The original concept for ST 4
- Thread starter Crewman47
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That was part 6, not 4. Ending on 3 would be silly.
The original Star Trek 4 was supposed to feature Eddie Murphy with a similar story about the whales. The original idea for Star Trek 6 was the Academy movie.
Harve Bennett has said that the casting for Starfleet Academy would have been Ethan Hawke as Kirk and John Cusack as Spock. I can almost see it, based on Dead Poets Society and Say Anything. Almost. The film would have been shot partly at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, which would have been the Academy, and I believe that Paramount actually built a new building on campus for the film. The film actually got fairly close to production. It was really only stopped at the 11th hour when some higher-ups at Paramount realized that there wasn't a role in the film for Shatner and Nimoy. The framing sequence that's been talked about -- Kirk addressing the Academy cadets and reflecting on his lost love -- was a late addition to make the film acceptible to Paramount's new needs.
The other model was the TV series "Paper Chase".
However, Takei, Koenig, Doohan and Nichols (who all realized there wouldn't be big roles for them), managed to get ST convention audiences imagining something comedic, akin to the "Police Academy" films and, with both ST IV and ST V having a lighter tone, people were willing to believe that's what Bennett had in mind.
Umm, I'm referring to Hawke's role in Dead Poets and Cusack's role Say Anything, which were released in the 1989/1990 window. Neither were in Paper Chase.
I can't look at Hawke and Cusack now and see them as Kirk and Spock, but if I put in the DVDs, I can almost see.
Y'know, that pisses me off, and it really gives rise to the opinion of the "gang of four" as being douchebags. Yes, I realize they were just trying to protect their careers, but they're also being churlish toward the franchise that gave them careers to start with. That's just dickery.
Yeah, the whale story, if memory serves, would have been the same, pretty much. But Murphy would have been an eccentric college professor who believed in alien life and when the Bird of Prey accidentally decloaked over the city at a baseball game, everyone at the stadium thought it was a joke except for Murphy's character, who would have been convinced of it being a visiting spacecraft. But then, Paramount didn't really want Murphy to be in a Star Trek movie and Murphy's people convinced him to do The Golden Child, which Murphy supposedly regrets, the film was re-written into the form that we know it, and Murphy's character became Gillian Taylor.
Yeah. Takei's always annoyed me the most. There's that scene in TSFS where he gets the immortal line, "Don't call me tiny". It's a great scene, it's funny, it got a big laugh. Yet George was vehemently opposed to it, as he thought it insulting to his character. However, when he saw the reaction of the audience, he decided he loved it after all. Sulu has about three memorable scenes in the whole franchise: wanking about with the sword in The Naked Time, "Don't call me tiny", and Captain Sulu in TUC. That's about it. I suppose that's why he clashed with Shatner so much - they both have massive egos. The difference seems to be that Shatner can laugh about himself.
Yeah that's what I meant, just got the numbers mixed up.
Umm, I'm referring to Hawke's role in Dead Poets and Cusack's role Say Anything, which were released in the 1989/1990 window. Neither were in Paper Chase.
Fully aware of that. I'm suggesting a contemporary TV model of kids-at-study that worked well.
So they were supposed to answer fan queries at conventions, weekend after weekend, by pretending that they were absolutely thrilled their future onscreen work in ST was likely to dry up?
I spoke with George Takei about this. The problem with convention anecdotes, of course, is that they get repeated ad nauseum and, depending on the actor's mood, the audience's tone on the day, and where in the one-hour patter the topic comes up, their responses will be different every time. On some days their answers were humorous, on other days they'd come across as angry. Essentially, though, recasting the "gang of four", but with meaty cameos being secured for Shatner and Nimoy, would feel threatening to four typecast actors depending on weekend conventions to top up their income and I can understand the actors feeling threatened.
So often fans say here that George should just "shut up" (on any number of topics), but if he chose to answer "No comment" then people would still complain.
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But who would've won? Would Star Trek V have been about Starfleet fighting a guerilla war against our new cetacean overlords?
No, Ian, the problem I have is that they were feeding audiences misinformation about a project they weren't even involved with, and probably had little if any solid idea of what it was about. That's like people citing Richard Arnold at conventions these days as a reliable source -- he's not connected to the franchise any longer, and he's no source of authority any longer.
There's nothing that I have ever heard about Starfleet Academy that makes it sound like it would have been any sort of comedic romp. Bennett, when I've seen him talk about it, has described a somewhat dark film that's about as far away from the hijinks and pratfalls of Police Academy as you can get.
"I'm sorry but I have absolutely no idea" makes for very boring convention patter. Instead, they made a few jokes about no longer being needed, and urging convention audiences to send letters to Paramount telling them what they wanted to see in the next movie. They were talking to their fans, not every ST fan. It's not as if they were on Paramount's "SF Academy" payroll and had to be either informative (or secretive) about a film they wouldn't be required for. ST IV was comedic and successful. (ST V also tried to be comedic in its own way.) The old cast assumed that the next film would also use humour.
Well, he's still an annual guest at Australian conventions, continues to be a freelance adviser to ST tie-in licensees, spends a lot of time on the Paramount lot and is in daily/weekly contact with many of the actors, writers and production people. I assume he also has contacts who worked on the new movie. So, yeah, he's still a fairly reliable source of ST news. And his dealer's table and charity auctions still have unique items.
Exactly, but that wasn't known at the time I'm talking about. IIRC, the Academy proposal was pitched by Bennett before ST V, and again before ST VI. It was only later that we started to hear it was to be much darker in tone.
