Your ideas: Star Trek IV but no whales.

[somebuddyX]

So a while ago I posted this thread which was asking what if Leonard Nimoy didn't return for Star Trek III and wondering what everyone's ideas were. This is just a similar one wondering, if for Star Trek IV they never came up with the whale (and whale probe) plotline, what do you think would have been another good follow up to the actual released Star Trek III. The crew are renegades from Starfleet on Vulcan with the Bird of Prey. The Enterprise has been destroyed. David is dead. Again, kinda a bit of both "what you think would happen?" and "what you would like to have happened?"

 

[Set Harth]

same plot but instead of whales it's monkeys.

 

[Dukhat]

I think the way you wrote your thread topic sounds misleading and not what you really meant. It's like you're asking what animal they should have used instead of whales.

Anyway, what might have been an interesting take is if Starfleet is now trying to hunt Kirk and Co. down, and they have to take refuge in the Klingon Empire in an effort to return Kruge's BoP as a gesture of peace. Perhaps not killing Maltz could have been the start of better relations.

 

[vfxart]

They chose to head home, could've stayed on Vulcan as exiles or refugees or whatever, but that's not the course this crew would take. No mention of pressure to turn them over and likely the Feds knew better than to try Sarek and his connections. But they weren't going to stay. So they could take their time, tend to each other and all needs, then face the consequences. They assured the well-being of a comrade prior to doing so; they had no idea that Spock intended to join them or stand with them. Everyone's pretty sure they left Vulcan with clear consciences and positions. Maybe an opportunistic vendetta story, Klingons trying to flush them from Vulcan. The Klingon ambassador scene negates the apocryphal Kruge acting on his own, even though hinted at in III. Anyway... Whales or no, they still saved the Federation from Khan and Kruge, the latter in the face of Starfleet's idiocy in not protecting the Grissom and the system better. Same end result, a new ship; just get there faster. Colorful metaphors would've been used at Starfleet Command and in the Council chambers.

 

[tharpdevenport]

Maybe something that serves as a bridge, but of course I am speaking of after-the-fact. Some time on Earth, some expansion of Saavik which could later lead to better reasons for her betrayal in TUC. But what the main plot is, I don't know.

 

[Dukhat]

If James B. Sikking had been persuaded to return as Styles, I totally could see him being super pissed at Kirk for the Excelsior’s sabotage, and would have been gladly tasked with bringing Kirk back to stand trial. He basically would have been the baddie in STIV.

 

[Qonundrum]

Hamsters.

Gotta be hamsters.

To save the future, they go back in time to get hamsters.

Why?

Because they couldn't perfect this and had to revert to the original warp drive engine concept, for which it was easier to scoop up the waste material with.


Okay, with that aside, I'd forget the giant cylinder of doooooooooooooooooo*-- and get on with the Klingon undercurrent that had been building up in the previous film. Indeed, TVH as shown builds on this, albeit a little and with the dorky "you pompous ass!" moment in the 23rd century that makes Kirk out to be a double-triple dipshit when he tells Spock how one has to swear every other word in ours... unless that's the intended idea to shove more comedy up the 23rd century segment before they went to the 20th, har-har... But, as you're wondering, how do I know it makes Kirk look bad? Well, I don't -- but someone said it and the underlying context behind that phrase would give points to either a Klingon representative or a Federation one, or someone else trying to rile things up but the space drain thing from "Day of the Dove" was nowhere to be found here and it'd be "small universe syndrome" doubledummassery if it were.

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(the thrill begins at 2:48)

That phrase needs to be anything but a notification tone... but either which way it lends more credence to TUC...

But all that aside, had TVH, overly long sitcom and all, had not been well-received, then we'd never have TNG - a show that actually took itself seriously all while the TOS movies continued to yuk it up. Which is amazing, considering it was the ha-har-haha stuff that had people flocking to this in the first place.

* Yup, it's footnote time again:​

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​

 

[flyerdog]

well, as I recall, Eddie Murphy lobbied HARD to be in ST4, and they were actually working on a script (alternate?) . Paramount thought about making it work but they didn't want their two biggest cash cows in the same franchise, in case the movie tanked...
as I recall it had something to do with Eddie playing a (nerdy) professor and meeting up with the crew and such and then him traveling back, um forward, with them to the future...I think the time travel angle played a much bigger role in this alternate idea...now as far as the crew going back in time, there would have to be some justification of course, I don't know how they would have resolved that pesky little issue!!!

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Still with whales, but not those whales: what if the probe was looking for this guy?

52-hertz whale - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[publiusr]

If James B. Sikking had been persuaded to return as Styles, I totally could see him being super pissed at Kirk for the Excelsior’s sabotage, and would have been gladly tasked with bringing Kirk back to stand trial. He basically would have been the baddie in STIV.

Maybe splice that with ST VI TUC.

The conspirators knew bloody well Kirk was going to steal the Enterprise, and Kruge was following Chang’s orders.

Kirk and crew foiled the plot with the Bounty, get the 1701-A as a reward.

After we get a BoP dogfight scene.

They save the whales with the-A that has enough room. Semi-combined with PROBE as a mini-series.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

But all that aside, had TVH, overly long sitcom and all, had not been well-received, then we'd never have TNG - a show that actually took itself seriously all while the TOS movies continued to yuk it up. Which is amazing, considering it was the ha-har-haha stuff that had people flocking to this in the first place.

The development on TNG began in early 1986. Even if Star Trek IV only grossed $70-80 million, along the lines of its two predecessors, Paramount would still have gone forward with the series.

Patrick Stewart in his memoir writes that due to the Writer's Guild strike Paramount almost cancelled the series, so perhaps a warier Paramount might have been faster to pull the plug after 13-16 episodes.

 

[Oddish]

Scotty wouldn't have said his iconic line: "Admiral! There be whales here!"

 

[FredH]

Randomly improvising this on the spot…

Kruge didn’t know it, but Klingon Intelligence absolutely was quietly going all-out to steal the Genesis formula, via any number of entirely separate agents — so while we were all distracted during The Search for Spock, one of them succeeded in getting it back to the Empire.

Cue the inevitable building up of warp-capable Genesis Bombs by the Klingons, and the resulting quick defensive buildup of such by the Federation. Just as David Marcus had predicted could happen. And with tensions spiraling, the quadrant tumbles towards an interstellar doomsday war.

(Maybe we include a timeskip of a few years, to allow this to happen.)

With disaster looming, Vulcan attempts to broker some way to pull back from the brink — but the Klingons disdain the Vulcans as “dogs of the Federation”, while forces within the Federation have begun to distrust Vulcan despite its being a member world, due to its recent vocal concern about the reasons for the Federation’s illogically provocative development of such a potentially apocalyptic force. Both powers are also angry at Vulcan for its continued harboring of the now-renegade James T. Kirk and his accomplices.

But when warp astronomers (yes, there’s now such a thing, so I declare) discover [Something] out in deep space which may have the power to literally depower the Genesis effect from activating in the first place — which suggests a possible way for all sides to defensively deploy it and remove the threat of doomsday — Vulcan sends a ship to try to retrieve it… and asks Kirk, the still-recovering Spock, and Dr. Carol Marcus — having the most direct experience with Genesis’ actual effects — to lead it. (Cue Kirk/Marcus drama subplot I won’t bother with here, but the source of extreme tension should be obvious. And Saavik’s coming along too, because dammit, we should never have lost Saavik. And there’s probably a subplot for her too, considering that she’s alive because David Marcus got himself killed to save her, right in front of her, and she’s nowhere near as calm about that as she’s seemed — his mother now being right there brings it all back to her, in a way she’s tried to bury during the intervening time.)

Thing is, the Klingons are sending someone to retrieve it too — exclusively.
So are Starfleet.
One way or another, Kirk is going to have to deal with both.

Can the known galaxy be saved, or is tragedy inevitable? Find out soon (never), in Star Trek IV: The Final Genesis…

 

[TheAdmiralty]

Didn't a lot of the Klingon trial and prison stuff from TUC originate from things Meyer and Bennett brainstormed for ST IV before Nimoy wanted to an environmental movie? Could have been pretty similar to that.

well, as I recall, Eddie Murphy lobbied HARD to be in ST4, and they were actually working on a script (alternate?) . Paramount thought about making it work but they didn't want their two biggest cash cows in the same franchise, in case the movie tanked...
as I recall it had something to do with Eddie playing a (nerdy) professor and meeting up with the crew and such and then him traveling back, um forward, with them to the future...I think the time travel angle played a much bigger role in this alternate idea...now as far as the crew going back in time, there would have to be some justification of course, I don't know how they would have resolved that pesky little issue!!!

I think the script was pretty developed at that point, he would have effectively been playing the Gillian role.

 

[Mudd]

It would have climaxed in something blowing up. Because every other Star Trek movie except the first one has.

 

[CoveTom]

Didn't a lot of the Klingon trial and prison stuff from TUC originate from things Meyer and Bennett brainstormed for ST IV before Nimoy wanted to an environmental movie? Could have been pretty similar to that.

No, Meyer didn't even get involved in IV until the story had already been developed and the first screenplay by other writers was rejected. The whole whale angle was in place before Meyer was ever asked to write the script.

 

[Set Harth]

It would have climaxed in something blowing up. Because every other Star Trek movie except the first one has.

Other than Star Treks 4, 8, and 12.

 

[FredH]

It would have climaxed in something blowing up. Because every other Star Trek movie except the first one has.

True, unfortunately. (And so many people I talked to back in the day thought V’Ger had blown up, too.)

 

[CoveTom]

True, unfortunately. (And so many people I talked to back in the day thought V’Ger had blown up, too.)

They thought V'Ger had blown up when the ending of the movie is literally Kirk, Spock, and McCoy talking about how they just witnessed the birth of a new life form?

 

[Mudd]

Other than Star Treks 4, 8, and 12.

Star Trek 4 is the current exception. Because whales. So, missing the point.

FC (8)? They blow up the Borg's interplexing beacon to keep them (supposedly) for calling their hive to Earth. Boom!

STID (12)? Yeah, they just use seventy torpedoes to blow the side out of the Vengeance, which Khan then crashes to blow up a lot more of San Francisco than makes any sense.

That second one is really, really hard to miss. Seventy goddamn torpedoes.