Captain's Blog pt. 44: The Storybook Records

Today we are joined by Jeff B, Der Kommissar of Into the Dark Dimension and fellow collector of Fin de siècle Americana, for a discussion of the Star Trek Story and Record sets from the 1970s.

Rather than give you all the technical details, let me link to this most excellent site, which should answer any questions/ provide any further info for the curious. (That site is maintained by Curt Danhauser, a virtual one-man-army of the interwebs; many hours of enjoyment to be found there for the Trek consumer. Chapeau, Curt!)

Inside cover

Jeff and I listened to (and read, where there was an accompanying storybook) all of these things just to be prepared to meet with you today; don't ya feel special? Let's dive right in. (For convenience, a plot summary is provided directly after each title, followed by our remarks.)

In Vino Veritas  

While at a diplomatic conference with the Klingons and Romulans, Kirk and Spock must deal with the presence of an infamous galactic troublemaker whose unwitting actions threaten the talks.

BKM: This one is really bizarre. I'm confused why anyone would think this would be a great story for kids. Not that it's PG-13 or anything, but who said "Let's have a story where everyone gets drunk and insults one another and let's misidentify everything associated with Romulans along the way?" It really feels like a story written for something else that was transposed, crudely, on Trek. The surreal-ness is the most interesting part, though, and I don't know if i'd like it to be in any smoother shape. I kind of enjoy it mainly for its fractured-mirror approximation of Trek.

The names in this one are particularly weird: Coriolanus Quince? (The intergalactic troublemaker)  Jack Sprat? (His assumed name) The Pomplancians?

JB: I was thinking exactly the same thing - this is a kid's story? I mean, yeah, it is, but the whole motif of drunks speaking their minds seems an odd thing to hang a kid's tale on. And Kirk tops it off with a bit of pontificating about how the world's gears are greased with white lies. I suppose somewhere along the way everyone needs to learn that, but on a Star Trek Power record? That said, it does get fun when everyone starts insulting each other...and am I right that Spock is the first one to show the effects? It's kind of fun to hear our favorite half-Vulcan blurting out comments during a diplomatic mission with two of the most prickly alien species Star Trek has to offer.

BKM: Spock was first, yeah. That definitely cracked me up.

JB: The names caught my notice, too. Coriolanus Quince immediately made me think of Cyrano Jones by name alone, and Harry Mudd just by his back-assward plan for universal truth in the galaxy. I also dig that he just sort of shows up and hangs out during delicate negotiations between three mutually-hostile galactic powers. Where was security?

Passage to Mouav 

The crew of the Enterprise must contend with the escape aboard ship of a small but ferocious alien animal that telepathically projects its terror into the minds of anyone who ventures near.

These were all re-released and/or expanded upon release of The Motion Picture, hence the different covers.

BKM: Also has some weirdness (i.e. the color-swapping for Uhura and Sulu, the different visual design of M'Ress, the general plot insanity of "there's a craa-aaa-azy pet on the loose!") but this one's pretty fun.

This is actually from The Crier in Emptiness, but since I mentioned the Uhura/ Sulu color-swap thing.

The different design for M'Ress.

The cra-aa-azy pet.

BKM: I can see the Trek-for-kids concept in play. I swear I have seen this exact pose of Uhura's white doppelganger in an old Playboy... Not that this is a first for comics or even Trek comics, but I wish I could do a side by side with the photograph that served as the (alleged - after all, I could be misremembering) model.

JB: I'll bet you're thinking of Will Elder's Little Annie Fanny.

I do believe he's right! - BKM

JB: What stood out to me in this episode were two things: the Enterprise being used for pet transport, and the attitude of the planetary official who owned the cat-creature: "Oh, it's causing your crew to lose their minds? Huh. Sounds like a personal problem to me. And oh, yeah, we don't know how to handle them, either. Buh-bye." That attitude caused me to laugh out loud, the distracted and blase way he just blew off Kirk.

Back cover

The Crier in Emptiness  

The Enterprise encounters a being of pure sound whose attempts at communication threaten to deafen them and possibly rattle the ship apart.

BKM: I quite enjoyed this one. Kind of a no-brainer for a radio version of Trek - an alien of pure sound, a space pipe organ (the Edoan Elisiar,) and a Dracula accent.

JB: My notes has this one as the Enterprise being attacked by living tinnitus. I actually have tinnitus, so the alien's sounds set my teeth on edge from recognition.

JB: Besides that, this one amused me in so many ways. Connors - and I kid you not, I wrote in my notes that he has a Dracula accent (though after thinking about it, I'm wondering if it was supposed to be Irish) - a crewman we've only just met, randomly drags in a keyboard that looks like he must play in a prog rock band in his off hours. It looks like it was cobbled together with a Moog synthesizer and a Mobius-strip xylophone-looking thing. The communication attempt presages Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which really made me go "hmm." I know you liked the music, but the note I made was that it was so bad (not the word I used in my notes), it was rejected from infomercials. Connors then becomes exhausted after a couple of minutes of noodling around on the piano, which further amused me.

JB: Then it gets even more frantic sounding in a "Sid and Mart Krofft on Quaaludes" way. The music creature then just sorta goes away, Kirk delivers an oddly heartfelt monologue on the loneliness of a violin solo, then gives a figurative shrug and gets everyone back to work.

BKM: These parting remarks from Kirk really puts this into truly-top-tier-weird-Kirk-Bullshit levels, up there with the end of "Who Mourns for Adonais" and other such moments. 

JB: Yeah, even mainline Kirk was often bizarre in his analysis and wrapping-up comments and actions. There is that moment when he rattles off the preamble to the Constitution and essentially salutes the American flag in "The Omega Glory" which always raised more questions in my mind than answers. So weird. The writing was often strange and inconsistent, but Shatner's performance could somehow pull it all together and make it seem natural to Kirk to be all over the place ideologically.

BKM: It's good to know Kirk's still a lunatic in the Power Records trekverse. 

JB:  So this critter that can come and go at will, and cause massive damage, bears no further investigation. It's all so off-the-wall that it's hard not to like it. And Neal Adams?!?!

BKM: (Addresses the home audience) Neal "Comics Legend" Adams' studio, Continuity, provided the artwork for the Power Records story books.

Time Stealer  

After venturing near a phenomenon that slows down time, the Enterprise encounters the inhabitants of a ship that is powered by magic.

BKM: The Enterprise vs. Conan and Merlin! Spock beats Conan! This one is shrouded in a haze of 70s weed, methinks. It's kind of enjoyable in the same way In Vino Veritas is, of just... what the hell were they thinking with this? It's not a bad production or anything, just damn odd. Spock's projecting the "mind energy of millions of Vulcans" amuses me. That's got to come in handy.

JB: I was amused how they kept referring to Klee as Konrac's consort. I know the word has a few nuances in its definition, but given its common usage, this lends a whole different dimension to the story.

It strikes me that the writer (Cary Bates) wanted to write a swords and sorcery...in spaaaace story, and Neal Adams did a decent enough job of rendering a Buscema-like Conan character. It's too bad it's a bit tedious, especially with the slowed-down-time opening. Hope is raised that something truly crazy is going to happen when Konrac charges onboard, swinging a battleaxe, but the story soon devolves down into a fairly standard Trek tale.

JB: What is it with voice actors of the '70s and '80s making with the high-pitched, screechy voice for bad guys and wizards? Klee is afflicted with such a voice, and he's given a rather douchey, supercilious attitude, to boot.

BKM: That's something that's always jumped out at me, too, this cartoon-villain voice you describe.

JB: So Atlantis, the magic-infused one, not the probably-inspired-by-some-ancient-catastrophe-but-not-a-supercivilization one, has acquired a toehold in the Trek universe. We're left with the assurance that Konrac and Klee's home will now advance normally, which raises the question about what that will mean for a magic-wielding civilization acquiring Federation-level tech, if they choose to ask for membership. Trouble is, I ended up so underwhelmed by the story that I kinda don't care.

The Human Factor  

The Enterprise crew must mount a rescue when visiting ambassadors abduct Lieutenant Uhura after learning that she has the computer skills needed to tend to their electronic god.

BKM: This is another one that feels to me like it might have come from a drawer of unused Gold Key stories. Some interesting ideas in the mix here, though kind of leftovers from TOS explorations. The title is interesting considering the theme, i.e. the human factor in transmission of deity/ godhead to society, how the pure is distilled/ corrupted through it. Or something - I'm not suggesting it's an altogether compelling take on such a theme.

JB: This one was a big bait-and-switch story, what with the faux-human-sacrifice contrivance. The gratingly over-polite aliens kidnap a Starfleet officer rather than just ask for help? That seemed oddly counter-intuitive to me, especially when Kirk flat-out wonders why they didn't just ask for assistance. The theme, which you ably encapsulate, is surprisingly complex and thoughtful once you boil it down, which is a plus in its favor. 

BKM: That "Why didn't you just accept our help to begin with?" thing reminded me of the Kelvins from "By Any Other Name." And at the end, Starfleet computer experts are on their way? They would have been helpful in a number of TOS scenarios; Kirk seemed less willing to deploy them in Archons, Apple, etc.

JB: Yeah, I can imagine those "computer experts" running around playing clean-up crew for Kirk. They must have finally sent a memo telling Kirk to lay off destroying every super-computer he runs across.

I got a kick out of Spock tut-tutting Chekhov and Sulu for displaying emotion. He does that a lot on these records. Maybe it's payback for all those times someone has implored him to embrace his own feelings, and he now stays on the backs of any nearby ensigns.

Robot Masters 

As hundreds of sophisticated robots disappear throughout Federation space, the Enterprise sets a trap for the culprits only to discover that the Romulans are hoarding the robots in a plot to use them as soldiers in a massive attack on a Federation starbase.

BKM: Definitely a fun story for kids and has that Gold Key/ not-quite-Trek but resembling Trek in some weird twisted-mirror fashion. The green wizard Romulan character is hilarious to me. I crack up just looking at this guy.

JB: The Romulan wizard was a hoot. I loved his freaky half-mitre. I may have to make a Halloween costume of the guy. And the Romulans in general being green was a bit of a double-take-maker. 

BKM: The robot-for-Spock at the end is cute. (Oh, this merry band...)

JB: Yeah, that denouement was delightfully weird. Spock expressing admiration for the emotionless robots, then being given a "hi sailor!" by Mastero the robot leader, was such an amazingly awkward moment. It keeps making me laugh just thinking about it.

BKM: And Scotty makes such a point of saying how "lifelike" Mastero is. Uhh... Scotty? (Also: I think the Romulans live in this galaxy, but no two facts about the Romulans are the same thing twice in these things...)

JB: The entire Romulan plan seems so Flash Gordon in style to me: they rustle robots to be in their army. What could go wrong?!? Plus, it's interesting that the Federation makes robots that resemble those from Earth vs the Flying Saucers. On top of that, but did you wonder, like me, whether the robots Scotty was waiting on were new to the Enterprise, or just replacements for ones he'd presumably worn out changing warp coil emitters? And if they were already standard equipment on Fed ships, I suppose they must hang out in Jefferies tubes when the cameras roll.

BKM: As a production, it's pretty shoddy. Chekov refers to the Romulans as Klingons once,

JB: Kirk lets loose with a "WHH-AAA-AAAT???" about a minute-thirty in that had me howling with laughter. I'd use it as a ringtone.

Captain Kirk is apparently played by Quagmire from Family Guy, here.

JB: If the Romulans had a Flash Gordon plan, Kirk's plan is even more pulp-magazine in style - "let's pretend we're pirates! What could go wrong?!?" Fun stuff. I do wonder how long he planned on playing pirate. I really loved that his pirate name was "Jimkirk" and that he made no pretense of a disguise.

BKM: Forgot to mention that, but that's probably my favorite such detail since the Gold Key story where he went down to the planet "in disguise" by wearing a fake afro

JB: I wonder why Kirk didn't just slow down and let Scotty reprogram the robots before gallivanting off into hostile space? I mean, didn't his whole plan hinge on that? Were the pirates on that tight a schedule? They're pirates, for God's sake! How punctual were they expected to be?

The Man Who Trained Meteors 

After the Enterprise crew witnesses a vast meteor swarm devastate a Federation city renowned for its beauty, they undertake to follow clues that indicate that the meteors were being controlled by artificial means.

BKM: What a waste of a truly great title. Actually, I shouldn't say it's a waste. These were after all aimed at children, and like Robot Masters, it succeeds as entertainment for children pretty well. Meaning only that it seems like the sort of thing that would activate a child's imagination in a compelling way. Something I can in no way prove without expensive scientific equipment and research funding.

JB: This one is definitely lackluster. It doesn't help that the antagonist has the classic "Superfriends supervillain" high-pitched voice that is about as endearing as the sound of rending metal. Spock spends a good bit of time, once again, admonishing people for their displays of emotion. Give it a rest, Spock!

BKM: I love the idea of the "Vulcan mind lock." One of those let's give Spock a power to move this story along ideas, sure, but I kind of wish they'd revisit it. (Along with Giant Spock from TAS and the telepathic dinosaurs from Dinosaur Planet. As mentioned elsewhere, if they made a new-Sulu-and-new-Chekov one-off movie or tv special where they just channel-flipped through all these alternate-Trekverses / non-canon-Treks, that'd be a lot of fun.)

JB: Overall, this one seemed thin to me. The villain has psychic powers that drive him insane, and he decides to go about committing mass murder. This will sound odd given how huge the level of destruction is, but it seems like there needs to be more to the story. This particular episode seems unusually grim: a wiped-out city;  Scotty mind-controlled to destroy the Enterprise; and Spock grappling with the villain in a painful psychic combat. It's all rather dark for a kid's story.

A Mirror For Futility 

The Enterprise crew encounters two vastly powerful and ancient starships that are locked in eternal combat, and struggles to convince them both that they are not enemies of either side.

BKM: I love how the voice of one of the aliens is as traditional/ TOS as you can get, and then the other one sounds like a rock concert frontman.

The panel design is so damn crowded in this one, but it's well-written enough. Kind of an unexciting story/ plot, but it gets across the morality-play of Trek well enough. I think if I was a kid hearing this, I might suspect someone was trying to get me to learn something and roll my eyes. Which, as an adult, makes me chuckle at the title.

JB: Alan Dean Foster writing this one caught my attention. It's simple yet clearly plotted, though a bit too on-the-nose as a morality tale. Still, it sets things up in an interesting way: two battle-scarred, gargantuan ships pounding away at each other. As a fan of the "exploding starship" sub-genre of military scifi, I was hooked. It ended up as rather predictable, from which blandness derived. Probably a decent enough story for kids, but thinking back, I don't know how excited I'd be by it. I think the details are intriguing, and I can imagine my kid self enjoying the notion of these aliens fighting for 150,000 years. That kind of thing automatically triggered a sense of wonder in me as a kid, and still does. It's too bad it's such a self-contained, static story that didn't really have a resolution. On the other hand, had it been a tad more intriguing, with the "aliens" written to be more sympathetic, I can see liking the idea of them wandering empty space, heedless of anything but their mutual vendetta.

To Starve a Fleaver 

The laugh-inducing microscopic parasites that benignly live on the body of a visiting ambassador begin to infest the ship's crew.

Feed a cold, starve a...

BKM: Another one with silly names, designed, I suppose, to appeal to children's nonsense names. (The meegees, the Marpapluans. They're kind of fun to say.) I love how the decision is essentially to exterminate this part of the Marpapluan ecosystem that is mildly-distasteful to humans. Way to go, Federation.

JB: The names do seem rather like someone trying to evoke a bit of a Dr. Seuss feel. This is one story I was trying to suss out exactly what the subtext was. The Marpapluans are forced to be pleasant, then Kirk and Co. arrive and set them free from their veneer of civility. It almost seems like the opposite of the "lesson" Kirk paid lip-service to in In Vino Veritas. So feigning pleasantness is OK, unless you're forced to be so? But isn't it society that forces that upon us, not much differently than the meegees, except less physically direct? Oh Kirk, how mercurial your ways!

The Logistics of Stampede  

The problem-solving abilities of Mr. Spock are put to the test when a periodically occurring mass stampede threatens all crops on a Federation planet.

BKM: More than most of the others, this reminded me of the sort of radio production I'd hear on AudioNoir or Old-Time-Radio.com or something. Not the most exciting story, but it has all those kinds of elements: broad accents, simple but effective sound fx (replete with hoofs pounding the ground, ticker-tape sort of accompaniment for tension, brakes-locking-sounds, etc.), dialogue that moves the action (little of it that there is) along, and an easily-imagined scenario.

And then Spock gives a big ecological lesson at the end. Take that, kids! Don't kill the buffalo. (Guess he took Kirk's somber reflection on that species at the end of "The Man Trap" to heart.)

JB: OK, this is the episode I found most compelling. Even I find that hard to believe. The story is straightforward, yet a bit complex, and tosses in some ecological lessons, to boot. Plus, it's essentially a Western, which is something I found to be an interesting change of pace for Trek. I think I especially liked the glimpse into frontier planet life in the Trek universe. It was also a big plus for me that it was a smaller story, in the sense that it presented a problem that seemed real, but not threatening on a cosmic scale.

Spock's solution to the problem immediately conjured to mind Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage. In that classic Western book, there is what is presented as an old, very dangerous cowboy trick for stopping a stampede. The front of the stampede is herded or goaded into a spiraling turn towards the other end of the herd, so that it eventually spends its energy in a hurricane-cloud of cattle. It's pretty cool to see the Enterprise crew pulling cattle drive maneuvers, though I wonder why they didn't just use shuttles to keep above the herd. Ah well, it was more exciting this way.

It does seem a little weird, though, that the deaths of literally millions of alien cattle is treated almost whimsically.

Dinosaur Planet 

While investigating a rocky, earthquake and volcano-wracked world, the Enterprise's sensors detect intelligent life-forms on the impossibly inhospitable planet's surface. After a landing party beams down to rescue these beings from the earthquakes and lava, they are menaced by huge dinosaurs.

BKM: Why we have never seen a credible telepathic/ intelligent-dinosaurs-in-space movie or ongoing series is beyond me. We have Sharknado, but no Ray Gun Space T-Rex? Glad they got admitted to the Federation.

JB: This is it. Welcome to Rock Bottom. Below here is only slash fiction and Tijuana Bibles when it comes to nutty interpretations of a well-known franchise.

BKM: Here's another one that strikes me as a discarded-Gold Key story, from the odd insistence on material wealth (gems) that you find there, to the actual dinosaur planet, etc. And man, Frank Tanka (a helmsman... or something) is all over these things.

JB: The good: Much more energy than many of the Power Records stories. The narration has a lot of nifty purple prose. Kirk sounds like he was recorded in a toilet. Sulu is Asian at last. Bones is made to look even more like a buffoon or stooge than in other entries. Spock ‘s barbs are generally dickish, vindictive, and mean-spirited. Voice actors all sound like announcers. The crew didn't know which creatures were intelligent because they didn't think to check. The crew rides dinosaurs to escape a collapsing cavern. This one has it all.

JB: The bad: It's all bad, so densely bad that it collapses in on itself to create a singularity of coolness.

I have to note that Starfleet has some shoddy vetting in the Power Records universe. Wodsworth, a crew member apparently here to move the plot (such as it is) along, apparently comes from the Mirror Universe or a timeline where exploitation of native peoples is still encouraged in the 23^rd century, because he’s totally open about stealing wealth from alien planets while killing the natives to get it. He even is willing to blast them with a phaser while being bear-hugged by his captain, all the while screaming about how the natives of the planet aren’t entitled to the wealth of their own planet. Amazingly, there is no outside reason for Wodsworth’s actions; he’s just a dick. I suppose this could be a theme in this episode, about how even the near-idyllic Federation, manifesting in Starfleet as the cream of the crop, can still produce exploitation-minded guys like Wodsworth, but man, does it seem random to me.

One awesome bit that stands alone - technobabble: “No! You will disequalize the organic interior of the cavern.” Jaysus.

Back cover

~

BKM: And there we have it. Given the relative obscurity of the subject matter, I doubt we'll see "Jeff and Bryan Discuss the Power Records" trending, but this was fun. Screw the hash-tags.

JB: I've talked about it a bit in the past, but there is something about doing something so obscure that makes me happy. It reminds me of sitting around late at night circa 1980-82, bullshitting with one or two buddies in an ice-cold basement, bouncing ideas and dreams off each other, rifling through old comics and skin mags and pondering the bizarre ads, and realizing just how fantastically isolated we were, yet somehow still connecting about little-known or long-forgotten things.

In a way, I feel like this - and, really, both our blogs in general - is the kind of project that I find most satisfying due to how few people are likely to connect with it. It gives me an odd sort of anticipatory pride that some person who remembers with fondness these records from their childhood will run across this discussion and at the least know someone else out there is talking about them, that these records aren't just some discarded bit of '70s merchandising.

BKM: Hear, hear. And if you are one of these readers, stumbling across these words...

Thanks to Jeff B for the palaver!

Captain's Blog pt. 43: Ten Treks That Never Happened

FROM THE BULLPEN: I started transcribing this post over five months ago, when my baby daughter was still en-wombed. As it simply consists of info transcribed from various source materials and not much in the ways of analysis, I just added a little bit to it at a time. Can't believe it's been five months and all these Trek-blogs later.

My work on this phase of the Captain's Log is more or less finished. There'll be a guest post (or posts) covering Deep Space Nine by my brother and his wife, and a back-and-forth on the Power Records with Into the Dark Dimension blogger Jeff B and maybe a wrap-up best-of/ Fiesta Bowl sort of post, but besides that, there remains only TOS posts, which I think I will group together under a different moniker. (Don't have one yet, so feel free to leave suggestions for such in the comments.)

Which is not to say any of the above (or the below) is incidental! Far from it. Thanks for coming all this way with me and hope you enjoy what remains. And without further ado, let's turn things over to:

I am the Guardian of Forever. I am my own beginning, my own ending. Behold! A gateway into ten Star Treks that never came to pass...

1. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (by Gene Roddenberry)

Around-about 1975, Paramount told Roddenberry to come up with a story for a big-screen Trek. His first attempt has become known as The God Thing, although no bona fide completed version ever materialized.

"Somewhere out there, there's this massive entity, this abstract, unknown life force that seems mechanical in nature, although it actually possesses its own highly advanced consciousness. It's a force thousands of times greater than anything intergalactic civilization has ever witnessed. It could be God, it could be Satan, and it's heading towards Earth. It demands worship and assistance, and it's also in a highly volatile state of disrepair.

"The original crew of the Enterprise have been embraced as heroes all over the galaxy. Spock has gone back to Vulcan to head their Science Academy. McCoy's married and living on a farm. Everyone else has been given hefty promotions and continues to serve on active duty. Starfleet has offered Kirk a prestigious but deskbound Admiralty, but he's passed, preferring to retain his rank as captain while acting as a sort of consultant / troubleshooter aboard Federation spacecraft. As we find him, he's visiting the recently overhauled Enterprise, supervising her new captain, Pavel Chekhov.

"Kirk rounds up the old crew while studying and battling this "God thing." We finally approach the craft, and the alien presence manifests itself on the Enterprise in the form of a humanoid probe, which quickly begins shape-shifting while preaching about having traveled to Earth many times, always in a noble effort to law down the law of the cosmos. Its final image is that of Jesus Christ.

"'You must help me!' the probe repeats, now bleeding from hands, feet, and forehead. Kirk refuses, at which point the probe begins exhausting the last of its energy in a last-ditch violent rampage. It summons up the last of its remaining strength to blast Sulu, severing his legs in the process. When Spock attempts to comfort him, he, too, is blasted and left for dead. With that expenditure of energy, the vessel is weakened to the point of vulnerability, and the Enterprise unleashes a barrage of firepower that destroys the craft.

"With that, we begin pondering the notion that perhaps humanity has finally evolved to the point where it's outgrown its need for gods, competent to account for its own behavior, without the religiously imposed concepts of fear, guilt, and divine intervention."

Can't just one of these God-returns stories be about Kali?

I'm not sure if the story Roddenberry describes justifies these conclusions at the end, but it is of course only a treatment. Many of its rough edges were smoothed into what became The Motion Picture, a picture I very much enjoy, so, really, this does exactly what a treatment should do: point the way towards a worthwhile destination and establish some method of getting there.

Paramount passed, somewhat understandably, but the idea for a movie remained hot, so Roddenberry approached Jon Povill to take a crack at it.

2. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (by Jon Povill)

"Our tale begins by finding the Enterprise and her entire crew dead, the victims of an imploding black hole. Suddenly, however, they're mysteriously reanimated, repaired by some sort of glowing intergalactic goo. What follows is a wildly complicated tale involving repeated time travel, heated arguments with Einstein, Hitler, Churchill, and Mao, clandestine meetings with JFK, and culminating with the Enterprise ultimately being responsible for the start of World War Two."

This idea was met with even less enthusiasm than Roddenberry's original one, but Paramount still wanted to do a bigscreen Trek, so they tried again.

3. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (by Chris Bryant and Alan Scott)

Note: Not this Alan Scott

"Planet of the Titans opens with the Enterprise hurtling through space to answer the distress call of a fellow Federation ship.

"Upon arrival, however, there is nothing to be found. The Enterprise has been duped. Strange energy waves blast across the bridge, searing Kirk's brain in the process. Althoguh the captain initially appears to have escaped injury, he slowly goes mad, eventually hijacking a shuttlecraft and blasting towards what seems to be an invisible planet. When rescue efforts fail, Spock - logically presuming the Captain to be dead although intuition tells him his friend has indeed survived - moves on.

"Three years later, Spock journeys back to the invisible planet and discovers it was once home to the Titans, an ancient, once-believed-mythical race of supremely intelligent and advanced humanoid creatures. Beaming down to the surface, Spock becomes convinced he's also closing in on Kirk. At the same time, his preliminary studies of the planet are horrifying, revealing that it will soon become engulfed by an enormous black hole.

"Meanwhile, a Klingon Bird of Prey has intercepted communications that detail the findings and is now speeding towards the Planet of the Titans, intent upon pillaging the vast intelligence and resources of the super-race. Spock ultimately finds his captain alive and well upon the surface of the planet. Kirk explains that the planet is not inhabited by the Titans at all but by the vicious and brutish Cygnians. They mindlessly destroyed the Titans long ago but were far too primitive to reap the rewards of their teachings. Very soon, the Cygnians decide the crew of the Enterprise must meet the same fate.

"What follows is a three-way battle against time, with the crew of the Enterprise trying to salvage the surviving riches of the Titans while simultaneously surviving attacks from the Cygnians and the Klingons. In the end, with no way out, Kirk orders the Enterprise through the Black Hole. Everyone else is destroyed, and the Planet of the Titans implodes."

At this point, Paramount, aggravated with the rising cost of development in absence of a script they liked, downgraded the project from big screen outing to small screen ongoing series, one they hoped would be the flagship of its own to-be-launched television network. That story with its many twists and turns and starts and stops is the subject of this book.

Eventually, in the wake of the mega-success of Star Wars, the show/ network idea was scrapped, and Paramount resurrected the idea of a motion picture. Back to the drawing board. Enter Harlan Ellison.

4. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (by Harlan Ellison)

No written treatment exists for Ellison's idea - he pitched it in monologue to an assembly of Paramount execs - but as pieced together from various sources:

"The story starts on Earth where strange phenomena is inexplicably occurring. In India, a building where a family is having dinner vanishes into dust. In the U.S., one of the Great Lakes suddenly vanishes, wreaking havoc. In a public square, a woman suddenly screams and falls to the pavement where she turns into some kind of reptilian creature. The truth is suppressed, but the Federation realizes that someone or something is tampering with time and changing things on Earth in the far distant past. What is actually happening involves an alien race on the other end of the galaxy. Eons ago, Earth and this planet both developed races of intelligent humanoid reptiles as well as humans. On Earth, the humans destroyed the reptile men and flourished. In the time of the Enterprise, when this race learns what happened on Earth in the remote past, they decide to change things so that they will have a kindred planet.

"For whatever reason, the Federation decides only the Enterprise and her crew are qualified for this mission, so a mysterious figure goes around kidnapping the old central crew. This figure is finally revealed to be Kirk. After they are reunited, they prepare for the mission into the past to save Earth.

"The Enterprise goes back to set time right, finds the snake-alien, and the human crew is confronted with the moral dilemma of whether it had the right to wipe out an entire life form just to insure its own territorial imperative in our present and future. (The story) spans all of time, all of space, with a potent moral and ethical problem."

Legend has it that after Harlan's pitch, some suit suggested putting the Mayans in there somewhere, an idea Harlan found offensive. Harsh words ensued, and Harlan stormed out. No lizard-men Star Trek.

Much to David Icke's disappointment, one imagines.

As with Roddenberry's original pitch, it's unfair to evaluate the merits of the story based on this alone, but the idea has a lot of problems. I'm not sure if there's actually a compelling ethical dilemma at the heart of it, for one. When an alien species invades your past (for very unconvincing reasons - it wants a kindred planet? That's it? From across the galaxy?) to wipe out your race, you're not really at a moral crossroads. I suppose discovering that your distant ancestors once committed genocide against intelligent reptilians is somewhat disturbing, but... what are you supposed to do? Sit back and allow it to happen? Condemn the future to oblivion to play missionary/ politically-correct with the distant past? 

But: it probably would've been tightened up in revision.

Speaking of Ellison, his original script for "City on the Edge of Forever" is quite a bit different than the TV episode it became. It's available as a book (and probably for free out there on the internet - I haven't looked) with an introductory essay from Ellison that blasts everyone from Roddenberry to Shatner to Joan Collins, and ending essays from David Gerrold, Walter Koenig, Peter David and others.  

Without getting a list of all the differences, the TV version is immeasurably better. It is to the TV version what Roddenberry's original pitch for TMP is to the finished version of The Motion Picture. Characters and concepts from Ellison's original are compartmentalized to much greater effect in the finished version. Count me on the side of the Genes and D.C. Fontana on this one.

5. Star Trek II (by Harve Bennett, Mike Minor, Sam Peeples, and Jack Sowards)

Harve Bennett started off his tenure as Trek's cinematic overseer with an idea to bring Khan back and to provide Nimoy with a great death scene for Spock. But things went through quite a few revolutions before Nicholas Meyer corralled all ideas into one workable script that met with approval from all quarters. The first attempts centered around the following:

"Khan rallies the youth of the entire galaxy (!!!) into a full-blown revolution against the Federation. In a no-holds barred quest for revenge, Khan frames Kirk as the intergalactic equivalent of Public Enemy Number One. Kirk gains a full-grown son named David (who is involved in Khan's rebellion against him/ the old guard) and romances a beautiful redheaded fellow officer named O'Rourke. (Later, O'Rourke is changed to a young female Vulcan named Saavik, and the steamy romance transferred to David.) Khan seeks control of the Genesis Device, a powerful technology capable of terraforming a planet in mere minutes. At the end, Khan and Kirk fight on a lava-planet with sword/ whips that can take the shape of a variety of stupid things."

Sensing that something was not coming together correctly, Bennett had sci-fi vet Sam Peeples take a crack at it. Peeples jettisoned all but the Genesis Device and kept that only as a minor subplot "amid a rather strange storyline focusing on a formless and unfathomable pair of villains from another dimension."

At that point, Meyer took the best points of the above and hammered out what he titled The Undiscovered Country. This was changed to The Vengeance of Khan and then to The Wrath of Khan, under which moniker it entered the world and cinematic history.

Cool Mondo poster for Khan.

6. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (by Steve Meerson, Peter Krikes, Leonard Nimoy, Harve Bennett, and Nicholas Meyer)

Although much of what was originally devised for The Voyage Home made it onto the screen, a significant portion of the story had to be reworked when Eddie Murphy passed on the project:

"Eddie Murphy was to play a rather eccentric college professor, one who firmly believed in the existence of extra-terrestrials, ghosts, ESP and the like. After a series of embarrassing and very public false alarms, Murphy's job would have been hanging by a thread. And at that point, he and some of his students (not nearly so open-minded on these topics) would have gone to the Super Bowl.

"Occupying the worst seats in the house on a typically foggy San Francisco afternoon, Murphy's professor character would've been enduring the game's stereotypically overblown halftime show when he would've become one of sixty thousand witnesses to the first appearance of a Klingon Bird of Prey in the twentieth century. He would be the only one to believe it was real.

"Later, when Murphy was alone in his classroom, listening to a series of recorded whale songs, the Klingon ship's computers would lock on to the sound, and shortly thereafter, Murphy would have found Kirk, Spock and company beaming into his classroom, asking questions, bidding him good day, and ultimately high-tailing it away from their wide-eyed observer. Many plot-twisting scenes and about three centuries later, Murphy would have been in full Starfleet regalia, having joined the force, and saluting his new friends."

Alas, the Eddie Murphy Trek was not meant to be. He went to do The Golden Child and his part was reworked for Gillian Anderson. (*EDIT: Not really Gillian Anderson.)

Additionally, George Takei was meant to have a scene where he meets his great-great-grandfather on the street, but the child actor hired to play the role was unable to perform. (I remember reading the novelization of this movie and coming across this scene and wondering, in those pre-internet/ deleted-scenes/ commentary-track days, whose bright idea it was to cut such a cool little scene.)

7. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (by William Shatner)

Is it possible that this movie started off as kind of a cool idea? Let's find out:

"Zar, a holy man driven by a genuine belief that God was speaking to him demanding he accumulate as many followers as possible and provide a suitable vehicle with which he might better spread his ideas through the universe.

"Spock surprises his shipmates by stating he knew the renegade holy man back in Vulcan seminary. (???) Surprise turns to shock when Spock makes it clear this man is so brilliant, so advanced, that he could genuinely be the Messiah.

"The crew of the Enterprise travels to Paradise City, battles with the forces of the holy man, and is ultimately overwhelmed by the sheer numbers within his command. In a last-ditch effort to regain control, Kirk sets a fatal trap for Zar but is thwarted by Spock, who warns the holy man of the danger. Kirk is furious, and he is not mollified when Spock explains his actions by stating that he now truly believes Zar to be the Messiah. Bones, too, becomes convinced, and they both tell Kirk that they cannot in good conscience allow any harm to come to the man. 

"Upon arrival at God's homeworld, they meet The Man. God is surrounded by a host of angels with flaming swords. They argue. The image begins to transform, ultimately becoming unmistakably satanic. The angels change into hordes of gargoyles, the Furies of Hell.

"Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, still suffering the effects of their first adversarial relationship, each run in a different direction. McCoy falls and breaks his leg and is surrounded by the Furies, as is Spock. Kirk is able to escape but risks his life to return and help his friends. Descending into the river Styx, they fight off the hideous attacks and eventually make their escape."

Well... I think adding the Furies/ angels business might have been kind of cool, and at least there's a point to the character tension between our trinity of heroes. But it still runs into the same problem the final product / Roddenberry's "God Thing" does: these ideas of God/ Satan are terribly limited to only one specific culture on Earth and therefore hardly compelling material for a universal-theology sort of story. The Motion Picture succeeds by positioning "the God Thing" the way it does via V'ger; here we get... I don't know, some lamer version of Q/ the Squire of Gothos. 

But as the failings of The Final Frontier are well-known, let's move on.

8. Starfleet Academy / The Academy Years (by Harve Bennett)

After the 2009 Star Trek came out, Harve Bennett made some waves by telling convention audiences they ripped off his idea for Starfleet Academy/ The Academy Years, the film he wanted to do after The Final Frontier:

"The last thing I did at Paramount before I left was a prequel. It was the best script of all and it never got produced. Ned Tanen, who was Paramount’s head of production, had green lighted it before he left. We even had location scouts and sent feelers out for the cast. It was Kirk and Spock aged seventeen entering Starfleet Academy. Montgomery Scott would have been their Engineering instructor. Kirk falls in love for the only time in his life. The cadets save the world. The premise of the film was racial tension. Spock becomes the first green-blood to enter the Academy, which is a red-blooded organization, and he is discriminated against. And there was a planetary cabal against green-bloods and the cadets at the Academy are the ones that save the day. Kirk’s love is killed heroically saving the planet from the ship.  I had an eye on John Cusack for Spock, which would have been great. Ethan Hawke could have been Kirk. There were so many possibilities. But basically it was a love story and it was a story of cadets, teenagers. And, in order to get Shatner and Nimoy in, we had a wraparound in which Kirk comes back to address the academy and the story spins off of his memory. At the end, Kirk and Spock are reunited and they beam back up to Enterprise, which would have left a new series potential, the academy, and a potential other story with the original Trek cast. All the possibilities were open, the script was beautiful, and the love story was haunting, but it didn’t happen.

"And the first sequence of that movie was Jim Kirk in a crop duster bi-plane, stunting about while his brother and his mother are "Jim, you wild ass – set down!" And he finally ends up crashing into a haystack."

Harve goes on to say it's this last bit that convinced him that Abrams et al. ripped off his script, changing the bi-plane to a "futuristic motorcycle thing." 

Which of course belongs to the policeman chasing Kirk, not Kirk himself, but don't tell Harve.

It actually came very close to being made, but Paramount's upper management - as it often did - changed hands, and the new studio heads did not want to celebrate the franchise's 25th anniversary without Shatner, Nimoy, and the gang reprising their roles.

Would it have worked? In 1991? Tough to tell. My instincts say no, but I have no doubt it would have been interesting. The racial tension story seems out of place to my eyes and ears, but it was developed well enough in Into Darkness. Which makes me wonder if Harve thinks that one, too, was drawn from his never-used script.

9. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (by Nicholas Meyer, Leonard Nimoy, Denny Martin Flinn, Lawrence Konner, and Mark Rosenthal)

  
Star Trek VI also went through many revisions before it congealed into the train wreck we know and love:

"As originally scripted, the film would've opened upon the USS Excelsior, under the command of Captain Sulu. From there, we would've found Kirk in bed, making love to yet another conquest. Not all that unusual, except for the fact that this woman is Carol Marcus, and as this  thing moves forward, you'd have gotten the distinct impression that these two had not only reconciled but were now well on their way to spending their autumnal years together while making love like newlyweds at every opportunity.

"However, when a knock on the door brings the news that the old crew of the Enterprise has been ordered to reassemble once more, Kirk risks his relationship and leaves Carol's embrace, finding even greater seduction in the opportunity for one last adventure. With that in mind, he sets out to round up the rest of his crew. Though Starfleet describes Spock's whereabouts as "highly confidential," Kirk would nonetheless locate the rest of the crew rather easily.

"He'd have found Scotty bored out of his mind to the point where he's now spending his days taking apart the Klingon Bird of Prey seen in Star Trek IV in a futile attempt to at last beat this damn horse to death uncover the secrets of her cloaking device. Uhura is next, equally bored, working for a Federation radio station as the host of a call-in advice program.

"Chekhov, too, is uneasy, yawning his days away at a chess club while repeatedly trying in vain to defeat higher life forms with special Russian strategies. Finally, Kirk finds McCoy most unhappy of all. Hailed as a conquering hero, Bones is nonetheless drunk and disorderly at a high-scoety medical dinner in his honor. Disgusted by the money-hungry (???) healers he's forced to endure in the civilian world, even the dependably cantankerous Bones jumps at the change to once again become useful aboard the Enterprise."

It really is remarkable how many of the Trek features' original scripts go through this "got to round up the crew, Magnificent Seven-style" business, only to cut it from the final draft. Moreover, it is suggested so repeatedly that the only excitement or fulfillment the crew ever has comes aboard the Enterprise and everything else is a pitiful substitute. Kind of a depressing idea!

10. Star Trek: Insurrection (by Michael Piller)

One paragraph from the introduction to Piller's memoir detailing the making of this movie covers many of the ideas developed and ultimately discarded:

"Would your movie be about the girl who broke our heo's heart and the best friend he's sent to kill, the rag-tag army of space mariners, the mysterious society of alien children, the trecherous Romulans, the Douglas-Fairbanks-esque Joss, who duels with Worf and lusts after Troi, the mutes who project illusions, the holographic stand-up comedian, the lecherous three hundred year old munchkin, the masked race of Generation X aliens, or Quark's trying to open a fountain of youth franchise amidst the Ba'ku? The Alamo stand-off? Heart of Darkness?"

When reading Piller's book, one is struck by his frequent callbacks to Hollywood's Golden Age: Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, Jane Wyatt in Lost Horizon, or Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., etc. I, too, love old movies, but his lack of contemporary reference points is interesting... I can see why Spiner and Burton felt he was so out of touch.

Time has resumed its shape. All is as it was before. 

(All what-might-have-been plot summaries from William Shatner's Movie Memories, except for Harlan Ellison's from his book The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay that Became the Classic Star Trek Episode, and Fade-In: From Idea to Final Draft: The Making of Star Trek Insurrection by Michael Piller)