A Brief Guide to Star Trek

association with the
Star Trek
movie.’
    By July 1976, Chris Bryant and Allan Scott – a British writing team – had been recruited for the stalled
Star Trek
movie. They had written the Nicolas Roeg-directed thriller
Don’t Look Now
, drawn from a Daphne du Maurier short story. Paramount studio executives approved their new
Star Trek
treatment, entitled
Planet of the Titans
, in October 1976 and they set about writing the full screenplay. This
Star Trek
film even had a budget and a director attached: $7.5 million and Philip Kaufman (later to write and direct
The Right Stuff
, an adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s novel). Ken Adam – who’d worked on the James Bond movies
Dr. No
,
Goldfinger
and
Thunderball
– was hired as production designer. Ralph McQuarrie, fresh from working on the yet to be released
Star Wars
, was working on a new look for the big screen
Enterprise
.
    Initially the movie was written without the character of Captain Kirk, after Paramount failed to agree terms with William Shatner to reprise the role. However, with the film now a ‘go’ project, Shatner soon changed his position, signing on to the project.
    In the script, Starfleet and the Klingons are brought into conflict by the discovery of the apparent home planet of along-extinct, but legendary, race known as the Titans. The technological secrets of this ancient race could be valuable to whoever controls them. Two new threats emerge – a black hole about to consume the planet, and the Cygnans, the ancient enemies of the Titans. Attempting to escape both threats, the
Enterprise
plunges into the black hole. The ship arrives in the distant past, apparently orbiting Earth. Kirk and the crew encounter primitive man, shows them the benefits of fire, and in the process themselves become the Titans of galactic legend.
    Despite all the positive moves surrounding the preproduction of
Planet of the Titans
, Paramount rejected the completed screenplay. Kaufman undertook a drastic rewrite, trying to match the screenplay to Paramount’s notion of what
Star Trek
on the big screen should be, but all he had to go on was that they wanted more than an expanded TV episode. Kaufman set out to explore the dual nature of Spock in some detail, teaming him up with a Klingon to be played by Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. ‘My idea was more of an adult movie dealing with sexuality and wonders [with] Spock and Mifune’s characters tripping in outer space’, claimed Kaufman. ‘I’m sure the fans would have been upset.’ By May 1977 – after two years of development work on a
Star Trek
movie –
Planet of the Titans
was as dead as Roddenberry’s
The God Thing
, and Kaufman moved on to remake
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
instead. That same month saw the release and phenomenal success of
Star Wars
. Paramount was worried that the appetite for a blockbuster science fiction film had been sated by George Lucas’ super-successful space opera, so felt no one would now want to see a
Star Trek
movie, not realising that
Star Wars
was about to kick-start a whole new era in science fiction filmmaking. It was only the success of Steven Spielberg’s
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
, later that same year, that prompted Paramount executives to think again about
Star Trek
. They had one of the most widely recognised science fiction concepts of all time, and now theywere about to bring it back where they felt it belonged: on television!

    In the middle of 1977,
Star Trek
was promoted as the flagship show to lead a proposed fourth US television network (alongside CBS, NBC and ABC) backed by Paramount Studios. The network would be launched with an all-new two-hour
Star Trek
TV movie in February 1978, followed by an ongoing series of one-hour episodes. As well as a series of original TV movies, the network would also carry mini-series based on successful epic novels such as
The Winds of War
and
Shogun
.
    Gene Roddenberry had been on the Paramount lot for almost two years, working on the various aborted
Star Trek
movie ideas. Now he was back in comfortable territory: in charge of a
Star Trek
television show. Dubbed
Star Trek: Phase II
, the new series would take advantage of technological advancements in television production, while recapturing
The Original Series
’ sense of optimism and wonder about the future in space. Unlike in the late 1960s, both Paramount and Roddenberry were now confident that new
Star Trek
episodes on TV would be met by a welcoming and growing