Roads not traveled....
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
Post ST: IV could have seen Kirk and co. kicked out of Starfleet and without the Enterprise, which would free them up from having to answer to Starfleet, and they could have had cool space adventures on their own.
And, of course the post-TMP films could have been more science-fiction and less action-adventure-y, had TMP been more well-recieved.
And, of course the post-TMP films could have been more science-fiction and less action-adventure-y, had TMP been more well-recieved.
I think this is something of a myth that has been exaggerated over time. TMP is the most commercially succesful of all the films until perhaps recently. The perceived flaws of the film have been unfairly exaggerated and many were fixed with the DE. If we had gotten the DE version in '79 the franchise might have unfolded differently. Nonetheless one can argue that TWOK may have injected added energy yet it also changed some things needlessly or too drastically than what was required.
Generations might not have been the mess that it was had the powers that be given Moore and Braga more time to write and hadn't forced certain requirements on them. If anything, I would've preferred a battle with the Romulans at the Armagosa Array to the ridiculous sailing ship intro for the TNG crew. That, and a Vorcha instead of a BoP for the Duras Sisters (if they were even in this version).
The Ashes of Eden which was Shatner's pitch for Star Trek VI. I enjoyed the novel and the DC comic adaptation, and could've easily seen it as a Trek movie.
Also, The God Thing and Planet of the Titans. I would've liked to have seen those made.
Also, The God Thing and Planet of the Titans. I would've liked to have seen those made.
It would have been less of a mess if they weren't forced to stick Kirk in it.
If it was a TNG-exclusive story, they could have afforded to be more coherent.
Also, we wouldn't have to mope about his lame-ass death.
GEN was a one-sheet movie, conceived by the suits as what would look good on a theater poster. In this case, Kirk and Picard together.
There is that continuing story that GR wanted to do a Trek movie where they go back in time to stop the Klingons (I think) from doing something bad and it ends up with Spock having to kill JFK.
Um...as much as I think AoE would have made an awesome Trek movie following on from TUC, I don't think it was ever really pitched as one, and particularly not pitched for ST VI.
EDIT: Here is a fun link at the projects that were never developed, but considered.
Um...as much as I think AoE would have made an awesome Trek movie following on from TUC, I don't think it was ever really pitched as one, and particularly not pitched for ST VI.
EDIT: Here is a fun link at the projects that were never developed, but considered.
According to George Takei at a convention I attended, Shatner had hoped to direct VI back-to-back with V. Per Takei, Shatner pitched a story where Kirk had to turn his back on his friends and collegues to solve the mystery of a strange world and a sensual woman who's asked for his help.
A Starlog interview with James Doohan, where he praises Shatner as a director and done around the release of TFF, also states that there were hopes of filming VI back-to-back with V and Shatner directing both.
Moreover, I remember several interviews around the time AoE was released where it was described as an abandoned movie pitch.
The Return was also pitched to Paramount as a Kirk returns movie.
I wouldn't have minded more of a science fiction feel post TMP because I believe you could have had that along with more energy and action. Those things aren't mutually exclusive.
"Rock-a-bye-baby, Or Die!" would have to be the worst Star Trek title ever......except "Q-Olympics" is worse.
The ones that have synopses sound like they kinda suck, except DS9's "Dysfunctional," apparently an Ezri story where she decided to have the symbiont removed. There's little doubt in my mind that it would've reset at the end, but it seems it would've been a much better let's-develop-Ezri-quick episode than the one where she goes to see her family, which isn't bad, per se, but is far less than compelling. But a risky operation to remove the unexpected, unwanted, mind-controlling gutworm? Now that's entertainment.
The unproduced TNG episode "Neutral Zone" sounds as bad or worse than the actual ep, and the aforementioned "Q-Olympics" might be the worst episode of Star Trek never made.
Could the commercial success of TMP have spawned a new series adapted from it much as the feature film Stargate was adapted into a series many years later? Recall that Stargate had also been a template that had to be tweaked to work as a series. Or what if the template of TMP had been followed more closely in successive films?
Well, not all for naught, just perhaps what they were expecting to do at the start...simply return Spock's body to Vulcan, where his katra would be released.
No Enterprise-A. Kirk and crew get the Excelsior. Maybe renamed Enterprise, maybe not.
And so maybe in V... instead of a broken down Enterprise with doors that don't work, how about experiments with the new transwarp drive, and a malfunction taking the ship to strange new worlds.
Possibly, but since Star Wars was the rage, Paramount probably wanted to jump on that more with at Star Trek sequel film.
I would love to see how the series played out without Spock died. Say Paramount decided to go ahead with Star Trek III and Nimoy stuck to his word to leave Trek behind. We'd have Saavik as science officer; David and maybe even Carol as new ongoing characters. Something like the DC Comics series in the issues before Trek 3. Back in 1982, it really felt like the movies were going in a new direction and introducing new blood was necessary to keep the series going (before anyone ever considered making a new TV series). Even if Kirk was given command again, he would need a knew XO (maybe bump up Sulu). It would have been nice to have Chekov somehow even mention not returning to Reliant. I always wanted someone to address the fact that Chekov chose to return to Enterprise after his torture and control by Khan.
I've also been interested in seeing how that would've played out. I really enjoyed the DC comics that explored the crew after TWOK, and even after TSFS, because things changed and weren't reset in those issues. Kirk commanded the Excelsior, Spock moved onto another command, Saavik was the science officer, etc.
It's a shame that all the next two movies after TWOK were basically reset the film series to basically the end of TMP, or even the original series.
Some have already been mentioned, like Planet of the Titans or The God-Thing. Harve Bennett's Starfleet Academy is well-known. The version of Star Trek IV with Eddie Murphy. The Ashes of Eden was, as mentioned, pitched for Star Trek VI, along with Walter Koenig's "Flanders Fields." The Return was, at the very least, an idea for Star Trek VIII.
Star Trek II had a long gestation, beginning with Roddenberry's time travel idea and then the Khan (and the Khan-less) scripts.
I've always been curious about Maurice Hurley's script for the first TNG movie, with Picard consulting a holodeck Kirk.
I'd also like to read Michael Piller's "Stardust" script, which Patrick Stewart balked at because it was too dark.
I don't know if the rumors of a Picard-less TNG movie (supposedly called either "Destiny" or "Destinies") in the mid-90s were actual plans or simply a virulent rumor spread by fandom at the time.
