12 Abandoned Star Trek Ideas That Would Have Been Incredible
1. Star Trek: The Beginning
The tentative title for an eleventh film that never came to pass, The Beginning was meant to be the first of a trilogy of films that bridged the gap between Star Trek Enterprise and Star Trek The Original Series. A full treatment was approved and multiple versions of the script were written, but the project fell apart in favour of going with JJ Abrams' reboot film in 2009.
Set four years after the events of Terra Prime, the United Earth Stellar Navy is being folded into Starfleet and a few officers are resentful of the move. One, called Tiberius Chase, has family ties back to the Terra Prime movement, who wanted to drive all alien influence from Earth. Somewhat suddenly, a massive Romulan attack fleet emerges from behind Earth's moon.
They demand for Earth to turn over all of the Vulcans living on the planet, to which Admiral Gardner refuses and manages to rally Starfleet and UESN forces.
When the Romulans are just barely driven off, it's discovered that the Romulans are planning to regroup with reinforcements. Tiberius Chase and his band of survivors track down the nuclear stockpile of an isolationist group, then hijack the USS Spartan from its drydock in Saturn and attempt to bring the war to Romulans.
This would be the opening moves of the much talked about Earth-Romulan War, during which the two sides did not see each other face to face. The war was fought entirely in ships and the subsequent Neutral Zone treaty was negotiated over subspace transmission. In one final detail, Tiberius Chase would be sending letters to Penelope Gardner, the daughter of Admiral Gardner, who is a school-teacher in Iowa (where a certain Captain was born).
While the 2009 reboot of the franchise seemed like a better bet, the franchise lost a lot by not following through with this project. But given how much of Star Trek there is, we, it's faithful fans, must always remember that there were so many more ideas out there. Many would have sucked, but so many would have been just awesome. In theory, out there in an alternate timeline, they all got made for our viewing pleasure. Just think on that one.