A Brief Guide to Star Trek

Troyius’, plus ‘The Ultimate Computer’ and ‘The
Enterprise
Incident’). Even with all those credits, his script for ‘The Godhead’ found itself stuck in development hell in the
Star Trek
production office in 1968. It concerned the last two representatives of an ancient race out to absorb the entire universe within their brains. Another idea, ‘The Lost Star’, echoed the episode ‘The Apple’, in that an entire race of people are held in subjugation by either a priestly elite or a malfunctioning computer, as seen in several
Star Trek
episodes.
    Even the cast of
Star Trek
got in on the act, developing or suggesting ideas for storylines, more often than not revolving around dramatic events concerning their own characters. Gene Roddenberry seriously entertained a few of these ideas, including one by William Shatner, another by Nichelle Nichols and one by DeForest Kelley. Shatner’s 1966 idea was called ‘The Web of Death’ and was described in
TV Guide
of October that year as having a ‘good flow’. The story outline saw the
Enterprise
discover the long-missing ship
Momentous
, encased in a web-like substance from a massive ‘space spider’. The spider attacks the
Enterprise
, but is repelled by a poison developed by Kirk, who uses the dead-in-space
Momentous
as a decoy to save the
Enterprise
(a gambit later used in ‘The Doomsday Machine’).
    DeForest Kelley’s story idea was to feature him as McCoy and Nichelle Nichols as Uhura trapped on a planet dominated by a dark-skinned race who subjugated the lighter-skinned people. Kelley noted, ‘there was a great racial problem, only reversed. The fact that I am a Southerner and she is black, and that we’re trapped on this planet together’ would provide the drama. According to David Gerrold, in
The World of Star Trek
, the script idea was ‘written, rewritten, and rewritten. Either the premise was too touchy for television or nobody could quite make it work. The script never reached a form where Roddenberry or Coon wanted to put it into production.’ A similar idea would be eventually explored in the conflict between the half-white, half-black and half-black, half-white Cheron race in ‘Let That Be Your Last Battlefield’.
    These were by no means all the unproduced ideas for the original
Star Trek
. Many did not get beyond thoughts or writer pitches that were never followed up. What they do show, though,is the depth of thought and experimentation that was going into
The Original Series
, that so many workable ideas did not progress to the screen in that initial three-year period of invention.

    While there are not as many surviving unproduced story ideas for
The Next Generation
as there were for the original
Star Trek
, across its seven years on air there seem to have been at least enough unrealised ideas for an entire additional season.
    Michael Piller began writing for
The Next Generation
during its second year, becoming the show’s lead writer during its third. Uniquely across the
Star Trek
series he implemented an ‘open door’ policy, inviting anyone who thought they could write a
Star Trek
teleplay to have a go. This led to a huge number of submissions, the vast majority of which were quickly rejected. However, the policy did pay some dividends, resulting in several episodes including the very popular ‘Yesterday’s
Enterprise
’. Writers who got their start from Piller’s policy include Ronald D. Moore (
Carnivàle
,
Roswell
,
Battlestar Galactica
), René Echevarria (
The 4400
,
Medium
,
Castle
) and Brannon Braga (
Threshold
,
24
,
FlashForward
).
    One teleplay that resulted was ‘Deadworld’, from journalist (and
Star Trek
chronicler) James Van Hise. ‘I wrote the story in 1987 at the behest of a mutual friend of Gerd Oswald’, said Van Hise. ‘Oswald had directed a couple of
Star Trek
episodes in the 1960s (“The Conscience of the King”, “The Alternative Factor”) and I’d spoken to him while he was directing an episode of the new
Twilight Zone
for CBS when I visited that studio in 1986. Oswald was looking for a story he could take to Paramount for
The Next Generation
which he could attach himself to as director. He read this outline but rejected it as being “too depressing”. I told my friend that Gerd, who was then in his 70s, was obviously a man who had never come to terms with his own mortality’.
    The Next Generation
creative consultant Greg Strangis tried to get an original story of his own on air.