A Brief Guide to Star Trek

film ‘single-handedly revived the
Star Trek
movie series, at least from a creative point of view’.
    The cast and creative crew could rightly bask in the appreciation being heaped upon
Star Trek: First Contact
– although it wouldn’t last, with the
Star Trek
movies about to enter a downward spiral.

    There was considerable momentum behind
Star Trek
following the blockbuster success of
First Contact
. Somehow, over the next two films the creative brains behind the movies managed to squander that momentum, along with fan and public goodwill, by turning out two very disappointing movies in
Star Trek: Insurrection
and
Star Trek Nemesis
.
    The writers of the two previous films, Braga and Moore, were unavailable for the third
The Next Generation
movie as they were committed to both ongoing
Star Trek
TV series,
Deep Space Nine
and
Voyager
, as well as scripting
Mission: Impossible II
for Paramount. Michael Piller was brought in by Rick Berman to work on the project after he’d lost out on the opportunity to write
Generations
. Piller’s reaction to
First Contact
was that it was ‘too dark’ for a
Star Trek
movie and he wanted to move things in a lighter direction.
    Piller had explored a concept he called ‘the Roddenberry box’, meaning the limitations that Gene Roddenberry had initially set for
Star Trek
and had adhered to most strictly on the early years of
The Next Generation
, but which each subsequent series had strived to work around. Roddenberry’s rules for lifein the twenty-third and twenty-fourth centuries were not fixed in stone – he often revised them as he went along – but they were his rules. Writers trying to create dramatic conflict often fell foul of these ‘rules’ as they seemed to inhibit many of the standard dramatic techniques used by screenplay writers for film and television. Unlike many, Piller quite liked the restrictions of working within ‘the box’, believing that
Star Trek
fans were drawn to that universe precisely because of the rules that Roddenberry had developed. Part of that was portraying the future in an optimistic manner: ‘The strength of
Star Trek
depends upon making people feel good about the future’, said Piller. The next
Star Trek
movie would, therefore, be a ‘feel-good’ movie.
    Various ideas came together in the discussions between Piller and Berman. Piller was conscious of his own ageing process, and like the themes contained in the earlier
Star Trek
movies of the 1980s, he was keen to tackle the subject again, perhaps in the form of a quest for the ‘fountain of youth’. Berman was also thinking in terms of a quest, but more along the lines of Joseph Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness
, a loose inspiration for the structure of Francis Ford Coppola’s
Apocalypse Now
(1979). In an interview on startrek.com, Berman addressed Piller’s early work: ‘He wanted to tell a story of Picard ending up being stripped of everything, losing his ship, his crew, his commission in Starfleet, losing everything but his sense of what was right and his integrity, and being left with nothing but that. When the studio read the story, they had the same reaction I had, which was that it was just nothing close to what a
Star Trek
movie should be.’
    The problem for Piller was that
First Contact
had effectively used up
The Next Generation
’s best villains in the Borg. He couldn’t return to them, but neither was it wise to try and develop an even more powerful adversary. His decision was to make a different kind of movie, something that wouldn’t try to compete directly with the previous
Star Trek
film. His initial attempt – under the title
Star Trek: Stardust
– had Picard pursuing a renegade Starfleet officer who’d taken it upon himself to attack theRomulans. During the chase, the crew of the
Enterprise
find themselves getting younger as they get closer to a mysterious area of space that seems to function as a fountain of youth.
Star Trek
had reverted its casts to childhood on several occasions on TV, in the episodes ‘The Counter-Clock Incident’ (
The Animated Series
) and ‘Rascals’ (
The Next Generation
) – as well as making them extremely aged in ‘The Deadly Years’ (
The Original Series
) and ‘Encounter at Farpoint’ (
The Next Generation
).
    Script revisions resulted in the rogue Starfleet officer being replaced by Data, in the Colonel Kurtz role from
Apocalypse Now
, and the fantasy-like fountain of youth notion was dropped altogether. The idea