How an abortive 1970s TV show cast a long shadow over Star Trek TNG (only for true nerds )

Roddenberry, Diller, and the Dreams of Bringing Back Trek

The original Star Trek TV series that ran in 1966-1969 was a modest success but never built up a large audience due to poor time slots among other factors. But after its cancellation, Star Trek reruns quickly gained popularity. By the mid 1970s there was already serious work being done toward a movie to fill the audience's demand for more Trek.

There was a joke on Sanford and Son about the old guys meeting up to watch Star Trek. That's how you know you've hit the big time.

Try now, children, to imagine the TV landscape of the 1970s. In your city you would have broadcast stations affiliated with each of the three networks: CBS, NBC, and ABC. There would also be a few independent stations airing reruns and old movies, usually using the UHF band where it was hard to get good reception. Cable TV was not yet a rival.

Goddammit, I had that station just a second ago.

Enter Barry Diller and the dream of a Fourth Network. Many big players had tried and failed in the past to set up their own new network to compete with the big three. But Diller had a better shot. He was CEO of the Paramount studio which owned a huge library of quality movies. And back in 1968 Paramount had bought out Lucille Ball's TV shows, including Star Trek. Diller's network would be based on old movies, new movies, and a new TV series: Star Trek: Phase II.

Indiana Jones was one of the great successes of Diller's time at the head of Paramount.

This new show was not merely a plan on the drawing board. Extensive preproduction work was done. Characters were cast, sets built, and scripts written. Everything was ready to begin shooting in late 1977. At this point a couple of huge events conspired to completely upend Diller's plan. Paramount decided in the end that a fourth network was too big a risk. Previous attempts had been costly failures and it was unclear if advertisers were really that interested. Meanwhile Star Wars had taken off as the biggest smash hit of all time.

(Barry Diller would later move on to FOX and create the successful fourth network there, a great success both as a business and for the quality of TV programming. In 1995 Paramount tried again to build a network based on Star Trek: Voyager but it never caught on and eventually folded into the CW.)

Married With Children was among the edgier, actually funny shows that carried Fox to success against the big three networks.

With no network to be the flagship of, Star Trek: Phase II was unnecessary. But so much work had already been done. It was decided to turn the pilot episode into a big budget feature film, taking advantage of the popularity of Star Trek, Star Wars, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. This movie became Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

The result was pretty decent if not spectacular. It proved popular and brought in a great deal of revenue. But behind the scenes the production had been more than troubled. Gene Roddenberry was out of his depth on such a big project and his inability to cooperate with superiors and equals caused problems. The special effects were a disaster and had to be completely remade, barely in time to put the movie into theaters. The budget ballooned to a virtually unprecedented $45 million.

The human adventure is just beginning.

The Motion Picture broke even but Paramount was never going to let Roddenberry near a movie again. Instead they went to Harve Bennett of Paramount's TV division to make Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which was an instant classic and also quite cheap to make. The remaining Star Trek movies would be made in this way without Roddenberry.

The movies did just fine without Roddenberry.

Ironically, the success of the movies proved that audiences would be interested in a new TV show, and rebooting Trek without Roddenberry's name and creative vision would have no chance. Roddenberry had been perpetually butthurt at network and studio executives for his entire career and now he intended to micromanage the new Star Trek: The Next Generation without meddling from oursiders.

So where did his first ideas for the new show cone from? He dusted off the old plans for Star Trek: Phase II and adapted them a bit fot a younger cast of characters. There isn't quite a one-to-one match between Phase II and TNG characters, but let's look at where our favorites evolved from.

Star Trek: Phase II

Kirk

Not much has changed for the captain since TOS except that he's a bit older and presumably delegating Decker to get in some fist fights for him.

Xon

Poor guy went to all the trouble of studying how to act Vulcan and get his ears fitted on but didn't get the part in the end.

The biggest change in Phase II was that Leonard Nimoy was not returning. Nobody else could hope to play Spock, so the new character of Xon was created to fill his place with certain unique twists.

While Spock was half human/half-Vulcan and a Vulcan supremacist, Xon is a full Vulcan who is confused and fascinated by humans. Instead of trying to suppress his emotional side, he tries to learn how to embrace his.

Decker

Will Decker is Kirk's first officer. He appears to bd pretty bland in the writer's guide, just a guy who is good at his job and worships Kirk and wishes he could be his son.

Ilia

Ilia in a screen test. Apparently they weren't even going to change the uniforms. That's how much of a continuation of TOS it would be.

The ship's navigator, and more importantly Gene Roddenberry's excuse to insert sexual content into the show. For her species everything is about s*x all the time, so she has to suppress this the way Spock suppressed his emotions.

She has a telepathic capability, described by Roddenberry as:

it simply is the ability to sense images in other minds. Never words or emotions, only images… shapes, sizes, textures. On her planet, sexual foreplay consists largely of lovers placing images in each other's minds.

Actual footage of Roddenberry while he wrote the writer's bible for the show.

Oddly enough she has no hair and this is supposed to be sexy. Production had gone as far as testing the actress in a bald cap.

Other Characters

Most of the cast is simply continuing thror characters from TOS, perhaps a big more exaggerated.

• It was intended that McCoy would spar with Xon as he did with Spock but it's not quite clear how that would work.

• Chekov is now head of security.

• Chapel will be returning (not surprising as she is played by Roddenberry's wife).

• A succession of space bimbos will again play Kirk's yeomen.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

A few characters drastically change again as Nimoy is finally coaxed back to the production and Decker and Ilia become expendable.

Xon

Spock coming back to cuck & chuck Xon.

With Spock back there's no need for Xon so he's completely eliminated. The actor is given a bit part as ghe guy at the Epsilon 9 space station. Spock is surly and reluctant to come back, much like the actor.

Decker

I always hated this whiny prick.

He becomes kind of a peepee in a power struggle with Kirk, whining that it's his turn to save the world.

Ilia

Bet she would have looked good with hair.

Her telepathic abilities aren't as explicit, but presumably that's why V'ger chose her. Her main power now is causing moids to have constant moidmoments around her, so, she has to swear an oath of celebacy to avoid taking over the whole ship.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

When Roddenberry comes back to the world of TV he forgets how Xon, Decker, and Ilia ended up in the movie and reverts to how they are in Phase II. He comes up with three characters based on them but not identical.

Xon = Data

Remember when Lore tried to teach Data to not act like an neurodivergent child?

Xon is back but this time he's not a Vulcan fascinated with becoming human, he's an android fascinated with being human. His goofy foibles in the first couple seasons trying to use human mannerisms make not sense for an android living with humans, but they would make perfect sense for Xon meeting humans for the first time.

There was even an attempt to have Dr. Pulaski have some repartee with Data like McCoy was supposed to with Xon, but it just comes across as her picking on a developmentally disabled child.

Decker = Riker

Good old bland, dependable beardless Riker.

The young, loyal man of action to support the captain. He doesn't get much of a personality until later seasons after Roddenberry is out of the picture. His relationship with Troi in the early seasons is the same as Decker's with Ilia.

Ilia = Troi

Imzadi! You're the love of my life. Let's spend the next 7 years somehow never hooking up again.

This is the most muddled transformation. Fortunately she at least gets to have hair and the whole slut species concept is scaled back. But Troi's telepathic power is never properly explained. Sometimes she can read emotions or even thoughts over vast distances. In many episodes it's simply ignored because otherwise she would solve the problem in 5 minutes.

Epilogue

If you think I'm exaggerating, during the 1987 Writer's Guild strike that crippled much of the 2nd season of TNG, they simply took the Phase II script "The Child" and changed Ilia's name to Troi.

After stumbling through the first couple seasons these do become characters who we love and respect. It shows how a character can grow from the humblest beginnings as actors and writers get experience with them.

!trekkies if you made it this far you deserve the title.