Prequels that never were: Starfleet Academy - Star Trek: The Beginnin

[Stone_Cold_Sisko]

With the release of JJ's new Star Trek reboot/prequel, a movie which I thoroughly enjoyed, thought I would remind people of these two ABORTED Star Trek prequel projects. Script synopsis and review links below:

Harve Bennett's Starfleet Academy movie (which got scuttled for Star Trek 6 I think)
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/22789

Star Trek: The Beginning by Erik Jendresen (Band of Brothers). Basically a war movie about the Romulan War - which got scuttled for the movie that just came out:
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/34635

 

[JTK2099]

Re: Prequels that never were: Starfleet Academy - Star Trek: The Begin

I would have LOVED to have seen Erik Jendresen's script done by Paul Verheoven or another director who is great at directing action/combat. If I could have had my pick, this is the movie I would have made instead of Trek09.

 

[Myasishchev]

Re: Prequels that never were: Starfleet Academy - Star Trek: The Begin

The Romulan War film sounds decent. With some minor fixes (the Terra Prime tools live in a former Nazi base and use Nazi-inspired tech? I mean I know subtlety is not a historical strength of Star Trek, but come on), it looks like it could be pretty boss.

And "Top Gun-like" is no insult.

I question how well the Romulans', apparently broadcast, reasons for attacking Earth could be squared with the surprise in Balance of Terror. If you go out of your way to exterminate a species that for all they know have never met you, it's probably going to raise some suspicions.

Then again, the fact that the Romulan language was known and translated at least as early enough to fashion a peace treaty suggests that the Roms either engaged in some really heavy subterfuge to keep their true origins hidden--to the point of inventing an entirely new and artificial language--or the Vulcans were too stupid to recognize a descendant of a language spoken only 2000 years ago. It's like if aliens showed up and started speaking a language which was obviously derived from Latin... oh, wait, that happened.