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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
00:03behind 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
01:11Trek fans and another little inclusion that makes this movie far closer to a Trek film than many in
01:17the audience ever expected. Number nine, 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
02:21passed
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 the
02:33Cage 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
03:10the ego and id. With that, the main villain of the film is a dream, one made manifest by alien
03:16technology, and the protagonists don't understand that. Star Trek itself owes more than a little to
03:21this seminal sci-fi film, while Forbidden Planet, had it simply come along a little later on, might well
03:26have suited William Shatner and Majel Barrett in the heroic roles, and probably would have, had Gene
03:31Roddenberry half a chance to say something about it. Number 7, Enemy Mine. Enemy Mine is a 1984 film
03:37directed by Wolfgang Petersen, serving as inspiration for The Enemy, a fourth season episode of Star Trek
03:42The Next 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. First,
03:53both parties speak in languages that are barely understandable to each other, as both attempt to
03:58overpower the other. Then, as time wears on, they learn to understand each other before cooperating. The
04:04final mission of the film sees one defecting to the other's side to save a child. The film has shades
04:09of the original series episode Arena, in which Kirk fights the Gorn of Cestus III. That story revealed
04:14that the aggression between the Federation and the Gorn hegemony stemmed from a miscommunication, something
04:19that Roddenberry often returned to in Star Trek. In fact, Star Trek The Motion Picture begins with
04:24V'ger unable to understand why it is not receiving a reply from its creator. Enemy Mine could quite
04:30easily slot into the Trek franchise with minimal changes required, which of course was part of the
04:35intentions of the time. Number 6, Serenity. Serenity, the spin-off and tying up of Firefly, owes a big
04:41debt to Star Trek, as did the series before it. While Joss Whedon said that he set Firefly in a
04:46region of space
04:47that the Enterprise would have flown right past, the Alliance forces represent a twisted version of
04:52the Federation from the point of view of the worlds that didn't exactly want to be under Starfleet's
04:57heel. Serenity sees an officer hunting down River and the crew of Malcolm Reynolds' ship, armed with
05:02the full authority of the government. The browncoats are the separatists, so often depicted as the bad
05:07guys in franchises like Star Trek, though shown sympathetically here. The crimes of the Alliance are
05:11revealed, coated in good intentions, with disastrous results. Gene Roddenberry described humanity going
05:17through Hell to reach Heaven, with both ends on show in Whedon's Wild West here. Reynolds is like
05:22Kirk with a greater sense of humour, though like Kirk, Picard and the rest he has an infallible sense of
05:27doing the right thing even in the wrongest circumstances. It's far from perfect, but Serenity attempts to
05:33show a future where people can do the right thing, something that Star Trek has preached since its earliest days.
05:39Number 5, Hellraiser, Bloodline. Be honest, this one's a bit of a shock innit? While there was an argument to
05:46include Hellraiser III 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 first contact hit theatres, sees a time-hopping tale that goes from an advanced future to Earth's past,
06:08in a plot that feels more than a little inspired by the Borg's temporal plans for humanity. The film
06:14introduces Angelique, a new variation on the Cenobites and Demons from Hell. With the film
06:18also featuring 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,
06:29with 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 best
06:50to be a part of the final frontier. Number four, 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 of
07:07the film received highlighted its slow pace and largely dialogue-heavy script. Amy Adams stars as
07:13the 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 and
07:31again, pun not intended, in Star Trek. Both Star Trek's 4 and Star Trek First Contact see the various
07:37crews of the Enterprise travelling through time to save humanity, with many episodes of the various
07:42series visiting it as a theme as well. All else aside, Arrival is a film that dares to take its
07:47time
07:47to tell its story. Though visually impressive, it relies less on the CGI of the world that it creates,
07:53and more on the story built within said world. It falls into the same type of sci-fi in which
07:57Star Trek
07:58lies, boldly going forward rather than simply blowing things up. Number 3, Silent Running.
08:04Silent Running is a 1972 film directed by Douglas Trumbull, who would go on to create the effects
08:09for Star Trek the Motion Picture. The film depicts Bruce Dern as Freeman Lowell, an astronaut and botanist
08:14who serves aboard the Valley Forge. It's a biodome orbiting Saturn tasked with keeping various plants and
08:20fauna alive to later be returned to an earth that is currently unable to manage them. The film's theme of
08:25conservationism is pure Trek, with Lowell rebelling against his human superiors to protect the plant
08:30life aboard his ship. He befriends three drones, Huey, Louie and Dewey, who help him care for the
08:35greenery, though Louie is lost along the way. While there is a logical issue within the movie,
08:39how did everyone forget the plants need sunlight to survive? It's still a surprisingly forward-thinking
08:44environmentalist film for the time. The Valley Forge's mission would be borrowed by Star Trek Discovery,
08:49this time portrayed by the USS Teacov. While the Valley Forge itself takes its name from the aircraft
08:54carrier, there was also an Excelsior-class ship serving with that name during the Battle of
08:58Chintaka in Deep Space Nine. The film may owe more to 2001 than it does to Star Trek, but it
09:03still
09:04deals with the theme of humanity's own short-sightedness, a theme that had already been and would
09:08again be visited in Star Trek many, many times. Number 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 some
09:25of the more militaristic elements of Star Trek while still forging an entire universe of its own.
09:31In 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 to the
09:46idea 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
10:06of an
10:06understatement, but the original creators both saw the merit of each other's franchises. No matter which
10:12side of the debate one comes down on, it's clear that they both owe a debt of gratitude to each
10:16other.
10:17Number one, 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 adventure.
10:31The 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
10:45been present. Harold Ramis was hired to direct, though he passed on the project after Tim Allen
10:49was cast as Nesmith. Ramis wanted action stars who could do comedy, as opposed to comedians doing
10:54an action film, 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
11:03now
11:03considered another ship in Starfleet, even if it's a little bit more like the Cerritos in terms of its standing.
11:08That'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
11:17touch 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.
11:30Jeti dovo, i prost vittati. Thanks very much.
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