A Brief Guide to Star Trek

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.
    Other
Phase II
storylines that were ultimately dropped included ‘Are Unheard Melodies Sweet?’, an episode that saw an alien try to capture the crew using illusions and fantasy, an idea dating back to ‘The Cage’. Worley Thorne’s story wasdistinguished by its inclusion of nudity and suggestive situations that would never have made it to air. Theodore Sturgeon proposed a comedy episode called ‘Cassandra’, about a young, clumsy yeoman and a tiny, Tribble-like creature that causes havoc aboard the
Enterprise
.
    Perhaps the most promising of all the storylines was John Meredyth Lucas’ planned two-part episode ‘Kitumba’. The story would have seen the return of the infamous Klingons, but would have explored their culture in a more serious way than ever happened on
The Original Series
, and was only achieved to a greater extent on
The Next Generation
. Kirk is sent on a secret mission, accompanying a Klingon defector to the Klingon home world. Their plan is to locate the ‘Kitumba’, the rightful ruler of the planet, in order to avoid a war between the Klingons and the Federation. ‘I wanted something we’d never seen on the series before’, said Lucas, who’d been a producer in
The Original Series
’ second year and had written ‘The Changeling’, ‘Patterns of Force’ and ‘That Which Survives’, and directed ‘The Ultimate Computer’ and ‘The
Enterprise
Incident’. He’d also both written and directed the episode ‘Elaan of Troyius’. ‘[I wanted] penetration deep into enemy space – then I began to think about how they lived. I tried to think what Klingon society would be like and the Japanese came to mind’.
    While Roddenberry believed writers would have no trouble getting to grips with the new
Star Trek
, he failed to understand that television and its audiences had moved on in the decade since the original show was on air and so would be expecting a different kind of storytelling. There were also three new characters (Decker, Xon and Ilia) for scriptwriters to contend with, and one major character (Spock) missing altogether. There was also the question of making a new show that appealed to the original
Star Trek
fans (who were desperate for their favourite show to return) and a potentially wider audience turned on to space opera science fiction by
Star Wars
.
    With Shatner on board, the new character roles were quickly filled. David Gautreaux won the role of Xon, whilemodel–actress – and former Miss India – Persis Khambata was signed up to play the sensitive Ilia. Despite this sign of progress, those working on
Phase II
began to notice that deadlines were being ignored, shooting dates were looming and the studio executives appeared unconcerned. This was extremely unusual in television production, and it soon began to become apparent to all that the show they were working on was destined never to appear on a television screen. The shooting date was looming for the two-hour pilot episode, and the pivotal role of Commander Decker had still not been cast. There was even some question about whether the character (originally a possible Kirk replacement) was needed for what was now intended to be a movie rather than a TV series. The real priority was the feature film script for ‘In Thy Image’ that Harold Livingston and Gene Roddenberry were rapidly – but secretly – redrafting.
    Roddenberry’s November 1977 rewrite of Livingston’s script was the first step in a process that would cause him to once again lose control of
Star Trek
. The others involved in the movie and
Phase II
project considered Roddenberry’s rewrite to be too intellectual (a criticism similar to those aimed at the original
Star Trek
pilot ‘The Cage’) and – more damningly – dull. It fell to Paramount executive Michael Eisner to decide between the scripts. He dubbed Roddenberry’s version to be ‘television’ and Livingston’s to be ‘a movie’ and ‘a lot better’. Roddenberry’s take was not without merit, so a decision was taken to create a third draft combining the best elements from both the competing versions, leaning heavily on the Livingston draft.
    The biggest problem came