10 Scrapped Star Trek Releases You Never Got To See
Development Hell, the final final frontier...
It probably goes without saying, but a franchise doesn't manage to spawn 8 separate TV shows and 12 major motion pictures without a whole host of ideas getting batted down in the process. For every hour of Star Trek you've managed to watch, another 5 or 10 probably ended up in the various bins that ideas must leap past on their way to getting made.
It probably also goes without saying, but a franchise that's built its entire premise on the limitless wonders of space exploration will have no shortage of new ways to realise the galaxy of possibilities therein. Across time, space, science and the human condition, virtually nothing's ever been off the table for Star Trek, and writers from within the franchise and without have pitched the next great sci-fi venture over the years.
While we can look at everything we have had and be delighted, looking at the various shows and movies that never quite made it is equally as fascinating. Outlandish adventures, in-depth character pieces, even ideas that would have pushed the canon into radically new territory and timeframes.
10. Reboot The Universe
Just going to open with a total shocker here, the mooted Star Trek series "Reboot The Universe" was about, comprehensively, rebooting the universe. Not in a grand, sweeping, biblical sense - nobody was talking about taking up back to the primordial soup and having humanity eventually emerge with scales - but in the classic Hollywood way of just recasting everyone and adding doing the effects better.
This idea, the brainchild of Babylon 5 screenwriter J. Michael Stracynski, was pitched in 2004 as Enterprise was beginning to wind down. The notion was to take Star Trek back to the original 5-year-mission of Kirk's generation but in an alternative universe where they were free to change whatever they wanted. Why yes, almost exactly like the JJ Abrams movie that was being put into production around the same time.
One very interesting caveat from this, was the plan to ape the 1960s series by taking already published stories and adapting them to fit the Star Trek universe. Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park) and Stephen King (just literally Stephen King) were cited as examples of authors they'd be looking to use. Imagine the possibilities...