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The Star Trek franchise is vast, with a history spanning decades. This video delves into the writers' rooms to uncover 10 fascinating ideas that were scrapped due to creative differences, scheduling conflicts, and more. What could have been?
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00:00Hello my friends, Sean Farrick here for Trek Culture, and today's video is brought to you by
00:04Star Trek Fleet Command. Hooray! More on that now in a second.
00:07When Star Trek first hit the screens in 1966, there were a lot of ideas that were swirling
00:12around this brand new show and what Roddenberry's team of writers could come up with. Ideas and
00:17suggestions abounded, with entire fleshed out proposals dismissed and hastily rewritten.
00:22Plot threads and episode ideas were hashed out and rehashed out over and over again,
00:27until a finished product could be brought to screen. While some stories and ideas would fall
00:31foul of creative differences, some would be discarded due to scheduling conflicts and
00:36production difficulties. This is true of almost every television show, but given just how vast
00:41the franchise of Star Trek has become over the decades since Captain Kirk first sat in the
00:46captain's chair, there's a lot that was left on the cutting room floor. With a fanbase as passionate
00:50as Trek's, it's no surprise that many of these details have been dug up and discussed at length.
00:56So with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with Trek Culture, and here are 10 abandoned Star Trek
01:00ideas that would have been incredible.
01:03My friends, just before this video starts, I just want to take a quick second to shout
01:06out and thank our sponsor, Star Trek Fleet Command. Fleet Command is a free-to-play game
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01:17You may be wondering why I'm dressed this way while talking about Fleet Command. I think
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01:58there's more than 25 new missions on the way with Strange New Worlds as well. There's also a little
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02:08Worlds exclusive, there is a rare Reginald Barkley that you can play as. Now, initially, he's only going
02:13to be available on PC before he extends into the mobile game as well, so make sure that you grab
02:18him while you can. Just to say again, thank you so much to Fleet Command. It is available via the
02:22description in the link to this video. Straight away, let's go.
02:25Number 10, Maurice Hurley's Plans for Q. After the tumultuous production of The Next Generation's
02:32first season, head writer Maurice Hurley was ready to pack in the whole bridge crew and start afresh.
02:37He had said in an interview with William Shatner that he had hoped to kill off the main cast and
02:41build
02:42the second season around finding a new crew for the Enterprise. Pretty drastic. Maurice Hurley
02:47eventually left the show at the end of the second season, and the 1988 writer's strike put pay to
02:52many of his plans. Many of the episodes that he had intended weren't produced, and those that did
02:57make the screen were often last-minute replacements to scrapped plans. Hurley's plans for Q would have
03:02been extensive. The idea was that early in the second season, Q would pay another visit to the
03:08Enterprise to torment Picard and warn him of the dangers that were out there. Because of this,
03:13Q would be stripped of his powers and have to live on the Enterprise for a time until he was
03:17able to
03:18regain his abilities. If all of this sounds familiar, it's because this plot was condensed into two
03:23episodes, Q Who and Déjà Q. The Missing Q arc was essentially Q having to adjust to humanity and
03:29learn how to get along with Picard as an almost equal. Ronald D. Moore later commented that Hurley's
03:35plans were more plot-focused, and after his departure from the series, the show became much
03:39more character-focused. He stressed that they didn't want to overuse characters like Q, which
03:44this arc may well have done. Pivotly, however, there was one difference in Q Who that didn't make it
03:50into this arc. Q wouldn't have introduced humanity to the Borg. That would have been something else
03:55entirely. Number nine, Maurice Hurley's plans for the Borg. Q wasn't the only season two plan that
04:02Maurice Hurley had to leave by the wayside. Initially, his plans were for the first season
04:06finale episode, The Neutral Zone, to be the first of two parts. The second part would focus on the
04:12Enterprise and the Romulans being forced to work together to unravel the mystery of the missing
04:17colonies in both their territories. The answer to that mystery? A migratory insectoid hive-mind
04:23species called the Borg. That's right, in the eyes of the man who came up with them, the Borg
04:28weren't meant to be a race of cyborgs. They were meant to be space army ants. They were extracting
04:33all materials from planets in their way. The Enterprise would discover that they were heading
04:37deeper and deeper in the Federation, and would have to scramble to collect allies in facing off
04:42against this threat. The Romulans and Klingons would be among them. This plan would have seen the
04:47complete defeat of the Borg at the conclusion of the second season. Just think on that for a moment.
04:52The Borg were only meant to appear for a single season, and they weren't introduced by Q.
04:57Perhaps it's for the best that the writers strike through these plans asunder, because afterwards
05:02Maurice Hurley left the show, and it took a very different direction. A better one? Perhaps not,
05:07but a fascinating one, certainly.
05:10Number 8. Giant Ferengi
05:12A script by Stephen DeKnight for Deep Space Nine was simply going to be called Giant, and would have
05:17placed a humorous bent on Ferengi evolution. Wolf, while accompanying Jadzia Dax for a drink in
05:22Quark's bar, would have found a Ferengi hitting on Jadzia and angrily dismissed him. He would have
05:28uttered the line, there's no honor fighting a single Ferengi, only to hear, I'd say the same
05:33thing about Klingons from behind him. Wolf would then be faced with a Ferengi who was at least his
05:38equal in height and body mass, and the two of them would engage in a traditional barroom brawl.
05:43Eventually, it would turn out that these two Ferengi, one little and one large, were brothers on the run
05:48from Ferengi space. Wolf and Dax would have been tasked with escorting them back there,
05:53discovering that the two of them had discovered a scientific formula to activate the genes for
05:57physical strength and prowess that was deep within the Ferengi genome. They explained that Ferengi
06:02were once large and strong, but had developed down an evolutionary path to be smaller, sneakier,
06:07and thus not considered a threat by larger species. When the four of them were attacked by Jem'Hadar
06:12on the way, they'd all have to work together to survive. Eventually, Wolf would have to acknowledge
06:17the history of the Ferengi as warriors in their own right. Could have been fun.
06:22Number 7. Ronald D. Moore's obsession with musicals
06:26Yes, before Buffy the Vampire Slayer hit us with its beloved musical episode, Ronald D.
06:32Moore wanted the next generation to have a musical episode. When the idea didn't go over particularly
06:37well there, he attempted to get it made on Deep Space Nine, and was again shot down.
06:41Ron's ideas were never fully fleshed out. His desire sprang simply from thinking that making a musical
06:46episode for either show would be fun. He's quoted as saying there's some tech virus that infects the
06:51crew and they can only communicate in song, you know? And just do it and have a ball. Alas,
06:56nobody was interested in pursuing it and the idea went nowhere. Coincidentally, Linda Park pushed to
07:01have a musical episode on Enterprise as well, given that she was a trained singer, as were John
07:06Billingsley and Scott Bakula. This idea didn't go anywhere either. Given the enduring popularity of
07:12Buffy's once more with feeling, maybe it might have been wise to cash in on the musical vibe.
07:16Also, has anyone attempted to adapt that Buffy episode into a stage show yet? If not, why not?
07:22Number 6. The literal year of hell
07:25Scuttlebutt would have us believe that the plans for Voyager's year of hell were much more extensive
07:29than the two-part episode that we eventually received. While this two-parter was sufficiently
07:34brutal as we witnessed the degradation and crippling of our beloved Voyager over an extended period of
07:39time, it could have been more. The plans for the year of hell were for it to have spanned an
07:44entire
07:44season, with the Krenim temporal ship haunting them for more than 20 episodes. Voyager would have
07:50accumulated more and more damage as time went by, as there would be nowhere for the ship to repair
07:54itself and they would slowly lose crew members. The two-part episode did do an excellent job of
07:59conveying the damage that Voyager is continually subjected to, but picture that breakdown spread
08:04over a whole season. Picture the sense of loss and isolation that could have been worked into the
08:09very fabric of the show as it progressed, mirrored by the increased frustration of Anorax as he tries
08:14to shape an entire quadrant to his liking until it's unrecognisable. The ultimate conclusion of the
08:20season would still have been the same, with Janeway destroying both the crippled Voyager and the Krenim
08:24time ship in a spectacular final space battle. Eventually, the plans for the season-long arc were reduced
08:30to the two-part episode we watched. Jerry Taylor and Brannan Braga felt that a season-long investment
08:35that would be reversed at its conclusion was too much for the audience to bear. Voyager, for all of
08:40the excellent solo episodes that are within it, overall lacked cohesion as a series and this missed
08:45opportunity could have paved the way for more overarching stories, the kind that Voyager's very
08:50premise demanded. But it wasn't to be.
08:53Number 5. Who's killing the great Voyagers of the Delta Quadrant?
08:57And why, yes, that title is directly taken from Who is Killing the Great Chefs of the Europe?
09:01The premise of this episode, put forward by Brian Fuller, was to follow the adventures of several
09:06alternate reality Voyagers. These different Voyagers are being systematically hunted down
09:11and destroyed by an unknown force that can somehow jump between these realities.
09:15Ideas included a completely Klingon version of Voyager, where the Klingon Empire had defeated
09:20the Federation back in Kirk's day, complete with Kate Mulgrew in full Klingon makeup, and a version that
09:26was completely crewed by Holograms, as well as a few others. Eventually, our Voyager and her
09:31Captain Janeway would discover what's happening. They would be confronted by another Voyager,
09:35this one commanded by Chakotay, whose marquee crew had overwhelmed the Starfleet crew.
09:40This alternate Chakotay had become convinced that Janeway was responsible for them being
09:44stranded in the Delta Quadrant, and while he had found a way to jump timelines, he hadn't yet
09:49found a way to cross the vast distance to return home. While this episode never panned out,
09:54it would have given Chakotay a lot more to do, and probably would have been pretty fun.
09:58We'd already seen Worf jump from timeline to timeline in the Next Generation episode
10:02parallel, so why not a rampaging alternate Voyager?
10:05Number 4. The Tantalus Prison of James T. Kirk
10:08You all remember the Tantalus device, yes? It was a minor plot point in the classic original
10:13series episode Mirror Mirror. When Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy, Uhura, and Scotty are transported to the
10:19Mirror Universe by a freak ion storm. Kirk discovers a device in his opposite number's
10:24quarters. This is the Tantalus device, something that could simply make a selected target completely
10:29disappear. This device later cropped up in the palace of Emperor Georgiou when she used it to
10:34keep an eye on a wayward Michael Burnham. Frequent Star Trek novelist Judith and Garfield
10:39Reeve Stevens had pitched a two-part episode for Star Trek Enterprise that featured the Tantalus device,
10:45where it would have been revealed that it didn't kill people at all. It simply transported them
10:49back in time, about 150 years, to an isolated penal planet. Since Mirror Spock, resplendent in
10:55his goatee, had used the device on Mirror Kirk just after the end of Mirror Mirror, this means that
11:00Kirk could still be there in the 2150s, when Captain Jonathan Archer and his crew would find him.
11:07You see, in the original pitch for this episode, the Mirror Universe hadn't been created by the
11:122150s. It didn't exist yet. Mirror Kirk and Archer would have tried to figure out what happened to
11:17it, and somehow, in some grave experiment, they would have accidentally created it. Yes, the plans
11:23for the Mirror Universe episode, In a Mirror Darkly, originally included a role for the evil version of
11:28Captain Kirk. While the episodes we did receive were amongst the strongest of Enterprise's fourth
11:32season, just imagine having had Kirk in the mix as well.
11:36Number 3. The first season of Enterprise.
11:38So, the first season of Enterprise could have turned out very different from the one that
11:43we watched. The pitch by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga was for a show that was set entirely
11:48on Earth, for the first season at least. Much of the premise still made it into pilot episode
11:53Broken Bow, but some of the plot points from the fourth season, such as anti-alien resentment
11:58amongst some humans, would have made it into this storyline. Essentially, the series would begin
12:02with first contact with the Klingons, which would have left Starfleet Command scrabbling
12:06to finish their first Warp 5 capable ship. So far, so familiar, but there was no temporal
12:12Cold War in this proposal, and humanity would have stumbled at the first hurdle. The brand new
12:17Enterprise would have been destroyed in its first attempt at a launch, leading the design team to go
12:21back to the drawing board. Eventually, this idea was rejected, and the show we got was a lot more
12:26like its predecessors in the original series, The Next Generation, and Voyager. Eventually, Enterprise
12:31would shake up its format with the Zindi War, but the first two seasons were not what they could have
12:36been.
12:37Number 2. The Godhead
12:39A scrapped episode from the third season of the original series, The Godhead was meant to be the 26th
12:45episode. This would have put it to be the very last, beating out the somewhat troublesome
12:49turnabout intruder. In this episode, the crew of the Enterprise would have discovered an ancient alien race
12:55that had discovered a way to accumulate all of their vast knowledge and place it inside a single
12:59person. While the details of who this single person were to be weren't released, it was likely to have
13:04been one of the crew, but unlikely to have been either Kirk or Spock. Whoever they turned out to be,
13:09the Godhead themselves would have been driven mad with power and would have become determined to use
13:14the Enterprise to conquer the galaxy. This story was actually put into the first stages of production,
13:19but the final two episodes of the third season were cancelled by NBC, and this one never saw the
13:24light of day. The Godhead is one of many original series episodes that could have been. In fact,
13:30our very own Brie has made a whole video talking about them, which includes some Oscar-worthy acting
13:35by Adam Cleary, so be sure to check that out. But for now, number 1. Star Trek The Beginning
13:41The tentative title for an 11th film that never came to pass, The Beginning was meant to be the first
13:47of a trilogy of films that bridged the gap between Star Trek Enterprise and Star Trek The Original Series.
13:52A full treatment was approved and multiple versions of the script were written, but the project fell
13:57apart in favour of going with J.J. Abrams' reboot film in 2009. Set four years after the events of
14:04Terra Prime, the United Earth Stellar Navy is being folded into Starfleet, and a few officers are resentful
14:09of the move. One called Tiberius Chase has family ties back to the Terra Prime movement, who wanted to
14:15drive all alien influence from Earth. Somewhat suddenly, a massive Romulan attack fleet emerges from
14:20behind Earth's moon. They demand for Earth to turn over all of the Vulcans living on the planet,
14:25to which Admiral Gardner refuses and manages to rally Starfleet and UESN forces.
14:31When the Romulans are just barely driven off, it's discovered that the Romulans are planning
14:34to regroup with reinforcements. Tiberius Chase and his band of survivors track down the nuclear
14:40stockpile of an isolationist group, then hijack the USS Spartan from its dry dock in Saturn and attempt
14:46to bring the war to the Romulans. This would be the opening moves of the much-talked-about
14:51Earth-Romulan war, during which the two sides did not see each other face-to-face. The war was
14:56fought entirely in ships, and a subsequent neutral zone treaty was negotiated over subspace transmission.
15:02In one final detail, Tiberius Chase would be sending letters to Penelope Gardner, the daughter
15:07of Admiral Gardner, who is a schoolteacher in Iowa, where a certain captain was born.
15:11While the 2009 reboot of the franchise seemed like a better bet, the franchise lost a lot
15:17by not following through with this project. But given how much of Star Trek there is,
15:21we, its faithful fans, must always remember that there were so many more ideas out there.
15:26Many would have sucked, but so many would have been just awesome! In theory,
15:30out there in an alternate timeline, they all got made for our viewing pleasure. Just think on that one.
15:35And that concludes our list. If you can think of any other examples, then do let us know in the
15:40comments below, and while you're there, don't forget to like, and subscribe, and tap that
15:43notification bell. Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I can be found across
15:47various social medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild. I've been Ellie with Trek Culture.
15:52I hope you have a wonderful day, and remember to boldly go where no one has gone before.
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