The Eight Episode Arc

[Arpy]

https://x.com/CodySDax/status/1710564562003505526?s=20

“According to MacDonald, he learned later that he was meant to return as N'Vek in seven more episodes as part of a Vulcan/Romulan reunification arc, several of which would have included Spock, but a falling -out between Rick Berman and Leonard Nimoy resulted in this being cancelled. On his last day of shooting TNG: ‘Face Of The Enemy’ MacDonald received the script revisions that killed his character.”

​

…Could you imagine the ramifications if this happened? (Also Rick Berman reminds me why I used to hate B&B back in the day.) But this could have totally changed the Trek we know.

1. depending on how they did it, an eight-episode multi-parter blasts out of the water anything Trek did til the last season of DS9. Even with softer connecting tissue, it couldn’t be til the Dominion War arc (again, on another series) Trek did anything like it.

2. would the end-result be Reunification? You could certainly do it over 8 episodes. I always thought they could have done it in one of the TNG movies. without the need to end the story quickly on the small screen, it wouldn’t need to take generations for the people to be ready. Hell, hadn’t they been interested in Vulcans since TOS? Or thought about reunification since they left 2000 years ago?

2.b. what a thing for TNG to do to reunify them over seven episodes. Lots of stories and angles and politics to explore. What a change to the future of the galaxy and the future of Star Trek that would have been. TNG started by showing a different galaxy from TOS’s — one of peace with the Klingons, and no Romulans. This would have continued that. And of course changed NEM and PIC!

3. and with the star power of Nimoy over 8 episodes, it could have totally blown open the wall on not mixing TOS and TNG. GEN might have been completely different. The rest of the TOS cast might have shown up at some point, either in a movie (depending on whether the studio wanted to splurge on budget to get them) or in individual episodes/ more miniseries. Where did Scotty go after “Relics,” did Admiral McCoy ever come back, whatever happened to Captain Sulu and the Excelsior, did Uhura become head of Starfleet Intelligence (Catalyst of Sorrows) or quit it all and go into politics, did have a large Russian family Chekov raise the next Federation president? Would the popularity of the 8-parter inspire TOS follow up episodes — a visit to the planet that create the Doomsday Machine, or Kirk (a la “Too Short a Season”) has to deal with the ramifications of some of his old cowboy diplomacy.

 

[Arpy]

(@Mutai Sho-Rin, I just reread the tweet and noticed that N’Vek was to be in EIGHT episodes all-in-all. Would you please change the title of the thread to “The Eight Episode Arc”? Please free to delete this reply, too. Thank you!)

 

[at Quark's]

but ... but .... then we never would have had one of the most iconic episodes ever, In the Pale Moonlight! (Assuming that reunification would have meant the Romulans joining the Federation - or would it have implied the Vulcans leaving it?)

Joking aside, it sound like a very interesting arc and yes, it would have changed the rest of the 24th century (series) in a lot of ways.

 

[Mutai Sho-Rin]

(@Mutai Sho-Rin, I just reread the tweet and noticed that N’Vek was to be in EIGHT episodes all-in-all. Would you please change the title of the thread to “The Eight Episode Arc”? Please free to delete this reply, too. Thank you!)

Done, and no need to delete the request.

 

[Arpy]

but ... but .... then we never would have had one of the most iconic episodes ever, In the Pale Moonlight! (Assuming that reunification would have meant the Romulans joining the Federation - or would it have implied the Vulcans leaving it?)

Joking aside, it sound like a very interesting arc and yes, it would have changed the rest of the 24th century (series) in a lot of ways.

Yeah, I’m guessing part of the 8-episode arc would be an explanation of what happens to Vulcan’s membership in the Federarion or the Star Empire’s dissolution. …I mean, talk about a game changer, but doable in 8 episodes if the Klingon Civil War was done in 2. More I’d gear towards the dissolution and some of the chaos that would ensue there. Not the least of which might, again, be Klingon involvement.

 

[Tosk]

While the falling out is documented, I don't know how much stock to put in every detail of this claim. For TNG to plan a specific (high) number of connected episodes so late in the run of the show...I dunno, I just can't see TNG ever doing eight interconnected episodes. And they presumably couldn't afford Nimoy for more than one or two eps. If it had been earlier, I could see an arc of non-consecutive episodes covering the story, but even then...

I'd be curious to know what dates Face was filmed during.

 

[Arpy]

I think because it was Spock they might have gone for it. I mean they were interested in serialization well enough in their next project DS9 with the Bajorans and Cardassians.

This was season 5 of TNG and they had two and a half seasons more to churn out; why not try it, especially after how well the Klingon arc was going? This would have been the other great Star Trek foe and, again, Spock.

It may indeed be because Nimoy priced himself out that they didn’t go for it. Isn’t that what torpedoed Shatner?

 

[Tosk]

This was season 5 of TNG

It was season six.

 

[Arpy]

It was season six.

“Unification” was episodes 5x07-x08.

Come to think of it…Time’s Arrow, Part II; Chain of Command, Parts I & II; Birthright, Parts I & II; and Descent, Part I were in Season 6. …there’s 6 hours of a kind of serialization right there, plus “Face of the Enemy.”

 

[Tosk]

“Unification” was episodes 5x07-x08.

Yes, but the supposed eight-ep arc was said to start with Face of the Enemy, which was halfway through season six.

 

[drt]

For TNG to plan a specific (high) number of connected episodes so late in the run of the show...I dunno, I just can't see TNG ever doing eight interconnected episodes.

They had all of those "relative you've never heard of coming out of the woodwork" episodes to do after all. But in all seriousness, presumably it would be like how they handled the Klingons, eight episodes here and there that addressed Reunification, but were largely self-contained, with a final two-parter featuring Nimoy to wrap everything up.

 

[Arpy]

They had all of those "relative you've never heard of coming out of the woodwork" episodes to do after all. But in all seriousness, presumably it would be like how they handled the Klingons, eight episodes here and there that addressed Reunification, but were largely self-contained, with a final two-parter featuring Nimoy to wrap everything up.

That’s how I took it. I didn’t expect 8 episodes one after another, although maybe. But after “Face of the Enemy” there was one other episode, then the “Birthright” two-parter…I wonder if part of that was to use makeup they’d worked on for the arc.

Man I wish we could get a look at the scripts or pitches or anything to do with how the story might have unfolded. Infighting factions, among the Vulcans too, chaos along the subject worlds and border powers. Would we have seen Tomalak again?

 

[Tosk]

there was one other episode, then the “Birthright” two-parter…I wonder if part of that was to use makeup they’d worked on for the arc.

If the decision to alter Face of the Enemy truly came during filming as MacDonald claims, then Birthright would have been well into production as-is already.

 

[JoseNoodles]

While the falling out is documented.

Could I get the SparkNotes? Why did Nimoy and Berman have a falling out?

 

[Tosk]

Could I get the SparkNotes? Why did Nimoy and Berman have a falling out?

Apparently it happened during the early process of Nimoy possibly directing Generations.

 

[Arpy]

If the decision to alter Face of the Enemy truly came during filming as MacDonald claims, then Birthright would have been well into production as-is already.

Would they have fit a Romulan prison camp two-parter that had nothing to do with reunification in between a handful of other Romulan episodes? That’s a lot of Romulana.

I’m wondering if they scrambled to make do with the Romulan makeup, costumes, props, et al (and the DS9 sets) when the other story didn’t pan out. I mean, the Data dreaming bottle episode of part one, then the Worf going on a weird side adventure of part two felt a little out of left field to me at the time.

Could have just been some cross promotion, using DS9 and Bashir in part one, but, eh, I wonder.

 

[Tosk]

I’m wondering if they scrambled to make do with the Romulan makeup, costumes, props, et al (and the DS9 sets) when the other story didn’t pan out.

That's my point though, if the plan was scrapped during Face, then Birthright was already written and in pre-production. They didn't just come up with a brand new two-part episode in a week, especially one that has to carefully schedule with the DS9 production.

 

[JoseNoodles]

Apparently it happened during the early process of Nimoy possibly directing Generations.

Oh, bummer.

 

[JesterFace]

Apparently it happened during the early process of Nimoy possibly directing Generations.

I wonder if 'Generations' might have been better with Nimoy directing?
However I think whoever directed that movie didn't have much to work on, I don't like it, sorry....

 

[Takeru]

I have a hard time believing this, who did MacDonald learn this from? If N'Vek was such an important character that he was supposed to appear in every episode of this arc that would have been communicated before he was cast in case he had other commitments, even if nothing specific was known yet his agent would have definitely been asked if he was potentially available over the next few months or the next year. The character would have been marked as possibly recurring during casting at minimum.

According to Braga Berman and Nimoy had a falling out over his refusal to direct Generations and being refused a script rewrite but that did not happen during production of Face of the Enemy, at that point they hadn't even chosen a story, another one proposed by Maurice Hurley was still in competition in February 1993 when Face of the Enemy aired and the first draft of the generations script wasn't finished until June '93. So there's no way the decision to kill of N'Vek had anything to do with Nimoy not liking Generations, the timelines don't match.

It also seems illogical that they would kill off N'Vek because a planned arc fell through, why not keep him alive off screen just in case? Killing the character was much more likely done to add tension to the end of Face of the enemy, the jig is up, Deanna revealed an imposter/traitor, her only ally dead etc.

Unless someone from the writer's room confirms this was actually planned I'm going to assume this is a situation of someone saying "Wouldn't it be cool if ..." and through a game of telephone this had turned into "There was a planned 8 episode arc and N'Vek would have been a central character" when it reached McDonald. I wouldn't even be surprised if the person McDonald learned this from was a fan because a romulan/vulcan reunification arc featuring Spock that makes TNG much more serialized than it ever was before sounds like fan fiction.