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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 Ferric for Trek Culture and here are 10 films that wanted
00:15to be Star Trek. Number 10, Avengers Endgame. I'm not actually joking. This is one that's
00:20actually been confirmed by the Russo brothers, both of whom openly admitted to being heavily
00:25inspired by Star Trek The Next Generation. Specifically they said that All Good Things
00:29was the main point of reference when putting the film together. Both stories see the heroes
00:33travelling to various points in time, affecting the past and future. Both also see them, when
00:37in the past, trying their hardest not to interfere with the normal flow of time, though this proves
00:42impossible in the big budget film. There's a large emphasis on Technobabble in Endgame,
00:46along with the standard explanations that tended to follow Trek's Technobabble, allowing for
00:50plenty of in-jokes with the audience. Finally, once all was said and done with the film, the
00:54end credits begin to roll. Oddly enough, that's when the Star Trek inspiration is most brazenly
00:59on show. When the big six stars are credited, the signatures appear on screen. While the
01:04original Avengers theme swells around them, this is a direct lift or borrow from Star Trek
01:09Six The Undiscovered Country. Another nod to the Star Trek fans and another little inclusion
01:14that makes this movie far closer to a Trek film than many in the audience ever expected.
01:19Number 9, The Quester Tapes. The Quester Tapes was a made-for-TV movie written by Gene Roddenberry
01:24himself. The original idea was a reworking of his script for Star Trek's second season,
01:29Assignment 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
01:38among humanity there to guide and lead them away from harm. In both stories, the rapid advent of
01:44technology changes the parameters of the visitors' missions. The televised version of The Quester Tapes
01:48also contains elements that would appear again in Star Trek The Motion Picture. Quester is an android,
01:53lost and 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 originally
02:16asked to play the part. He went so far as to take part in make-up tests before he was passed over for
02:21the role. Number 8, Forbidden Planet. Now, looking at the year of release, 1956, a very obvious question
02:28springs to mind. How could Forbidden Planet want to be Star Trek nine years before The Cage was even
02:34written? Well, this is a slightly more subjective entry than the others on the list. Forbidden Planet
02:40was, in many ways, quite ahead of its time and would easily have been an episode of the original series.
02:46Morbius, Altera, Adams and Robbie the Robot are characters right out of Star Trek's very Bible.
02:52Adams is clearly an inspiration for Kirk. Encounter Stranded Woman, woo Stranded Woman, bring Stranded
02:58Woman away with him. Robbie is also credited as one of the first depictions of an android beyond a simple
03:02automaton, serving as inspiration for Data. The core threat of the film shows the battle between the
03:08conscious and the unconscious, along with the war between the ego and id. With that, the main villain of
03:13the film is a dream, one made manifest by alien technology and the protagonists don't understand
03:19that. Star Trek itself owes more than a little to this seminal sci-fi film, while Forbidden Planet,
03:24had it simply come along a little later on, might well have suited William Shatner and Majel Barrett
03:28in the heroic roles, and probably would have had Gene Roddenberry half a chance to say something about it.
03:33Number 7, Enemy Mine. Enemy Mine is a 1984 film directed by Wolfgang Petersen, serving as inspiration for
03:40The Enemy, a fourth season episode of Star Trek The Next Generation. It features Dennis Quaid and
03:45Louie Gossett Jr. as Davage and Jerry, two soldiers from opposing species marooned together on a barely
03:50hospitable world. The film is Star Trek to the core. First, both parties speak in languages that are
03:55barely understandable to each other, as both attempt to overpower the other. Then, as time wears on,
04:01they learn to understand each other before cooperating. The final mission of the film sees one
04:06defecting to the other side to save a child. The film has shades of the original series episode
04:10Arena, in which Kirk fights the Gorn of Cestus III. That story revealed that the aggression between the
04:15Federation and the Gorn hegemony stemmed from a miscommunication, something that Roddenberry often
04:20returned to in Star Trek. In fact, Star Trek The Motion Picture begins with V'ger unable to understand
04:26why it is not receiving a reply from its creator. Enemy Mine could quite easily slot into the Trek
04:31franchise with minimal changes required, which of course was part of the intentions of the time.
04:36Number 6, Serenity. Serenity, the spin-off and tying up of Firefly, owes a big debt to Star Trek,
04:42as did the series before it. While Joss Whedon said that he set Firefly in a region of space that the
04:47Enterprise would have flown right past, the Alliance forces represent a twisted version of the Federation
04:53from the point of view of the worlds that didn't exactly want to be under Starfleet's heel.
04:57Serenity sees an officer hunting down River and the crew of Malcolm Reynolds' ship,
05:02armed with the full authority of the government. The browncoats are the separatists, so often
05:06depicted as the bad guys in franchises like Star Trek, though shown sympathetically here. The crimes
05:10of the Alliance are revealed, coated in good intentions, with disastrous results. Gene Roddenberry
05:15described humanity going through Hell to reach Heaven, with both ends on show in Whedon's Wild West here.
05:21Reynolds is like Kirk with a greater sense of humour, though like Kirk, Picard and the rest,
05:26he has an infallible sense of doing the right thing even in the wrongest circumstances. It's far
05:31from perfect, but Serenity attempts to show a future where people can do the right thing,
05:36something that Star Trek has preached since its earliest days.
05:39Number five, Hellraiser Bloodline. Be honest, this one's a bit of a shock innit? While there was an
05:45argument to include Hellraiser 3 on this list, featuring Terry Farrell in her pre-Deep Space Nine days,
05:51the fourth Hellraiser film actually fits the world of Star Trek a little better than many might assume.
05:56For one, the film is primarily set in space. The film, released in 1996, the same year that Star
06:02Trek's first contact hit theatres, sees a time-hopping tale that goes from an advanced future to Earth's
06:07past, in a plot that feels more than a little inspired by the Borg's temporal plans for humanity.
06:13The film introduces Angelique, a new variation on the Cenobites and Demons from Hell, with the film also
06:19featuring Adam Scott, who has a small role as the helmsman of the USS Defiant in Star Trek First
06:24Contact. There are several similarities here. Angelique is easily likened to the Borg Queen,
06:28with both attempting to use temptation to gain power. Trickery is eventually the downfall of both
06:33the Borg and the Cenobites, as the descendant of Le Marchand deduces the way to destroy the demons,
06:39while the former drone, Locutus, Jean-Luc Picard, destroys the Borg. Though Bloodline may be one of the
06:45outliers in this list, there are enough similarities to say that this Hellraiser film was trying its
06:50best to be a part of the final frontier. Number 4, Arrival. In many ways, Arrival feels like a big
06:56budget, extra long episode of Star Trek. The story revolves around the attempt to communicate with a
07:01species not of this world, with little to no emphasis on action. In fact, many of the negative
07:06reviews of the film received highlighted its slow pace and largely dialogue-heavy script. Amy Adams stars
07:12as the linguist brought in by the military to try and find common ground with this race of aliens.
07:17She feels 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
07:26nature 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
07:42various 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
07:51world that it creates and more on the story built within said world. It falls into the same type of
07:56sci-fi in which Star Trek lies, boldly going forward rather than simply blowing things up.
08:02Number 3, Silent Running. Silent Running is a 1972 film directed by Douglas Trumbull,
08:07who would go on to create the effects for Star Trek The Motion Picture. The film depicts Bruce
08:12Dern as Freeman Lowell, an astronaut and botanist who serves aboard the Valley Forge. It's a biodome
08:17orbiting Saturn tasked with keeping various plants and fauna alive to later be returned to an earth
08:22that is currently unable to manage them. The film's theme of conservationism is pure trek,
08:27with Lowell rebelling against his human superiors to protect the plant life aboard a ship. He befriends
08:32three drones, Huey, Louie and Dewey, who help him care for the greenery, though Louie is lost along the way.
08:37While there is a logical issue within the movie, how did everyone forget the plants need sunlight
08:41to survive? It's still a surprisingly forward-thinking environmentalist film for the time. The Valley
08:46Forge's mission would be borrowed by Star Trek Discovery, this time portrayed by the USS Teacoff.
08:51While the Valley Forge itself takes its name from the aircraft carrier, there is also an Excelsior
08:55class ship serving with that name during the Battle of Chintaka in Deep Space Nine. The film may owe more
09:01to 2001 than it does to Star Trek, but it still deals with the theme of humanity's own short-sightedness,
09:06a theme that had already been and would again be visited in Star Trek many, many times.
09:12Number 2. Star Wars A New Hope
09:15Now, put down your lightsaber for a second. When George Lucas was writing his space opera,
09:20Star Trek had been around for almost a decade. The galaxy far, far away takes inspiration from
09:25some of the more militaristic elements of Star Trek, while still forging an entire universe of its own.
09:30In a strange case of a snake eating its own tail, Star Wars followed on from Gene Roddenberry's works,
09:36while also inspiring Paramount to scramble to get the motion picture up and running. Lucas himself
09:41stated that Star Wars stood on the shoulders of Star Trek, as the latter had softened the audience
09:46to the idea of fantasy in outer space. While Trek had stumbled through a second life with the arrival
09:51of the animated series, its fans had kept the franchise alive long enough for other attempts
09:56at sci-fi fantasy to make a name for themselves, including the tale of young Master Skywalker.
10:01To say that there has been a rivalry between Star Wars fans and Star Trek fans is a little bit of an
10:06understatement, but the original creators both saw the merit of each other's franchises. No matter
10:12which side of the 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. It's 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
10:36extraterrestrials believing that the actors really were astronauts. Although this version of the story was
10:40ultimately scrapped, the idea was passed to Bob Gordon, who added far more humour than had originally been
10:45present. Harold Ramis was hired to direct, though he passed on the project after Tim Allen was cast
10:50as Nesmith. Ramis wanted action stars who could do comedy, as opposed to comedians doing an action
10:54film, though he did eventually praise Allen's performance. The film has achieved cult status
10:58as 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 its
11:08standing. That's everything for our list. If you reckon we missed anything, please drop it into the comments
11:12below. 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 TrekCultry, and you can catch myself over on
11:21Twitter at SeanFerrick as well. We want to take this opportunity to express our solidarity to our
11:25friends over in the Ukraine. We wish them peace, we wish them safety, jete dovo, i prost fitati. Thanks very much.
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