Gene Roddenberrys Original Star Trek 2 Pitch Would Have Ruined Wrath Of Khan

Gene Roddenberry’s Original Star Trek 2 Pitch Would Have Ruined Wrath Of Khan

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Star Trek’s cinematic fortunes could have been very different had Gene Roddenberry made his proposed sequel instead of The Wrath Of Khan.

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Gene Roddenberrys Original Star Trek 2 Pitch Would Have Ruined Wrath Of Khan

Star Trek’s movie history would have been very different had Gene Roddenberry made his proposed sequel instead of Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan. After being unceremoniously canceled after season 3 in 1969, Star Trek: The Original Series became a cultural phenomenon in reruns. By the late ’70s, a television revival was being planned, though the success of Star Wars eventually shifted the project to the big screen.

That project would become Star Trek: The Motion Picture. That cold, sprawling epic of a film cost the studio many more millions than they had wanted to spend, made worse by the fact that it landed a little lightly at the box office. It wasn’t a bomb, but no one involved in its production ended up satisfied, with Roddenberry condemning studio interference and Paramount growing tired of the increasingly difficult Roddenberry. The next Star Trek: TOS movie, The Wrath of Khan, would be produced largely without Roddenberry’s input and became a massive success, propelling Star Trek into big-screen franchise territory.

But Roddenberry had other plans. The Star Trek creator crafted an entirely different sort of sequel to The Motion Picture that would have taken the characters on a controversial time travel story to one of the darkest days in American history.

The Plot Of Roddenberry’s Star Trek II

Gene Roddenberrys Original Star Trek 2 Pitch Would Have Ruined Wrath Of Khan

Roddenberry’s idea for a Star Trek sequel would have been wildly different from The Wrath Of Khan. Set shortly after the events of The Motion Picture, the Star Trek movie featured Klingons who travel back in time to 1963 Earth using the Guardian of Forever, first seen in the class TOS episode “City On The Edge Of Forever.” Once there, the Klingons would stop the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, resulting in a massively altered timeline and the Klingons becoming the supreme power in the universe. Kirk and friends would have to go back in time to correct the timeline by making sure JFK dies when he’s supposed to.

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Not only does this story seem rather insensitive — Kennedy had been dead less than 20 years when Roddenberry pitched his idea — it was also unoriginal, borrowing several elements from “City On The Edge Of Forever,” a notoriously contentious script originated by writer Harlan Ellison that Roddenberry attempted to take too much credit for over the years. If the pitch had actually been approved by the studio, Roddenberry probably could have looked forward to a lawsuit from Ellison.

How Star Trek II Would Have Changed Spock

Gene Roddenberrys Original Star Trek 2 Pitch Would Have Ruined Wrath Of Khan

Perhaps the most famous aspect of Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan is Spock’s last minute sacrifice to save the Enterprise from being destroyed. Spock’s death was a shock, and it would set the stage for the next several movies which revolved around Spock’s resurrection. In many ways it informed every proceeding appearance of Spock, all the way through the J.J. Abrams Kelvin timeline films.

Spock wouldn’t have died in Roddenberry’s proposed Star Trek II, but he would have been fundamentally altered by another event — he would have been forced to assassinate JFK. It’s hard to imagine how much that would have affected Spock (and his Star Trek legacy), being forced to perpetrate one of the most heinous crimes of the 20th century. It’s probably best for all involved that Roddenberry’s script never got made, but it was a godsend particularly for Spock, who was spared a dark, somewhat ridiculous fate.

Star Trek Without The Wrath Of Khan

Gene Roddenberrys Original Star Trek 2 Pitch Would Have Ruined Wrath Of Khan

It’s hard to overstate how much The Wrath Of Khan meant to the Star Trek franchise — the original movie, The Motion Picture, was a production nightmare that underperformed at the box office; another troubled underachiever might have meant the end of not only the Star Trek movies but the end of the entire franchise as a mainstream live action concern. The Wrath Of Khan was, of course, a triumph, a hit with both critics and fans and making a healthy profit at the box office. It set the template for how Star Trek movies would be produced for the next decade. That success would lead to another incredibly popular television spinoff, Star Trek: The Next Generation, which would eventually lead to a small screen explosion with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager launching in the 1990s.

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But beyond its financial success, The Wrath Of Khan is a turning point for the crew of the USS Enterprise. It’s when their stories stopped being so much about the exploration of the far reaches of space and became a more personal tale of mortality and lifelong friendship. Kirk’s struggle with his midlife crisis is perhaps his most human, relatable storyline, as is his vulnerability when he loses Spock. Kirk’s grief at Spock’s death would animate the next film, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, where Kirk made unspeakable sacrifices to bring his friend back to life.

Roddenberry Forgot What Made Star Trek Great

The sad fact is, by the time Paramount was making Star Trek films, Gene Roddenberry had lost sight of what made his creation special. He became so obsessed with visions of utopia that he forgot that Star Trek has always been propelled forward by engaging characters more than its big ideas, and The Motion Picture was proof that Roddenberry no longer understood his characters.

Tellingly, Roddenberry would go on to pitch his JFK script several more times, becoming convinced that Paramount wasn’t interested in a time travel premise. After the massively successful time travel story of Star Trek: The Voyage Home, Roddenberry was baffled — if the studio was amenable to a time travel story, why not use his? The answer is obvious, of course: The Voyage Home is a triumph because it’s about the relationships between the characters as much as it is about saving the Earth from angry space whales. It stayed true to Kirk and Spock and McCoy even as they were strangers in a strange land. By the back half of his life, Roddenberry simply lost touch with the writer he used to be; that evolution made him very entertaining on the convention circuit, but it unfortunately meant he no longer understood what made Star Trek great in the first place.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/star-trek-2-gene-roddenberry-pitch-wrath-khan-story-details/

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