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Given how much Star Trek there is, let's check out how much there isn't!
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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 available
01:12on both iOS and Android and it's available via the link in the description to this video.
01:17You may be wondering why I'm dressed this way while talking about Fleet Command. I think
01:22you know where this is going. Star Trek Strange New Worlds is coming to Fleet Command. Yes,
01:27that is true. To coincide with the launch of the show on Paramount Plus, it is launching
01:32in game. What does that mean? It means you get to use the souped up enterprise. It also
01:36means you get to use the holodeck, which is a little bit cool, but we have new characters
01:41coming. Those characters including Captain Pike, you've got Lieutenant Spock and you've got
01:46Lieutenant La'Anne Noonien Singh, who I would follow into battle in a heartbeat. Of course,
01:52as you know, the game itself is open world. It's constantly evolving. So there's always
01:55new games, new things to do. In fact, there's more than 25 new missions on the way with Strange
02:01New Worlds as well. There's also a little bit of a surprise for those of you who feel he didn't
02:05get his due. While he's not Strange New Worlds exclusive, there is a rare Reginald Barclay that
02:12you can play as. Now, initially, he's only going to be available on PC before he extends into the
02:15mobile game as well. So make sure that you grab him where you can. Just to say again,
02:20thank you so much to Fleet Command. It is available via the description in the link to this video.
02:24Straight 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 build
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 able 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
03:49make it into this arc. Q wouldn't have introduced humanity to the Borg. That would have been something
03:54else entirely. Number 9. Maurice Hurley's plans for the Borg. Q wasn't the only season 2 plan that
04:02Maurice Hurley had to leave by the wayside. Initially, his plans were for the first season finale episode,
04:08The Neutral Zone, to be the first of two parts. The second part would focus on the Enterprise and
04:13the Romulans being forced to work together to unravel the mystery of the missing colonies in both their
04:18territories. The answer to that mystery? A migratory insectoid hive-mined species called
04:23the Borg. That's right, in the eyes of the man who came up with them, the Borg weren't meant to be a
04:29race of cyborgs. They were meant to be space army ants. They were extracting all materials from planets
04:35in their way. The Enterprise would discover that they were heading deeper and deeper in the Federation
04:39and would have to scramble to collect allies in facing off against this threat. The Romulans and
04:44Klingons would be among them. This plan would have seen the complete defeat of the Borg at the
04:49conclusion of the second season. Just think on that for a moment. The Borg were only meant to appear
04:54for a single season, and they weren't introduced by Q. Perhaps it's for the best that the writers
04:59strike through these plans asunder, because afterwards Maurice Hurley left the show and it took a very
05:04different direction. A better one? Perhaps not, but a fascinating one, certainly.
05:10Number 8. Giant Ferengi. A script by Stephen DeKnight for Deep Space
05:14Nine was simply going to be called Giant and would have placed a humorous bent on Ferengi
05:19evolution. Wolf, while accompanying Jadzia Dax for a drink in Quark's bar, would have found
05:24a Ferengi hitting on Jadzia and angrily dismissed him. He would have uttered the line,
05:29there's no honor fighting a single Ferengi, only to hear, I'd say the same thing about Klingons
05:34from behind him. Wolf would then be faced with a Ferengi who was at least his equal in height
05:39and 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
05:47on the run from 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 were
06:02once 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
06:11by Jem'Hadar on the way, they'd all have to work together to survive. Eventually,
06:16Worf would have to acknowledge the history of the Ferengi as warriors in their own right.
06:21Could 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
06:36particularly well there, he attempted to get it made on Deep Space Nine, and was again
06:40shot down. Ron's ideas were never fully fleshed out. His desire sprang simply from thinking that
06:45making a musical episode for either show would be fun. He's quoted as saying,
06:49there's some tech virus that infects the crew and they can only communicate in song, you know?
06:54And just do it and have a ball! Alas, nobody was interested in pursuing it, and the idea went
06:58nowhere. Coincidentally, Linda Park pushed to have a musical episode on Enterprise as well,
07:03given that she was a trained singer, as were John Billingsley and Scott Bakula. This idea didn't go
07:09anywhere either. Given the enduring popularity of Buffy's Once More With Feeling, maybe it might
07:14have been wise to cash in on the musical vibe. Also, has anyone attempted to adapt that Buffy
07:18episode into a stage show yet? If not, why not?
07:22Number 6. The Literal Year of Hell
07:24Scuttlebutt would have us believe that the plans for Voyage'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
07:39period of time, it could have been more. The plans for the Year of Hell were for it to have
07:43spanned an entire season, with the Krenim temporal ship haunting them for more than 20 episodes.
07:49Voyager would have accumulated more and more damage as time went by, as there would be nowhere
07:53for the ship to repair itself, and they would slowly lose crew members. The two-part episode
07:58did do an excellent job of conveying the damage that Voyager is continually subjected to, but
08:03picture that breakdown spread over a whole season. Picture the sense of loss and isolation that could
08:08have been worked into the very fabric of the show as it progressed, mirrored by the increased
08:12frustration of Anorax as he tries to shape an entire quadrant to his liking until it's unrecognisable.
08:18The ultimate conclusion of the season would still have been the same, with Janeway destroying
08:23both the crippled Voyager and the Krenim time ship in a spectacular final space battle.
08:27Eventually, the plans for the season-long arc were reduced to the two-part episode we watched.
08:32Jerry Taylor and Brannan Braga felt that a season-long investment that would be reversed
08:36at its conclusion was too much for the audience to bear. Voyager, for all of the excellent solo
08:41episodes that are within it, overall lacked cohesion as a series, and this missed opportunity
08:45could have paved the way for more overarching stories, the kind that Voyager's very premise demanded.
08:51But 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.
09:02The premise of this episode, put forward by Brian Fuller, was to follow the adventures
09:05of several alternate reality Voyagers. These different Voyagers are being systematically
09:10hunted down and destroyed by an unknown force that can somehow jump between these realities.
09:16Ideas 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,
09:25and a version that was completely crewed by Holograms, as well as a few others.
09:29Eventually, our Voyager and her Captain Janeway would discover what's happening.
09:33They would be confronted by another Voyager, this one commanded by Chakotay, whose marquee crew
09:38had overwhelmed the Starfleet crew. This alternate Chakotay had become convinced that Janeway
09:43was responsible for them being stranded in the Delta Quadrant, and while he had found a way to
09:47jump timelines, he hadn't yet found a way to cross the vast distance to return home.
09:52While this episode never panned out, it would have given Chakotay a lot more to do, and probably
09:56would have been pretty fun. We'd already seen Worf jump from timeline to timeline in the
10:01Next Generation episode parallel, so why not a rampaging alternate Voyager?
10:04Number 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, Hurrah, and Scotty are transported to
10:19the Mirror Universe by a freak ion storm, Kirk discovers a device in his opposite number's quarters.
10:25This is the Tantalus device, something that could simply make a selected target completely disappear.
10:30This device later cropped up in the palace of Emperor Georgiou when she used it to keep an eye
10:35on a wayward Michael Burnham. Frequent Star Trek novelist Judith and Garfield Reeve Stevens had
10:41pitched a two-part episode for Star Trek Enterprise that featured the Tantalus device, where it would
10:46have been revealed that it didn't kill people at all. It simply transported them back in time,
10:50about 150 years, to an isolated penal planet. Since Mirror Spock, resplendent in his goatee,
10:56had used the device on Mirror Kirk just after the end of Mirror Mirror. This means that Kirk could
11:01still 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 it,
11:17and somehow, in some grave experiment, they would have accidentally created it.
11:21Yes, the plans for the Mirror Universe episode, In a Mirror Darkly, originally included a role for
11:27the evil version of Captain Kirk. While the episodes we did receive were amongst the strongest
11:31of Enterprise's fourth season, just imagine having had Kirk in the mix as well.
11:36Number 3, the first season of Enterprise.
11:39So, the first season of Enterprise could have turned out very different from the one that we watched.
11:44The pitch by Rick Berman and Brandon Braga was for a show that was set entirely on Earth,
11:49for the first season at least. Much of the premise still made it into pilot episode Broken
11:53Boat, 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 to finish
12:07their first Warp 5-capable ship. So far, so familiar, but there was no temporal Cold War in this
12:13proposal, and humanity would have stumbled at the first hurdle. The brand new Enterprise would have been
12:18destroyed in its first attempt at a launch, leading the design team to go back to the drawing board.
12:23Eventually, this idea was rejected, and the show we got was a lot more like its predecessors in the
12:27original series, The Next Generation, and Voyager. Eventually, Enterprise would shake up its format
12:32with the Zindi War, but the first two seasons were not what they could have been.
12:37Number 2, the Godhead. A scrapped episode from the third season of the original series,
12:43the Godhead was meant to be the 26th episode. This would have put it to be the very last,
12:48beating out the somewhat troublesome turnabout intruder. In this episode, the crew of the
12:52Enterprise would have discovered an ancient alien race that had discovered a way to accumulate all
12:57of their vast knowledge and place it inside a single person. While the details of who this single
13:02person were to be weren't released, it was likely to have been one of the crew, but unlikely to have
13:07been either Kirk or Spock. Whoever they turned out to be, the Godhead themselves would have been driven
13:11mad with power and would have become determined to use the Enterprise to conquer the galaxy.
13:16This story was actually put into the first stages of production, but the final two episodes of the
13:21third season were cancelled by NBC, and this one never saw the light of day. The Godhead is one of
13:27many original series episodes that could have been. In fact, our very own Brie has made a whole video
13:32talking about them, which includes some Oscar-worthy acting by Adam Cleary, so be sure to check that out.
13:37But for now, number 1, Star Trek The Beginning. The tentative title for an 11th film that never came to pass,
13:45the beginning was meant to be the first of a trilogy of films that bridged the gap between
13:49Star Trek Enterprise and Star Trek The Original Series. A full treatment was approved and multiple
13:55versions of the script were written, but the project fell apart in favour of going with J.J.
13:59Abrams' reboot film in 2009. Set four years after the events of Terror Prime, the United Earth's
14:05Stellar Navy is being folded into Starfleet, and a few officers are resentful of the move.
14:10One called Tiberius Chase has family ties back to the Terror Prime movement, who wanted to drive all
14:15alien influence from Earth. Somewhat suddenly, a massive Romulan attack fleet emerges from behind
14:20Earth'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 to
14:35regroup with reinforcements. Tiberius Chase and his band of survivors tracked down the
14:39nuclear stockpile of an isolationist group, then hijacked the USS Spartan from its dry dock in Saturn
14:45and attempt to bring the war to the Romulans. This would be the opening moves of the much-talked
14:50about Earth-Romulan War, during which the two sides did not see each other face to face.
14:55The war was fought entirely in ships, and a subsequent neutral zone treaty was negotiated
15:00over subspace transmission. In one final detail, Tiberius Chase would be sending letters to Penelope
15:05Gardner, the daughter of Admiral Gardner, who is a schoolteacher in Iowa, where a certain captain
15:11was born. While 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, we,
15:22its 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, out there in an
15:31alternate 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 notification
15:43bell. Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I can be found across various social
15:48medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild. I've been Ellie with Trek Culture. I hope you have a wonderful
15:53day and remember to boldly go where no one has gone before.
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