"Point of Extinction": The Lost TAS Episode

The Roddenberry 366 Vault unveiled one corker of a surprise today - the first draft of a never-produced episode of the Animated Series!

Reading it, it's pretty clear the writer (who would go on to write a DS9 and a VOY episode each, as well as for lots of other TV shows) had no idea just how limited the animation was going to be, or that he only had a half-hour instead of an hour to work with!

EDIT: If only the last page or two wasn't missing...

 

Thanks for bringing this to our attention!

 

Interesting. That makes at least two unfilmed TAS scripts that have been published, along with Russell Bates's "The Patient Parasites" way back in Bantam's The New Voyages 2.

That's kind of what a first draft is for, though. Often you start out by writing a draft that includes everything you want to include, and then in later drafts you trim out or simplify the parts you can't afford or practically achieve. After all, you never know what parts you will be able to pull off, and the producers and director and production staffers are better judges of what is and isn't possible than the writer is, so it makes sense to start off including everything you want and trimming down, rather than pre-emptively leaving out something that you might've been able to do after all.

Interesting to see Paul Robert Coyle's name on something this early. I know his name mainly from Hercules: The Legendary Journeys as one of the production team. They did a couple of clip shows framed by comedy segments in which the show's cast played caricatures of the show's real-life producers, and Michael Hurst (Iolaus) played Coyle -- as a bitter old drunk, IIRC. (Ted Raimi played Alex Kurtzman, Bruce Campbell played Rob Tapert, Hudson Leick played Liz Friedman, etc.)

They aren't. I know the PDF file says it's 46 pages and the script ends on 44, but the cover page and cast list page at the beginning aren't numbered, so those are the first two pages. It looks to me like there's probably just one page missing, with the stage direction at the end probably meant to lead into the closing Enterprise flyaway shot.

 

And at least one more line of dialog, if not two or three. You are correct that it's likely only one page missing, but there had to have been more on it than stage direction. The guest character of Saras called to communicate with Scotty and McCoy, and had yet to do so.

 

Yeah, and it looked like there was a McCoy/Spock punchline coming.

 

Very much a McCoy/Scotty story. Who knows if it could have been any good in final form.

Why would they need a "hovercraft" when a standard shuttlecraft would serve just fine?


I don't recal what the other "lost" TAS story was, mentioned upthread.

 

For the same reason they have aqua shuttles and life support belts. In the words of Walter Bishop (Fringe) "Because it's cool."

 

it's too bad that this episode was scrapped tbh, mccoy and scotty are my favourite characters by far.

 

Wonder if they will release other scripts. I love these.

 

Well, with the life support belts it was because it was a lot cheaper to animate the characters with a glowing forcefield around them than working up entirely new model sheets of the characters in space suits.

 

I think the writer meant "shuttlecraft"

 

No, the script explicitly specifies "one of the light, two-man hovercraft-type landing vehicles." Perhaps that was a new design that Filmation considered using at that time, along the same lines as the aquashuttle, heavy shuttle, and other variants from TAS. I could see how a combined shuttle/hovercraft could be useful in TAS; it'd be easier to use a ground vehicle in animation than live-action (see the desert flyer in "Yesteryear" or the groundcar in "The Jihad," for example, or the aquatic scouter-gig in "The Ambergris Element"), and you could economize by using the same hovercraft cels for space scenes and ground scenes. As a hovercraft, it could've even worked for water scenes.

 

They use a ground vehicle in "Jihad."

 

There was no cost increase in creating model sheets for a spacesuits, and i'm not certain there's Filmation documentation to support that (or I'm sure someone would have posted it here).. Filmation--and other animation studios of the era--had no problem creating space or underwater suits for characters normally wearing their regular clothing. If you look at series from the same era--Sealab: 2020 (1972), Emergency +Four (1973-75) and other series, special suits were designed to be used often, and did not lead to some cost problem, or budget-busting situation. The creation & use of the TAS belts seems like a creative choice to "advance" certain TOS concepts, just as Filmation added a second bridge door, introduced several new shuttles (detailed interiors as well as exteriors), and rooms never seen on the live action series. Moreover, Filmation did not hold back creating a wealth of new aliens, weapons, ships, planet-scapes, etc., along with everything adapted from TOS.

 

Time = Money. Not only would the time spent creating those model sheets be taking time away from something else, they would have had to generate those models for ALL the major characters. AND create new animation cycles for them. Using the force field belts meant that they could reuse all the existing footage that they already had. And Filmation was ALL ABOUT reusing existing footage.

 

Model sheets are cheap. Animation is comparatively expensive, especially at the time because of the material costs (acetate, xerography, paint) and personpower. The life support belt effects were comparatively cheap because it was a simple to draw and paint a belt and a loose "glow" effect which could be done for any existing character animation. To add spacesuits would have been a lot more time consuming.

 

That is not expensive, and the aforementioned examples (Sealab: 2020 and Emergency +4) of full, alternate suits used with greater frequency than TAS used the belts--proved that it did not cause an issue with the budget. TAS went as far as they wanted--head-to-toe aliens, such as the Orion pirates, Klingons, along with:

• The guest characters (new designs) of "The Jihad"
  
• "The Ambergris Element"
• "Bem,"
  
• "The Slaver Weapon"
  
• "The Infinite Vulcan"
• A wealth of alien designs in "The Time Trap"
• "The Pirates of Orion" with a new Starfleet ship (Huron), characters, as well as the titular pirates, their ship and bridge interior

...and so on. TAS' intent was to expand in all categories that were (in some cases) only touched on or suggested by TOS. It makes no sense form a production standpoint that any design / animation cycle that could be re-used over and over again (which helps budgets, not hurt it) like an environmental suit would be some budget-buster, yet the series--as a matter of common practice--went above and beyond the call of duty with numerous new aliens, weapons, spaceships, interiors, etc. Think about it.

...or, just provide the documents detailing the choice of using belts instead of suits.

 

I'd wager that those shows likely had higher budgets than TAS did.

 

If I recall correctly, they were produced by Hanna-Barbera, which did have a higher development budget for each show. So any reusable animations were done first, including extra outfits for primary characters, using that budget. Filmation was one to cut such corners, so they could have larger budgets per episode for the things TREK_GOD_1 mentioned.

 

That's right. Filmation saw its recycled stock character animations as a feature, not a bug, because it saved them time and money that they could devote to other things.