A Brief Guide to Star Trek (16 page)

Roddenberry recruited two key staff members: production executive Robert H. Goodwin (filling the practical producer role previously held by Robert Justman) and creative producer Harold Livingston, who would be responsible for developing the scripts. Roddenberry attempted to poach designer Matt Jefferies, who had worked on the original
Star Trek
series and had originated the look of the
Enterprise
, from his job on
Little House on the Prairie
. Jefferies managed to briefly work on both projects, before recommending his old Desilu assistant Joe Jennings for the art director role. Jefferies rapidly updated the old
Enterprise
design for the new series, while retaining many of its distinctive features.

While scripts were being devised and a series ‘bible’ created,
Paramount had to negotiate once more with
Star Trek
’s main cast members. Most had been signed up, paid and released in relation to
Planet of the Titans
, so the hope was that an offer of a pilot TV movie plus an initial thirteen-episode television series would be attractive to actors whose careers had not exactly blossomed since
Star Trek
. The sticking point this time was Leonard Nimoy. Fearing that the actor – who had perhaps been the most successful of the
Enterprise
crew post-
Star Trek
– would not want to commit to a full-time series, Roddenberry offered him the pilot and guest appearances in two episodes. It was hardly surprising he turned that offer down. It looked like
Star Trek: Phase II
would launch without Spock, so Roddenberry devised a new Spock-like replacement. A Vulcan named Xon with many of the characteristics later echoed in
The Next Generation
’s android Data would feature instead.

Similarly, although William Shatner was happy to sign up for the new show, Paramount feared they would not be able to retain the expensive actor for subsequent years if the series was to take off. As a form of insurance, Roddenberry devised a second-in-command character who could become a replacement captain if need be. Commander Will Decker was put in place as the
Enterprise
’s number two (anticipating the creation of Commander Will Riker for
The Next Generation
in the 1980s). Meanwhile, Shatner reportedly feared that his role of Captain Kirk would either be reduced to cameo guest appearances in a handful of episodes or dispensed with altogether through the dramatic move of killing off Kirk.

While a new six-foot fibreglass
Enterprise
model was being constructed,
The Original Series
costume designer William Ware Theiss was back on
Star Trek
, developing new uniforms for the crew of the revamped 1970s
Enterprise
. Roddenberry, Livingston and Povill had all contributed to the new series bible and writers’ guide. ‘The challenge was coming up with things that weren’t repeats of ideas already explored [in
The Original Series
]’, said Povill. ‘We were definitely striving for things that were different, fresh and also
Star Trek
.’
Phase II
was now ready
to recruit a new team of storytellers to add to Roddenberry’s growing universe.

Among the writers signed up for the new show was USC screenwriting tutor Alan Dean Foster. He’d adapted the animated
Star Trek
series episodes into short stories for the
Star Trek Logs
paperbacks (just as James Blish had adapted the majority of the live-action
Star Trek
episodes into short story form). Foster was hired to adapt an old story idea from Roddenberry into a
Star Trek
outline. Entitled ‘Robot’s Return’, the story was originally planned for the aborted
Genesis II
series. Alan Dean Foster adapted it into a script entitled ‘In Thy Image’.

Originally intended as the first of the regular one-hour episodes of
Phase II
, ‘In Thy Image’ brought the action back home to twenty-third-century Earth, a place never visited by the original
Star Trek
series. The action of
Phase II
was to take place in a period after the conclusion of the original ‘five-year mission’, prompting a visit by the
Enterprise
to Earth for a complete overhaul. In developing the project, it was felt that Foster’s story should become the basis of the two-hour pilot movie, which would begin with the
Enterprise
refit just being completed in Earth orbit. The crew reunion aspects of the ori -ginal planned pilot (drawn from Roddenberry’s
The God Thing
movie idea) would be merged with Foster’s version.

There was an important
Phase II
creative meeting in early August 1977, attended by Paramount executives Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner. Alan Dean Foster pitched his ‘In Thy Image’ story in some detail, at the end of which Eisner (seemingly without any irony, given this was a
Star Trek
TV series meeting) declared: ‘We’ve been looking for a [
Star Trek
] feature [film] for years, and this is it!’ Those attending the crucial meeting, including Goodwin, Livingston and Roddenberry, were stunned. For the past month Paramount executives had been struggling in their attempt to secure advertiser support for their fourth television network concept, which was itself to have been built around the
Phase II
series. By the end of July 1977 it was clear that the time was not right for Paramount to proceed. That
decision also meant the end of
Star Trek: Phase II
as a television series. The project had already incurred $500,000 in development costs and there were several significant future commitments (to potential cast and crew) that would have to be honoured, whether the project progressed or not. Whatever the fate of the proposed Paramount TV network, something would have to be salvaged from the wreckage of
Phase II
so the studio could recover the substantial investment already made.

The initial plan was to continue with production on the two-hour pilot movie and see if that could be sold to one of the existing networks as a broadcast event. If that succeeded, then perhaps a full television series could follow. However, at the conclusion of the August meeting, Eisner decided that
Star Trek
would instead become a movie – as had originally been intended when Roddenberry had returned to Paramount almost three years earlier.

However, until the administrative requirements of switching the
Phase II
project to a feature film could be completed, production would have to continue as if
Star Trek
was still returning as the already-announced TV series. Having cancelled
Planet of the Titans
and announced
Phase II
in quick succession in recent months, Paramount did not want to suffer the embarrassment of a third disappointing
Star Trek
announcement. Nothing could be said publicly until the studio was ready to fully announce the new
Star Trek
feature film.

By the middle of 1977,
Star Trek: Phase II
was essentially a zombie project – it was still walking around as if it were alive, but the top creatives involved knew their new TV show was dead on its feet. The intended fate of the project would be kept secret from those working on it – only those who were in attendance at the August meeting knew the truth. There was still a possibility that a new
Star Trek
TV series might follow the film, so any script, production art and other material produced for
Phase II
might then prove to be useful (much of the development work would actually prove to have a direct influence on
The Next Generation
in the late 1980s). For the next five months (essentially the rest of 1977), development work on
Phase II
would continue.

Gene Roddenberry’s immediate task was to adapt the ‘In Thy Image’ story to a movie screenplay while keeping the preproduction work on
Phase II
ticking over, without giving anything away to the team putting in the creative work on the officially abandoned show. The basic story of an unknown, artificial object heading for Earth – clearly a potential threat – and the entanglement with it of the
Enterprise
crew was retained. However, the big problem Roddenberry had to solve was the nature of this unknown object: what is it and what does it want? The breakthrough came when Roddenberry moved on from the object being ‘God’ to it being something in search of ‘God’ (or, at the very least, its creator). He also noted that the creative team had discussed making the object ‘Pioneer 10 [or] a later NASA probe’.

Meanwhile, Harold Livingston was commissioning writing assignments for
Phase II
, canvassing likely new
Star Trek
episodic storylines from writers such as Ted Sturgeon (‘Shore Leave’, ‘Amok Time’), Walter Koenig (who’d scripted an episode of
The Animated Series
), and David Gerrold (‘The Trouble With Tribbles’). By the end of the month, building had begun on the brand new, revamped
Enterprise
bridge set – with few of those involved aware that it would not be used for
Phase II
but would instead feature as the central set for
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
.

In September William Shatner was contracted to once again play the role of Captain James T. Kirk, presumably contracted to a feature film rather than a TV series. The search was ongoing for actors to portray Commander Decker and Spock replacement Lieutenant Xon, as well as the new female character of Ilia (a forerunner of
The Next Generation
’s Counsellor Troi).

The drive to commission thirteen individual episode scripts proceeded alongside the building of the
Enterprise
sets, even though Livingston knew the writers’ work would be unlikely to be used. Following ‘In Thy Image’ would be Norman Spinrad’s
‘To Attain the All’, concerning an artificial planet that is revealed to be a ‘living’ computer that enhances the crew’s intellectual abilities. Other planned episodes included ‘The Prisoner’ by James Menzies, which had the
Enterprise
crew lured to a planet by visions of twentieth-century icons including Einstein and Buster Keaton. Logos, an alien, is behind the deception: he’s so obsessed with mankind that he plans to absorb the entire species, beginning with the
Enterprise
crew. Scriptwriter Schimon Wincelberg would have returned to
Star Trek
with ‘Lord Bobby’ (AKA ‘Lord Bobby’s Obsession’), an episode that dealt with honour and sacrifice while featuring a character recalling Trelane in ‘The Squire of Gothos’ and anticipating
The Next Generation
’s Q, alongside the return of the Romulans. William Lansford’s ‘Devil’s Due’ drew heavily on one of
Star Trek
’s predecessors,
Forbidden Planet
, and was later adapted for
The Next Generation
’s fourth season.

Richard Bach, writer of
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
, had two scripts in development for
Phase II
. ‘Practice in Waking’ was an alternate reality story that put the
Enterprise
crew in artificial environments created through directed dreaming. ‘Bach is a
Star Trek
fan’, wrote Harold Livingston in a 1977 memo, ‘[and] has submitted two stories’. The second was ‘A War to End Wars’ that saw a repressed society annually release its emotions through starship combat (somewhat echoing
The Original Series
instalments ‘The Return of the Archons’ and ‘A Taste of Armageddon’). A rewrite by Arthur Bernard Lewis replaced the starships with combat by android and saw Kirk get romantically involved with a female android.

‘The Savage Syndrome’ seemed to combine the titles (if not the plots) of ‘The Savage Curtain’ and ‘The Immunity Syndrome’ from
The Original Series
. This storyline, by Margaret Armen and Alf Harris, was a ship-set story designed to be a cheaper to make episode (often called ‘bottle shows’ and made using only regular standing sets). Alien technology would have unleashed the
Enterprise
crew’s primal urges and seen them split into warring factions (one led, of course, by Kirk). It was
an exploration of the inherent savagery lying just beneath the surface of mankind’s civilisation, and in theme and character exploration, ideally suited to the new
Star Trek
.

Alongside the revised ‘Devil’s Due’, another storyline ori -ginally intended for
Phase II
was later revived for
The Next Generation
due to the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike. Jon Povill’s ‘The Child’ (initially co-written with Jason Summers) saw Lt Ilia give birth to a Deltan child that attracts the interest of a curious alien life form that wishes to study the
Enterprise
crew. The episode was eventually rewritten, replacing Ilia with ship’s counsellor Troi.

Old
Star Trek
episodes were often the inspiration for ideas developed for
Phase II
. ‘Tomorrow and the Stars’, by Larry Alexander, was a virtual retelling of Harlan Ellison’s ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’. Thrust back in time due to a transporter malfunction, Kirk falls in love with a married woman on the eve of the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor. As before, Kirk has to resist the temptation to put a woman he loves – and the lives of hundreds of others – above ensuring history unfolds as it should. The story originated in an abandoned outline for Roddenberry’s planned
Genesis II
series and had been allocated to Alexander. ‘Pearl Harbor is good because it is visual’ said the writer.

David Ambrose, author of the British 1970s conspiracy-based TV hoax
Alternative 3
, wrote a teleplay entitled ‘Deadlock’, dealing with mind control. A subversive paramilitary organisation within Starfleet plots to overthrow the Federation by seeding mind-controlled ‘fanatics’ in key positions. It’s a very 1970s conspiracy-minded idea, like
All the President’s Men
or
The Parallax View
. Some of these concepts resurfaced in
The Next Generation
episode ‘Conspiracy’, originally planned as the basis for an abandoned ongoing story arc.