What If...Trek and Wars were switched?

If they were switched, Trek would have toys in stores with SW fans having to deal with resin garage kits...

 

^ The Legos!

 

The point of Star Wars was the visual spectacle as well as the charm of that groundbreaking and futuristic spectacle being combined with old-fashion good vs. evil adventure. As a TV show it would one have been weird enough that it might not have been able to get on the air and two, if it did, on a TV budget it would have only attracted a small following and not grown much beyond that, though being fondly remembered by some, some staunchly arguing that Vader and the Emperor were really cool and Han was a very underrated, charismatic character. You would have needed a really charismatic actor (if Ford, he would elevate the popularity but not nearly as much as he plus the effects did).

Star Trek starting on the big screen probably also wouldn't have gotten or developed a big audience (assuming the first plot was "The Cage" or "Where No Man Has Gone Before", "The Return of the Archons", "Errand of Mercy" if they were lucky enough to choose to use the Klingons) but there would likewise be some fans arguing Spock was a great character, the setting was interesting and there was a lot of unappreciated potential.

 

20th Century Fox would have put more thought into Damnation Alley..

 

Maybe "The Cage" and "WNMHGB" is the equivalent to the early drafts of Star Wars with Annikin Starkiller. I wonder if you could pick one episode from each TOS season, whether it's the best or just really encapsulates what Trek is about, to be the three OT films. Or smoosh two together into feature length. Episode IV: The Man Trap on the Edge of Forever.

 

Well, Flash Gordon was featured in comics, serials, and a 1950s TV show before Forbidden Planet was made. So, respective primary inspirations were "switched."

 

the USS Enterprise is sent to Alpha Centauri to find out what happened to USS Discovery. Captain Kirk discovers that Captain David Bowman had to battle a murderous A.I. before encountering a large monolith..

 

Sorry but, in my opinion at least, even the earliest drafts of "Journal of the Whills: The Star Wars were leagues above The Cage or Where no Man has gone before.
So even if they had refined those scripts in a similar way as Star Wars was refined to the version that was eventually filmed, they'd still be nowhere near as good as A New Hope.

 

If WNMHGB or The Cage (or something vaguely similar to those) had been developed as longer cinematic movie scripts from the get-go, we simply wouldn't have ended up with the same stories that we got on television.

If they started out with the TV treatments as we know them and then padded them out for the silver screen, then of course they would have ended up with uneven plotting and structure like we got with ST:TMP (as great as it is).

Kor

 

Part of what made Star Wars fantastic was the special effects & cinematographic technology. You couldn't have had convincing light sabers in the 1960's. The original Star Trek is so flat on SFX. The sets were wonderfully designed in a minimalist sense while being relatively cost conscious. The modeling was also excellent for it's time, but compared to Star Wars it's very minimalist. Star Wars would've been too expensive to make in 1966~1969. I'm very glad Star Trek came first!

 

I think a good first Star Trek movie would, as Lord Garth said, be about the crew getting together. But I'd say it should be the crew getting together plus Balance of Terror. They should fight the Romulans, and discover that the Vulcans and Romulans are secretly the same species. The movie could explore racism. Also, the episode already has a wedding in it; that can become a big part of the plot and happen near the end.

 

Well, for one example, it's not too hard to imagine this exchange had the shows did a role reversal:

"Spock, I am your father!"
"Dr. McCoy, not only is that an illogical assertion, it is outlandish and cannot be true."
"Look within yourself, you know it it to be true!"
"I see lots of muscles, surprisingly some body fat, internal organs of which most of mine are larger than yours, and with the microscope I can see MIDI-chlorians and in every argument we have I play you like a keyboard when I hook up my Atari 1040ST, but what you say is still not true."
"Dammit Spock, I'm a Doctor not a warlord wearing an art deco Samurai costume that a dozen other shows imitated!"
"That's my line."
"Ugh! But I didn't say it felt good, which you can't say so ha-ha, and at least the Commodore Amiga 500 beats the snot out of the Atari ST."​

(with apologies for the anachronistic dated computing references...)

 

Spock's real father is the Romulan Commander they had been fighting for a movie and a half. I mean, he uncannily looks like his dad.

 

DARTH SAREK: No, I am your father...
SPOCK: That is highly improbable
DARTH SAREK: Use your logic. You know this is true.

 

Bones would have hated light sabers as savage.

 

Note that Star Wars went to television a year after the end of the original trilogy. They made two live-action films set on the planet Endor and I gotta state, for TV movies they were outstanding. I typically feel that aside from Star Trek, The X-Files and The Outer-Limits, TV shows simply do not have the quality of films.

With their limited budget, time constraints and visual affects, they cannot live up to the quality of films. However television films and miniseries can pull off a better image.

But even with the time constraints, Lucas's genius pulled off a much better product than one would expect for Sci-Fi television films. Note that these spin-off films are equally fantasy as they are Sci-Fi:

 

TV shows often try to match that "epic" feel of film - and for (any) various reason(s) don't match up to it, even if they give each episode several zillion dollars. Putting the TV episodes that look nice onto a big screen doesn't often fix that issue either.

IMHO, Star Wars has always been more fantasy-themed. Both are part of the same overall genre, overlap is inevitable.

And both of those still give the children in the audience more respect and dignity than "The Phantom Menace" ever could. Never understood how fart jokes are considered somehow more hilarious than Chris Rock and Robin Williams combined... it's a shame they didn't do that with the Taun-Tauns to taunt-taunt the audience with via its toot-toot... the audience two decades earlier would have balked...

The music sounds generic, or these movies had the score created that would become generic use for lots of other shows. I'd swear an action riff was even used in Red Dwarf (with Ace Rimmer in it...)

 

The opening of the movie is vaguely similar to TMP in that the enemy ships (Klingon/Romulan) are seen attacking their target (Vger/Earth Outposts) only, in this movie, the attack is successful. With a big budget this could really work as a special effects extravaganza with swooping starships swooping and attacking from multiple vectors.

We wouldn't need too long with the "refit" Enterprise since it would be new to the viewers. We would need some running commentary to fill in the gaps about the Earth/Romulan war and why there is a neutral zone (or there was no war and there is no neutral zone and this movie just starts with an attack from a brand-new alien species).

Meanwhile on TV...

Star Wars follows in the traditions of the Lone Ranger, Zorro, and other westerns. Each week our core heroes fly in the Millennium Falcon to a new planet of the week and free the people from Imperial rule. You know, kinda like the TV Planet of the Apes and Logan's Run and the first season of Buck Rogers.

 

Agreed on the first paragraph. However academicians and critics who reviewed the two Ewok films, clearly distinguished them as a children's fantasy set in a Sci-Fi universe. The saga films according to them were more Sci-Fi themed. A dystopian society being overthrown by a the hero protagonists. These movies actually used fairy tale tropes rather than just taking inspiration from them. But most importantly they actually included sorcery in them, which is not The force.

Telekinsis has always been an element of Science Fiction and we've seen it in X-Men and Star Trek plenty of times. In fact we see sorcery in Star Trek as well, but distinct from the telkenisis abilities of aliens and mutants. And this is the same argument the academicians commenting on the Ewok movies have written. IMAO, these movies are the only time you even hear the word "magic" in the Star Wars universe, at least on live-action screen. There's plenty of non-canon comics and animated stuff that probably uses it, but these movies actually depict and use it.