Star Trek: 10 Things You Never Knew About Enterprise
4. Starfleet Academy Was Never On The Cards
For nearly 40 years, there have been rumours of a Starfleet Academy television series. This goes back to Harve Bennett's time as a producer on the series.
At one point, there was a proposed spin-off while the Original Series films were still in production. Then, a draft of the script of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country featured flashbacks to the Academy, with Bennett confirming preliminary offers had been sent to Ethan Hawke to appear as Kirk and John Cusack to appear as Spock.
This version of the script came to nothing and actually led to Bennett's departure from Paramount. However the idea of a prequel never truly went away. It would be revisited in J.J. Abrams' 2009 Star Trek film, though the similarities between Bennett's version and his own were purely surface level.
Berman and Braga however categorically denied that their prequel would have anything to do with this idea, even though Bennett was still trying to get his story made. In the case of one prequel beating out another, Enterprise got the green light and the Academy series was put on the shelf.