season. So, I think it's unfair to judge what Phase II could have been by a few story outlines and a couple of scripts.
I think -- like TNG -- it would have picked up during the third year. I base this on my observations of many other series.
Very few series find their "legs" the first season...sometimes not until the third season. So, I think it's unfair to judge what Phase II could have been by a few story outlines and a couple of scripts.
I think -- like TNG -- it would have picked up during the third year. I base this on my observations of many other series.
Re: Phase Two; NO WAY
Since there's already a Phase Two thread, I'm merging the two...
Since there's already a Phase Two thread, I'm merging the two...
Yeah, but I thought the concept for Devil's Due was worse, so it balances out.
I liked TWOK-TSFS-TVH trilogy. That allowed us to get TNG and following spinoffs. If Phase II had been born, I don't think we would have seen anything else afterwards, which would be a shame.
I liked the movies too.
Who knows how Phase II would have turned out? TNG's first season seems to be generally disliked, but there were another 6 seasons after that.
Seeing how Spock's my favorite Trek character, I went with the movies since he wouldn't have been a regular in Phase II. Ideally, I would have loved ST:TMP as the 2-hour premiere of Phase II followed by the series which included Spock exploring his newfound acceptance of emotions. They could have left Xon in as a backup science officer and used him to show the contrast between Xon as a Vulcan and Spock as accepting his human side more.
When I think of how many more hours of Trek we'd have had, I have to go with Phase II because instead of 5-10 hours of movies, we would have had more than that in a TV season.
On the other hand, the amount of money they were able to spend putting together the movies makes this a quantity versus quality issue.
Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed the movies immensely, with The Wrath of Khan my favorite of the bunch. I just would like to have seen more with the original crew. When you look at Trek, the Classic series gets the least amount of time and episodes.
And I wouldn't have minded seeing more of Ilia. I mean, more appearances.
In a sense I think we eventually did get Phase II, only it was as TNG particularly in the early seasons. Echoes of Phase II are right there in the series. Even the 1701D is conceptually similar to Ralph McQuarrie's paintings of a redesigned Enterprise.
For me part of the problem is that I look at TMP and like to imagine a series built on that and Phase II wouldn't have been that.
For me part of the problem is that I look at TMP and like to imagine a series built on that and Phase II wouldn't have been that.
Similar threads
