20 Things You Didn't Know About Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
16. Before And After It Was A Movie—The Star Trek Revival Was Planned As A TV Series Called Star Trek II
When Philip Kaufman’s Star Trek movie was put on ice, the studio shifted to developing a new TV series. If you’re not confused yet, the TV series was yet another project to be titled “Star Trek II.” In fandom, the abandoned program is popularly known as “Star Trek: Phase II,” although the name was only briefly used for the project.
This series proposal introduced the characters of Ilia and Decker into the mix. Persis Khambatta had a screen test on October 27, 1977 and signed a six-year contract to play Iia on television before the plug was pulled (an actor was not selected for the Decker role; Stephen Collins only joined the project after it transformed back into a feature film). Sets and models were in various stages of completion at that point; some would be modified and used in the movie, while others would be completely rebuilt and redesigned.
Of the various stories proposed for a TV movie to relaunch Star Trek, “In Thy Image” was chosen. Alan Dean Foster, a science fiction writer who had adapted the animated Star Trek into a series of books for Ballantine, wrote the story outline based on a premise called “Robot’s Return” by Gene Roddenberry. Harold Livingston wrote the script. “In Thy Image” brought back a variation of the “Object” from the 1975 “God Thing” script, now called V’ger.