10 Scrapped Star Trek Releases You Never Got To See
7. Hopeship
Even though Star Trek was enjoying pretty solid success in the 1960s, the US television audience's true affections lay with medical dramas. Some people will tell you cop shows were the hallmark of that era but, deep down, this was a nation that wanted to follow the more human adventures of doctors and nurses. Marcus Welby, M.D, Medical Center, and Dr. Kildare were all a big deal.
Thus while working on the second season of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry devised a way to meld his beloved sci-fi franchise with the medical dramas battering it in the ratings with... a new Star Trek series set on a Federation medical vessel. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, Hopeship.
The development, quite predictably, didn't get very far but the recurring Original Series character (he appeared, like, twice) Dr M'Benga was written in as part of the principal cast. "Elements" of the Hopeship's design, although nobody can say what exactly, also went into creating the USS Pasteur seen in the finale of The Next Generation.