TWOK deleted scene question

[Christopher]

^I wonder if things would've been different if TOS, like Mission: Impossible and various other '60s shows, had gone through cast changes during its run. We lost Rand and gained Chekov, and there were a lot of cast changes between the pilots and the regular series, but otherwise the cast remained quite consistent, and that's what the fans expected and what the movies stuck with. Perhaps if there'd been more permanent and major cast changes in the show, then the audience would've been more receptive to further cast changes in the movies.

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

^I wonder if things would've been different if TOS, like Mission: Impossible and various other '60s shows, had gone through cast changes during its run. We lost Rand and gained Chekov, and there were a lot of cast changes between the pilots and the regular series, but otherwise the cast remained quite consistent, and that's what the fans expected and what the movies stuck with. Perhaps if there'd been more permanent and major cast changes in the show, then the audience would've been more receptive to further cast changes in the movies.

Makes sense to me. In hindsight, I think if TOS had been able to run for 1-2 more seasons, there may have been a way to begin phasing out some of the crew and introducing new characters. What I'd have done during the final season is work the Enterprise's upcoming refit into the show, perhaps by showing Scotty reviewing blueprints showing the updated Constitution-class design, and also find a way to introduce Decker, Nogura and other characters who would be playing more prominent roles in the films.

As for the crew during the films, I'd have found a way to keep Saavik around, and I'd have moved both Sulu and Chekov to another ship and kept them there. I very much prefer Kirstie Alley's Saavik to Robin Curtis' and don't know if the former would have been available for the films, but I'd have rather seen her start working her way up the chain of command as the older crew members were transferred or gradually phased out.

--Sran

 

[Christopher]

Makes sense to me. In hindsight, I think if TOS had been able to run for 1-2 more seasons, there may have been a way to begin phasing out some of the crew and introducing new characters.

That might've happened anyway due to the need to cut the budget, as most long-running series must do to stay on the air. Perhaps they would've phased out Shatner and/or Nimoy for cheaper leads.

What I'd have done during the final season is work the Enterprise's upcoming refit into the show, perhaps by showing Scotty reviewing blueprints showing the updated Constitution-class design, and also find a way to introduce Decker, Nogura and other characters who would be playing more prominent roles in the films.

Of course, that's back-projecting after the fact; there's no way that anyone making a hypothetical fourth and fifth season in 1969-71 could possibly have known that those characters would be created in 1977-8. If the show had lasted long enough to go through cast changes, it would've introduced totally different characters than the ones we got.

 

[Tomalak]

As for the crew during the films, I'd have found a way to keep Saavik around, and I'd have moved both Sulu and Chekov to another ship and kept them there. I very much prefer Kirstie Alley's Saavik to Robin Curtis' and don't know if the former would have been available for the films, but I'd have rather seen her start working her way up the chain of command as the older crew members were transferred or gradually phased out.

--Sran

I always liked the eighties Star Trek comics, which introduced new recurring characters, and made Saavik pretty integral.

A shame they couldn't cut a deal with Kirstie Alley for Star Trek III - I liked her a lot more than Robin Curtis too, and I think most people would agree.

 

[Christopher]

^I prefer Curtis.

 

[Tomalak]

^I prefer Curtis.

Well I did say "most".

 

[Commishsleer]

Makes sense to me. In hindsight, I think if TOS had been able to run for 1-2 more seasons, there may have been a way to begin phasing out some of the crew and introducing new characters.

That might've happened anyway due to the need to cut the budget, as most long-running series must do to stay on the air. Perhaps they would've phased out Shatner and/or Nimoy for cheaper leads.

Would they really have done that?
Weren't the leads the least of TOS problems.

 

[Christopher]

That might've happened anyway due to the need to cut the budget, as most long-running series must do to stay on the air. Perhaps they would've phased out Shatner and/or Nimoy for cheaper leads.

Would they really have done that?
Weren't the leads the least of TOS problems.

From a production standpoint, all problems are money problems. And the lead actors get paid the most money.

Besides, I gather that both Shatner and Nimoy threatened to walk at some point if they didn't get raises, and the producers considered replacing them if negotiations couldn't be worked out. Apparently the Season 2 volume of Marc Cushman's These Are the Voyages says that the producers considered Mark Lenard and Lawrence Montaigne as replacement Vulcans for season 2 if negotiations with Nimoy didn't work out (though this was before they'd been cast as Sarek and Stonn, so they wouldn't have played those specific characters if that had happened).

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I don't agree. He was still Data; but he was a Data who believed he'd achieved what had been his life's goal, only to find that it didn't give him the answers he'd hoped for. There was a lot that could be done with that; I did it myself in my post-GEN story "Friends With the Sparrows" in the TNG anthology The Sky's the Limit. But the movies just gave up on it in the laziest way possible, and they systematically evolved him backward from one movie to the next.

Well, I think the way Generations introduced and implemented the emotion chip was pretty lazy, so I was fine with them getting rid of it just as easily.

The evolution that you describe sounds much more interesting than what they actually did.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

And I agree that it's a shame the movies never figured out a good way to integrate new characters into the mix. Whenever I rewatch TWOK, I think it's a shame that both Saavik and David had so much potential unfulfilled.

Personally, I think they wouldn't have been so quick to write out Saavik if Kirstie Alley had continued in the role.

 

[Tomalak]

From a production standpoint, all problems are money problems. And the lead actors get paid the most money.

Besides, I gather that both Shatner and Nimoy threatened to walk at some point if they didn't get raises, and the producers considered replacing them if negotiations couldn't be worked out. Apparently the Season 2 volume of Marc Cushman's These Are the Voyages says that the producers considered Mark Lenard and Lawrence Montaigne as replacement Vulcans for season 2 if negotiations with Nimoy didn't work out (though this was before they'd been cast as Sarek and Stonn, so they wouldn't have played those specific characters if that had happened).

Nimoy's possible departure is covered in the Solow/Justman book isn't it? I remember a copy of a memo listing potential replacement Vulcans, including Mark Lenard, and I think David Carradine was another name that stood out.

 

[Christopher]

Personally, I think they wouldn't have been so quick to write out Saavik if Kirstie Alley had continued in the role.

They dropped Alley because of her agent's monetary demands, didn't they? Most Hollywood decisions come down to money above all else, so I'm not convinced that bringing Alley back a second time would've increased their odds of keeping her around.

 

[Tomalak]

Personally, I think they wouldn't have been so quick to write out Saavik if Kirstie Alley had continued in the role.

They dropped Alley because of her agent's monetary demands, didn't they? Most Hollywood decisions come down to money above all else, so I'm not convinced that bringing Alley back a second time would've increased their odds of keeping her around.

Once you bring back Spock, there's no need for replacement Vulcan.

Is there an early draft of Star Trek IV that has Saavik on the trip back in time with the rest of the crew?

 

[eyeresist]

Well, I think the way Generations introduced and implemented the emotion chip was pretty lazy, so I was fine with them getting rid of it just as easily.

Apparently the chip was introduced during TNG but not actually used until GEN.

 

[Christopher]

^Yes. The emotion chip was introduced in "Brothers" in season 4. Noonien Soong had made it for Data, but Lore stole it for himself. We later saw in "Descent" that he'd used the chip to persuade a bunch of liberated Borg to follow him as a cult leader, and when Data defeated and dismantled Lore in the 7th-season premiere, he set the emotion chip aside, unsure if he'd ever risk installing it.

Maybe what JonnyQuest037 means is that it was lazy for the movie plot -- which for many filmgoers would be their introduction to the TNG cast and setting -- to build on a leftover story thread from the series, and that Data's reason for finally deciding to install the chip was kind of underwhelming.

 

[eyeresist]

According to Moore/Braga, one of the studio's demands for GEN was a Data comedy "runner". There have been plenty worse Data "comedy" moments!

Maybe they should have ended the film with Data whacking the side of his head with his hand, and the chip popping out with a microwave "ping".

It amuses me to think of awful ideas.

 

[The Old Mixer]

^I just don't accept that as an excuse.

I wasn't attempting to make one. It was more of an observation of the difference between the TNG TV show and the films. The show would have handled it better.

 

[Christopher]

^But what I mean is that I don't agree that it's just "because it's movies." It's not like it was somehow impossible for the motion picture series format to handle such a story in a better way, because the TOS movie series did handle Spock's evolution in a better way. So the problem isn't just that it was done in movies instead of TV -- the problem is that the movies could have done it better but didn't.

 

[The Old Mixer]

The problem is that it was the TNG movies, which are generally understood to have not been as good as either the TOS movies or the TNG TV series. Although it was only implicit, I was referring specifically to the TNG films, not films in general.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Personally, I think they wouldn't have been so quick to write out Saavik if Kirstie Alley had continued in the role.

They dropped Alley because of her agent's monetary demands, didn't they? Most Hollywood decisions come down to money above all else, so I'm not convinced that bringing Alley back a second time would've increased their odds of keeping her around.

Yeah, I understand that Alley was asking for more money than DeForest Kelley (Not that she or her agent would've known that, of course). I wasn't really considering the monetary question, though. I just meant that Alley's portrayal of Saavik was more effective and better-received than Curtis'.