A Brief Guide to Star Trek

which everything is not quite as we know it in the stories we experienced across four decades as
Star Trek
viewers. It’s certainly a fascinating byway in
Star Trek
history.

    Unmade scripts and story ideas were not the only unseen alternative
Star Trek
s: alongside and beyond the airing of
Enterprise
, several prominent creative people proposed new takes on the series’ basic concepts to Paramount (which became CBS Paramount in 2006 as a result of a corporate merger) to continue the franchise beyond
Enterprise
. The fact that their ideas were quickly rejected suggests the studio focus was on bringing
Star Trek
back to cinemas rather than television. Jonathan Frakes, Commander Will Riker on
The Next Generation
, was behind one failed pitch: ‘I had a
Star Trek
[series idea] that I developed for TV’, Frakes told website UGO in 2011, ‘and we were told in no uncertain terms that they said no to a Bryan Singer television
Star Trek
, they said no to a William Shatner television
Star Trek
. They feel at CBS Paramount that they don’t want to make the same mistake that’s been made before, which was watering down the brand by having a TV show and a movie [at the same time]. That’s what happened with
Star Trek Nemesis
, and that’s why I think
Star Trek: Enterprise
didn’t last the way they expected it to. It was the classic corporate greed of “we’ve got something good, so let’s continue to milk it” and [they] milked it so dry that the fans had no appetite for a movie. So I think what they’ve done by taking time off before the Abrams’
Star Trek
, and they’re doing it again [with] the second one, is a much smarter business plan. Much to my chagrin! Not that I wouldn’t love the
Titan
, or the
Rikers in Space
, or any of those shows on the air.’
    Star Trek: Titan
was a spin-off series of novels published by Pocket Books, starting in 2005, that drew on the fact that Riker ended
Star Trek Nemesis
as captain of his own ship, the USS
Titan
. It seems likely that Frakes’ idea for a new
Star Trek
TV show was based around these further adventures of Riker.
    As mentioned by Frakes, both
The Original Series
star William Shatner and film director Bryan Singer (
X-Men
,
Superman Returns
,
Valkyrie
) had also developed new
Star Trek
series ideas. Shatner’s notion would have sounded very familiar to
Star Trek
movie producer Harve Bennett. Called
Star Trek: The Academy
, his proposed series would have followed the adventures of teenage versions of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. The actor had worked up his proposal with Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, but this time he bypassed Rick Berman, pitching directly to Paramount chief Sumner Redstone. Once the concept was rejected, the Reeves-Stevens instead turned it into a planned two-novel series, but only the first (
Star Trek Academy: Collision Course
(2007)) ever appeared. In the novel, the first meeting between Kirk and Spock takes place in a strip club where Kirk is hiding out while Spock is trying to sell off Vulcan artefacts. Facing time in a penal colony, Kirk and Spock opt to join Starfleet Academy instead, with Kirk giving his Vulcan friend the nickname ‘Stretch’.
    Movie director Bryan Singer was a lifelong
Star Trek
fan who’d made a minor cameo appearance in
Star Trek Nemesis
as a Starfleet officer on the bridge of the
Enterprise
. He’d been involved in a stalled attempt in 2001 to revive
Battlestar Galactica
(a feat eventually achieved by
The Next Generation
’s Ron Moore in 2003). Singer claimed his proposed version of
Star Trek
would have been ‘Big . . . it would be very big’, according to an interview with iseb.net in 2005. Set just beyond the thirtieth century, Singer’s proposed TV series would have been called
Star Trek: Federation
. It would have featured a less warrior-like and more political depiction of the Klingons, while Vulcans and Romulans would be pursuing their reunification away from human contact. The Federation would have spread far and wide across the galaxy, making communication a difficult and time-consuming process. Distant areas of the galaxy would therefore provide new frontiers for exploration, cut off from the support that Starfleet and the Federation normally supply (echoing the set-up of
Voyager
– although unlike
Voyager
, Singer seemedintent on exploring genuinely new and unknown worlds). Singer’s
Star Trek
essentially proposed a fresh start for the franchise, devoid of any connections with the previous