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These are the films that wanted so desperately to boldly go out into the world of Star Trek.
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00:00Look, I want to be Star Trek, you want to be Star Trek, that guy in the bushes over there behind you
00:04wants to be in Star Trek as well. There's nothing wrong with that. The Star Trek bit I should
00:08mention. With that in mind, I'm Sean Ferrick for Trek Culture and here are 10 films that wanted to
00:15be Star Trek. Number 10, Avengers Endgame. I'm not actually joking, this is one that's actually
00:21been confirmed by the Russo brothers, both of whom openly admitted to being heavily inspired by Star
00:26Trek The Next Generation. Specifically, they said that All Good Things was the main point of
00:30reference when putting the film together. Both stories see the heroes traveling to various points
00:34in time, affecting the past and future. Both also see them, when in the past, trying their hardest
00:39not to interfere with the normal flow of time, though this proves impossible in the big budget
00:43film. There's a large emphasis on Technobabble in Endgame, along with the standard explanations that
00:48tended to follow Trek's Technobabble, allowing for plenty of in-jokes with the audience. Finally,
00:52once all was said and done with the film, the end credits begin to roll. Oddly enough,
00:56that's when the Star Trek inspiration is most brazenly on show. When the big six stars are
01:01credited, the signatures appear on screen. While the original Avengers theme swells around them,
01:06this is a direct lift or borrow from Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country. Another nod to the Star
01:12Trek fans and another little inclusion that makes this movie far closer to a Trek film than many in
01:17the audience ever expected. Number 9, The Quester Tapes. The Quester Tapes was a made-for-TV movie
01:23written by Gene Roddenberry himself. The original idea was a reworking of his script for Star Trek's
01:28second season, Assignment Earth. In that story, a benevolent species sends Gary Seven to protect Earth
01:34from its own mistakes. In The Quester Tapes, a benevolent race installed android protectors among
01:38humanity there to guide and lead them away from harm. In both stories, the rapid advent of technology
01:44changes the parameters of the visitors' missions. The televised version of the Quester Tapes also
01:49contains elements that would appear again in Star Trek The Motion Picture. Quester is an android lost
01:54and looking for its creator. This, of course, is highly reminiscent of V'ger, though there are also
01:58shades of data. When a situation calls for the need to seduce a lady, Quester states that he is
02:05fully functional. The movie almost went one step further. Though Robert Foxworth, who would later
02:10appear as Admiral Layton and Administrator Velas, played Quester in the film, Leonard Nimoy was
02:15originally asked to play the part. He went so far as to take part in makeup tests before he was passed
02:21over for the role. Number eight, Forbidden Planet. Now, looking at the year of release, 1956, a very
02:28obvious question springs to mind. How could Forbidden Planet want to be Star Trek nine years before
02:33The Cage was even written? Well, this is a slightly more subjective entry than the others on the list.
02:39Forbidden Planet was, in many ways, quite ahead of its time and would easily have been an episode
02:45of the original series. Morbius, Altera, Adams and Robbie the Robot are characters right out of
02:51Star Trek's very Bible. Adams is clearly an inspiration for Kirk. Encounter Stranded Woman,
02:56Woo Stranded Woman, Bring Stranded Woman away with him. Robbie is also credited as one of the first
03:00depictions of an android beyond a simple automaton serving as inspiration for data. The core threat
03:06of the film shows the battle between the conscious and the unconscious, along with the war between the
03:10ego and id. With that, the main villain of the film is a dream, one made manifest by alien technology
03:17and the protagonists don't understand that. Star Trek itself owes more than a little to this seminal
03:22sci-fi film, while Forbidden Planet, had it simply come along a little later on, might well have suited
03:26William Shatner and Majel Barrett in the heroic roles and probably would have had Gene Roddenberry
03:31half a chance to say something about it. Number 7, Enemy Mine. Enemy Mine is a 1984 film directed by
03:37Wolfgang Petersen serving as inspiration for The Enemy, a fourth season episode of Star Trek The
03:42Next Generation. It features Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr. as Davage and Jerry, two soldiers from
03:48opposing species marooned together on a barely hospitable world. The film is Star Trek to the core.
03:53First, both parties speak in languages that are barely understandable to each other, as both
03:57attempt to overpower the other. Then, as time wears on, they learn to understand each other
04:02before cooperating. The final mission of the film sees one defecting to the other's side to save a
04:08child. The film has shades of the original series episode Arena in which Kirk fights the Gorn of
04:12Cestus III. That story revealed that the aggression between the Federation and the Gorn hegemony stemmed
04:17from a miscommunication, something that Roddenberry often returned to in Star Trek. In fact,
04:23Star Trek The Motion Picture begins with V'ger unable to understand why it is not receiving a
04:27reply from its creator. Enemy Mine could quite easily slot into the Trek franchise with minimal
04:32changes required, which of course was part of the intentions of the time. Number 6, Serenity.
04:37Serenity, the spin-off and tying up of Firefly, owes a big debt to Star Trek, as did the series before it.
04:44While Joss Whedon said that he set Firefly in a region of space that the Enterprise would have flown
04:48right past, the Alliance forces represent a twisted version of the Federation from the point of view
04:54of the worlds that didn't exactly want to be under Starfleet's heel. Serenity sees an officer hunting
04:59down River and the crew of Malcolm Reynolds' ship armed with the full authority of the government.
05:03The browncoats are the separatists, so often depicted as the bad guys in franchises like Star Trek,
05:08though shown sympathetically here. The crimes of the Alliance are revealed, coated in good intentions,
05:13with disastrous results. Gene Roddenberry described humanity going through Hell to reach Heaven,
05:18with both ends on show in Whedon's Wild West here. Reynolds is like Kirk with a greater sense of humour,
05:24though like Kirk, Picard and the rest, he has an infallible sense of doing the right thing,
05:28even in the wrongest circumstances. It's far from perfect, but Serenity attempts to show a future
05:34where people can do the right thing, something that Star Trek has preached since its earliest days.
05:39Number 5, Hellraiser, Bloodline. Be honest,
05:43this one's a bit of a shock, innit? While there was an argument to include Hellraiser 3 on this list,
05:48featuring Terry Farrell in her pre-Deep Space Nine days, the fourth Hellraiser film actually fits
05:53the world of Star Trek a little better than many might assume. For one, the film is primarily set
05:58in space. The film, released in 1996, the same year that Star Trek first contact hit theatres,
06:04sees a time-hopping tale that goes from an advanced future to Earth's past, in a plot that feels more
06:09than a little inspired by the Borg's temporal plans for humanity. The film introduces Angelique,
06:15a new variation on the Cenobites in Demons from Hell. With the film also featuring Adam Scott,
06:20who has a small role as the helmsman of the USS Defiant in Star Trek First Contact, there are
06:24several similarities here. Angelique is easily likened to the Borg Queen, with both attempting to
06:29use temptation to gain power. Trickery is eventually the downfall of both the Borg and the Cenobites,
06:35as the descendant of Le Marchand deduces the way to destroy the demons, while the former drone,
06:40Locutus, Jean-Luc Picard, destroys the Borg. Though Bloodline may be one of the outliers in this list,
06:46there are enough similarities to say that this Hellraiser film was trying its best to be a part
06:51of the final frontier. Number 4, Arrival. In many ways, Arrival feels like a big budget,
06:57extra long episode of Star Trek. The story revolves around the attempt to communicate with a species
07:01not of this world, with little to no emphasis on action. In fact, many of the negative reviews
07:07of the film received highlighted its slow pace and largely dialogue-heavy script. Amy Adams stars as
07:12the linguist brought in by the military to try and find common ground with this race of aliens. She
07:17feels like a lift from episodes of the original series, something we say very much as a compliment
07:21here, for when Star Trek was at its best, it was attempting to solve the issues of the universal
07:25nature of understanding. Arrival also focuses on the topic of time, something that features again
07:31and again, pun not intended, in Star Trek. Both Star Trek's 4 and Star Trek First Contact see the
07:37various crews of the Enterprise travelling through time to save humanity, with many episodes of the
07:41various series visiting it as a theme as well. All else aside, Arrival is a film that dares to take
07:47its time to tell its story. Though visually impressive, it relies less on the CGI of the world
07:52that it creates, and more of the story built within said world. It falls into the same type of sci-fi
07:57in which Star Trek lies, boldly going forward rather than simply blowing things up. Number three,
08:03Silent Running. Silent Running is a 1972 film directed by Douglas Trumbull, who would go on to
08:08create the effects for Star Trek The Motion Picture. The film depicts Bruce Dern as Freeman Lowell,
08:13an astronaut and botanist who serves aboard the Valley Forge. It's a biodome orbiting Saturn, tasked with
08:18keeping various plants and fauna alive, to later be returned to an earth that is currently unable to
08:23manage them. The film's theme of conservationism is pure Trek, with Lowell rebelling against his
08:28human superiors to protect the plant life aboard his ship. He befriends three drones, Huey, Louie and
08:33Dewey, who help him care for the greenery, though Louie is lost along the way. While there is a logical
08:38issue within the movie, how did everyone forget the plants need sunlight to survive? It's still a
08:42surprisingly forward-thinking environmentalist film for the time. The Valley Forge's mission would be
08:47borrowed by Star Trek Discovery, this time portrayed by the USS Tikov. While the Valley Forge itself
08:53takes its name from the aircraft carrier, there is also an Excelsior-class ship serving with that name
08:57during the Battle of Chintaka in Deep Space Nine. The film may owe more to 2001 than it does to Star
09:03Trek, but it still deals with the theme of humanity's own short-sightedness, a theme that had already been
09:08and would again be visited in Star Trek many, many times. Number two, Star Wars A New Hope. Now,
09:16put down your lightsaber for a second. When George Lucas was writing his space opera, Star Trek had
09:21been around for almost a decade. The galaxy far, far away takes inspiration from some of the more
09:26militaristic elements of Star Trek while still forging an entire universe of its own. In a strange
09:31case of a snake eating its own tail, Star Wars followed on from Gene Roddenberry's works while also
09:36inspiring Paramount to scramble to get the motion picture up and running. Lucas himself stated that
09:42Star Wars stood on the shoulders of Star Trek as the latter had softened the audience to the idea
09:46of fantasy in outer space. While Trek had stumbled through a second life with the arrival of the
09:51animated series, its fans had kept the franchise alive long enough for other attempts at sci-fi
09:57fantasy to make a name for themselves, including the tale of young Master Skywalker. To say that there
10:02has been a rivalry between Star Wars fans and Star Trek fans is a little bit of an understatement,
10:07but the original creators both saw the merit of each other's franchises. No matter which side of
10:12the debate one comes down on, it's clear that they both owe a debt of gratitude to each other.
10:16Number 1, Galaxy Quest. What list of Trek themed films would be complete without Galaxy Quest,
10:22the 90s parody that was effectively a forerunner to Seth MacFarlane's The Orville, its both satire
10:26and a loving tribute to the original series, while also standing as its own thoroughly enjoyable
10:30adventure. The film began life as Captain Starshine, a script by David Howard who struck on the idea of
10:35extraterrestrials believing that the actors really were astronauts. Although this version of the
10:40story was ultimately scrapped, the idea was passed to Bob Gordon who added far more humour than had
10:44originally been present. Harold Ramis was hired to direct, though he passed on the project after
10:49Tim Allen was cast as Nesmith. Ramis wanted action stars who could do comedy, as opposed to comedians
10:54doing an action film, though he did eventually praise Allen's performance. The film has achieved cult
10:58status as both a movie in its own right, but also as a de facto Star Trek film, with the Protector now
11:03considered another ship in Starfleet, even if it's a little bit more like the Cerritos in terms of
11:08its standing. That's everything for our list, if you reckon we missed anything please drop it into the
11:11comments below. Please don't forget to like, share and subscribe. Remember that if you want to get in
11:16touch with us, you can follow us over on Twitter at TrekCulture and you can catch myself over on Twitter
11:21at SeanFerrick as well. We want to take this opportunity to express our solidarity to our friends
11:26over in the Ukraine. We wish them peace, we wish them safety. Jeti dovo i prostvitati. Thanks very much.
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