Star Trek: 10 Unmade Projects We(blastr.com) Wish Were Made

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Nutso
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Star Trek: 10 Unmade Projects We(blastr.com) Wish Were Made

Post by Nutso »

http://www.blastr.com/2011/06/10_unmade ... _proje.php
For a franchise that spanned five TV series, 11 movies and Roddenberry-only-knows-how-much erotic fan fiction, there was a lot of Star Trek we still never got to see.

A ton of different movies, spinoff and reboots were proposed but never hit the screen (especially after Star Trek: Enterprise was canceled). Here are the 10 we wish we were watching on DVD right now.
Star Trek: Federation

Proposed by/Year: Bryan Singer, Christopher McQuarrie & Robert Meyer Burnett 2005

What it was: A TV series that would've followed Star Trek: Enterprise. When CBS/Paramount had no plans for the franchise director Bryan Singer (X-Men, Superman Returns), screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) and director Robert Meyer Burnett (Free Enterprise) came up with their own idea for a new Star Trek series. Set in the year 3000, the Federation is in serious decline, having given up exploration. The Vulcans and Romulans have reunified, the Klingons have become a race of "warrior mystics," and the Ferengi have become more and more powerful over the last couple centuries. Then a new threat, the Scourge, attacks the Federation, destroying two colonies and the Starfleet ship USS Sojourner. There's only one survivor: a Lt. Commander Alexander Kirk. This incident causes a number of worlds to leave the Federation, including Vulcan, Betazoid and Bajor. The Federation commissions a new USS Enterprise to return to exploration and fight the Scourge, led by captain Alden Montgomery, but after he is killed, command transfers to, you guessed it, Kirk.

Why it never happened: Well, while Burnett and McQuarrie wrote a 25-page first draft of a proposal, they never actually pitched it to CBS/Paramount. It turns out they were still working on it when Paramount announced that J.J. Abrams would be doing his movie. With him helming the franchise, Singer and the bunch decided the time to pitch a new series had passed, so they stopped working on the project.
Star Trek: The Final Frontier

Proposed by/Year: Zero Room Productions, 2005

What it was: An animated webseries set in the future of Star Trek's, um, future. To help keep the franchise going, Star Trek.com proposed a series of five six-minute animated shorts (much like the original Star Wars: Clone Wars shorts or G.I. Joe Resolute) set 150 years after Star Trek: Nemesis. In this future, the Federation had stopped exploring the universe as the use of Omega Molecule weapons has made Warp travel impossible in much of the galaxy. So, while Starfleet is focusing more on protecting its territory instead of exploring the galaxy, the captain of the latest USS Enterprise, Capt. Alexander Chase, disagrees and gets assigned to the frontier to continue the whole "where no one has gone before" thing. The series was developed by Zero Room productions, made up of two Star Trek veterans, Dave Rossi (production associate/producer on every Trek series since The Next Generation) and Doug Mirabello (production associate on Star Trek Enterprise) and José Muñoz, co-ordinator of Warner Brothers Television Post Production.

Why it never happened: Well, according to the Zero Room's website, the staff of StarTrek.com was laid off and CBS/Paramount decided to hold off on any Trek projects until after the J.J. Abrams movie. But if you want to read the scripts and storyboards, they've put them up online at http://zeroroom.squarespace.com/ (They're currently going through and writing scripts for the series and putting them up on the site. Just don't hold your breath that it'll ever actually get animated.)
Star Trek: Reboot The Universe

Proposed by/Year: J. Michael Stracynski & Bryce Zabel, 2004

What it was: A proposed TV series that would've, um, rebooted the universe. Screenwriters J. Michael Stracynski (Babylon 5, Changeling) and Bryce Zabel (Dark Skies, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation) came up with their own idea for continuing the franchise after Star Trek: Enterprise, which included starting all over again with the original Enterprise's five-year mission in an alternate universe. While that might sound like the J.J. Abrams movie, this one would've been a five-year TV series and, like Babylon 5, would feature a planned out five-year storyline with plot lines set up from the very beginning. Interestingly enough, the proposal also suggests going back to the original series tradition of buying and adapting short-story ideas from leading SF stories for episodes. As the proposal explains:

Now imagine a new Star Trek calling upon the talents of writers like Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Dean Koontz, Michael Crichton, Anne Rice, Kurt Vonnegut, Anne McCaffrey and others.

Sounds pretty good, eh?

Why it never happened: CBS/Paramount decided to go the feature film route with J.J. Abrams.

(Get used to that explanation. You'll be seeing it a lot.)
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Re: Star Trek: 10 Unmade Projects We(blastr.com) Wish Were M

Post by McAvoy »

A JMS TOS sounds interesting. Higher budget, better actors, better CGI, better writing. Whats not to like?
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Re: Star Trek: 10 Unmade Projects We(blastr.com) Wish Were M

Post by Teaos »

I always liked the odea of a hospital ship. We know medical dramas can be interesting. The ship could be involved in big important events, mix it up more more singular isolated episodes. And it would provide a whole new enviroment to the normal, "Ship in space looking for trouble" routine.
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