A Brief Guide to Star Trek

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 wasan 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