What If...Trek and Wars were switched?

[Bry_Sinclair]

So I’ve just started watching the Disney Gallery for The Mandolorian, and in a segment Deborah Chow said something along the lines of it being the first Star Wars TV show, and that got me thinking.

What if the development of Star Wars and Star Trek had been flipped, with Wars starting out as a TV show before going into movies and Trek had started out on the big screen? What would ANH, TESB and ROTJ be like if they’d been three seasons of television? What Trek episodes would’ve become feature films?

Thoughts?

 

[Orphalesion]

Well the original BSG was an attempt to ripp off Star Wars as a TV show. I thinkS tar Wars, if it had been a TV show ,might have shared a similar fate. A (for the time) very ambitious and high quality pilot movie with cool aliens, battles, locations (but still shabbier than our Star Wars Movies were) that would have been the equivalent of ANH.
After that it would have quickly devolved into "Planet of Hats" plots where Luke and Han go on wacky hi-jinks with completely human looking aliens, while Lea has some b-plots on the Rebel Ship. The Galactic Civil War is, theoretically still ongoing, but rarely referred to or advanced in order to keep a episodic nature.Darth Vader is the recurring villain who appears, and is foiled (but never completely defeated), in most episodes "I vow by the power of my Force, I shall return!"
It gets cancelled after one season because the ratings don't justify the expenses.

Trek starting out as movies...uh...a string of 1960s ScifFi movies comparable to Logan's Run in both aesthetic, atmosphere and overall quality? But like, more obviously focused on women in risque outfits because "Roddenberry".

 

[The Wormhole]

It would begin a butterfly effect culminating in the creation of an alternate timeline in which hamburgers eat people. Obviously.

 

[Tribble Threat]

Logan's Run seems like a good comparison, maybe like a reboot of Forbidden Planet made in the style of Logan's Run. The first movie would probably be like The Cage, but maybe with a sex scene added in. I don't know about the second and third one. I can imagine the second trilogy being based on The Next Generation, and the Disney Star Trek movies being based on various other Star Wars shows. I don't know if it's the most realistic way for it to play out, but it's fun to imagine.

I'm also imagining this short-lived Star Wars show gets made into a shorter-lived animated series later on in kind of a Hanna Barbara style (with same same cast, and Ewoks), and then later there's another live action series of "Star Wars: The Last Generation".

 

[Kirby]

Well the original BSG was an attempt to ripp off Star Wars as a TV show. I thinkS tar Wars, if it had been a TV show ,might have shared a similar fate. A (for the time) very ambitious and high quality pilot movie with cool aliens, battles, locations (but still shabbier than our Star Wars Movies were) that would have been the equivalent of ANH.
After that it would have quickly devolved into "Planet of Hats" plots where Luke and Han go on wacky hi-jinks with completely human looking aliens, while Lea has some b-plots on the Rebel Ship. The Galactic Civil War is, theoretically still ongoing, but rarely referred to or advanced in order to keep a episodic nature.Darth Vader is the recurring villain who appears, and is foiled (but never completely defeated), in most episodes "I vow by the power of my Force, I shall return!"
It gets cancelled after one season because the ratings don't justify the expenses.

does that mean that we’d get Star Wars 1980 with flying motor bikes and superhero cub scouts?

 

[Orphalesion]

does that mean that we’d get Star Wars 1980 with flying motor bikes and superhero cub scouts?

And Ewoks, lots and lots of Ewoks.

And in the 2000s we'd get an "edgy" reboot that dresses Luke, "Leah" and "Hank" in contemporary clothing, ditches all the aliens or exciting scifi elements and makes everybody an unlikable asshole.

 

[1001001]

 

[somebuddyX]

Neat idea. Just today I was thinking of a different kind of Wars/Trek switch where you could have the Prequels/Enterprise, Clone Wars or The Mandalorian/Discovery, Original Trilogy/TOS and TOS films and Sequel Trilogy/TNG and TNG Films, DS9 and Voyager.
I don't know how the reboot films would fit into this.
Maybe the Xindi conflict is the in-universe Clone Wars? "You fought in the Xindi Wars?" "Yes I was once a starship captain, like your....great grandfather."
I do like that we'd get six films with the Original Trilogy cast and I guess Chewbacca gets his own ship in the sixth film or something. "She'll fly apart." "WRRROAOARR." (Translation: Fly apart then!)

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Star Trek probably would have been a box office failure but cult classic.

Star Wars as a TV show, it's hard to imagine because you identify it so much with its endings. And since it was the 70s it'd be totally episodic, and if the death star ever blows up it'd be in the series finale. It might be something popular at the time but seen as a quaint anachronism now. Or Ron Moore would have made a dark Star Wars reboot instead of Battlestar Galactica.

 

[Orphalesion]

Honestly I'm wondering a little bit whether Star Trek as we know it would have been ambitious enough to start as a series of movies, rather than TV, in the 1960s.
As I said I'm picturing it similar to Logan's Run, which while known isn't nowhere near as a cultural phenomenon as Star Trek and Wars are.

I can very much imagine a version of Star Trek that begins as a movie in 1964 ending up on MST3K.

 

[Tribble Threat]

And since it was the 70s it'd be totally episodic, and if the death star ever blows up it'd be in the series finale.

Or maybe they'd introduce the Death Star and blow it up in the same episode. It could be the focus of one episode's story.

 

[Leroy]

lol if Trek and Wars were switched you'd have a glut of Star Wars TV show spin-offs in the 90's. I wonder if they would have adapted what is considered the expanded universe in our reality? Heck I know I'd take adaptations of the Zahn novels, the New Jedi Order stuff, the Rogue Squadron comics over what Disney gave us.

 

[publiusr]

“Another of those emo kids dressed in black stirring up trouble on the streets, Spock? The goth thing was old in the ‘90’s—the 1990’s.”

No Captain. That’s actually Johnny Cash.

“Did somebody say ‘ca—

Shut up.

 

[Lord Garth]

Original Trilogy (Set in the 23rd Century)
Star Trek, Episode IV: The Galaxy's New Hope (1977)
Star Trek, Episode V: The Klingons Strike Back (1980)
Star Trek, Episode VI: Return of the Enterprise (1983)

Prequel Trilogy (Set in the 22nd Century)
Star Trek, Episode I: The Cloaked Menace (1999)
Star Trek, Episode II: Attack of the Xindi (2002)
Star Trek, Episode III: Revenge of the Tal'Shiar (2005)

Sequel Trilogy (Set in the 24th Century)
Star Trek, Episode VII: The Borg Awakens (2015)
Star Trek, Episode VIII: The Last Stand (2017)
Star Trek, Episode IX: The Rise of Soji Asha (2019)

Spin-Offs
Star Trek: Regula One (2016)
Sulu: A Star Trek Story (2018)

Live-Action TV Series
The Andorian (2019-Present)

 

[somebuddyX]

lol if Trek and Wars were switched you'd have a glut of Star Wars TV show spin-offs in the 90's. I wonder if they would have adapted what is considered the expanded universe in our reality? Heck I know I'd take adaptations of the Zahn novels, the New Jedi Order stuff, the Rogue Squadron comics over what Disney gave us.

I think with these universe swaps you have to set up what rules you want to abide by. Like is it meant to be a "real" fictional universe or a "fictional" fictional universe. My favourite of the former is Alternate Rise of the Blockbuster where a guy theorised what happened if George Lucas had directed Apocalypse Now and and without Star Wars being made it's Superman: The Movie that kickstarts the blockbuster film and brings a wave of comic book films in the 80s. It's all based on theorising real world cause and effect. For the latter you have stuff like those MCU/DCEU photoshop film swaps where you switch out RDJ and Ben Affleck to play Batman and Iron Man, things that could never happen in the real world but operate on their own logic in their world.
So something as simple as Star Wars' version of Star Trek: The Next Generation:

• Is it a show released in the 80s like TNG or some completely new spinoff show derived from Star Wars: The Original Series?
• If it's a direct counterpart to TNG is is set 100+ years later, so it's basically Star Wars: Legacy? Is it the Sequel Trilogy plugged into the same position in the timeline? Is it the Thrawn Trilogy or other EU? Is it a completely new story with original characters acting as counterpoints to the original series, like how the TNG characters aren't carbon copies of TOS characters?

Long story short, there's so many ways to go with this concept. I've probably thought about this way too much but these alternate universes are just really fun to think about.

 

[somebuddyX]

Live-Action TV Series
The Man, The Laurian (2019-Present)

Not "The Andorian"?

 

[Lord Garth]

Not "The Andorian"?

Shit. You're right. That would've worked better. Fixing it now.

I made another change too. "Attack of the Xindi" instead of "Attack of the Romulans".

 

[Arpy]

Each Wars movie would be a different Trek series movie.

TOS
TAS
TMP-TUC

TNG
DS9
VOY

ENT
DSC
PIC

Solo — JJ
Rogue — SNW
Mandalorian — Lower Decks

 

[Orphalesion]

I'm still trying to figure out what story in early Trek would have been able to produce a "A New Hope" calibre type of movie. Because a two hour version of the Cage or Mudd's Women would definitely not be it.
And neither would TMP have been a success if there hadn't already been a loyal and hyped fanbase from the show.

 

[Lord Garth]

I'm still trying to figure out what story in early Trek would have been able to produce a "A New Hope" calibre type of movie. Because a two hour version of the Cage or Mudd's Women would definitely not be it.
And neither would TMP have been a success if there hadn't already been a loyal and hyped fanbase from the show.

None of the episodes are compatible without being changed beyond recognition, so It would have to be a new story. Or maybe "not so new". How the crew got together. It's an idea Gene Roddenberry was toying around with as early as the '60s. And obviously that would go on to become the basic template for the 2009 Film.

In my list, that's what I was picturing. That Kirk and Spock would be "The Galaxy's New Hope". They'd save the day somehow. Maybe they have to save the galaxy from Khan. That's the idea in my head.

Throw some Klingons in there somewhere (which they also did in the actual first Star Trek movie), and then I'd be able to justify my title for "The Klingons Strike Back" in the sequel.

If I turned Star Trek into Star Wars, I'd keep the focus very narrow. The main enemy in the Original Trilogy would be the Klingons, the Prequel Trilogy would be the Romulans, and the Sequel Trilogy would be the Borg.

I'd base the Original Trilogy off some hybrid of TOS and the TOS Movies that would tilt more toward the Movies.

For the Original Trilogy:
Episode IV is the TOS Origin Story with TWOK and "Space Seed" elements
Episode V is a Klingon Story with influences up to TSFS
Episode VI is TUC

For the Prequel Trilogy:
Episode I is ENT Seasons 1-2
Episode II is ENT Season 3
Episode III is The Romulan War

For the Sequel Trilogy:
Episode VII is "The Best of Both Worlds"
Episode VIII is First Contact
Episode IX is Picard Season 1