Star Trek's Biggest Leap Almost Didn't Happen

Before Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the first major cinematic release to be adapted from a TV series was the 1954 cop movie Dragnet, based on the popular show of the same name. But, for the most part, Dragnet and the 1966 Batman feature film were curiosities prior to 1979. Because before 1979, the idea of a film franchise blending with a TV franchise, at least on a larger scale, was literally unheard of. When Star Trek: The Motion Picture hit theaters on Dec. 6, 1979, it not only brought back the Star Trek brand from TV purgatory, it transformed the entire Trek world into a movie franchise. This was a strange, new concept in 1979, and what makes the debut of the first Star Trek movie even stranger is that, for a big part of its production history, it was supposed to be a new TV show.

So, why did we get a Star Trek movie, rather than a new Star Trek TV show? The answer is a little complicated, but the smoking phaser (or blaster) isn’t 100 percent because of Star Wars.

Bringing Back Star Trek

After getting canceled by NBC in 1969, Star Trek almost immediately had a comeback. Thanks to increased popularity in syndication, by 1973, Gene Roddenberry was able to launch Star Trek: The Animated Series, which, at the time, was just presented as a continuation of the first series, albeit with a little more toned down. Interestingly, at this exact same time, Roddenberry was workshopping a possible Star Trek feature film with producer Herb Solow, which had the working title of “A Question of Cannibalism.” Perhaps low-key inspired by Robert Heinlein’s 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land and the classic H.G. Wells Time Machine, this story would have dealt with the Enterprise dealing with one alien race who enslaved another race as a food source. Little is known about how far along this project got, but Solow and Roddenberry weren’t on speaking terms after it dissolved.

Then in 1975, a movie project called Star Trek: Planet of the Titans — written by Allan Scott and Chris Bryant — started to take shape. This would have been all about the crew traveling back in time and bootstrapping themselves as the Titans from ancient myth. By 1977 — the year Star Wars was released — this project was shelved in favor of developing a new Star Trek TV series, and it’s that TV series that, ironically, actually led to the first Star Trek movie.

Star Trek: Phase II

Beginning production in the mid-1970s, this unmade TV series is generally referred to as Star Trek: Phase II, though sometimes it’s confusingly called “Star Trek II,” which has nothing to do with the actual 1982 film with that exact title. There are several entire books written on this period of Star Trek history, including Sherilyn Connelly’s excellent The First Star Trek Movie, as well as Star Trek: Phase II: The Making of the Lost Series by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens. There’s a lot to unpack during this period, but here’s the basic, utterly reductive bottom line: Star Trek: Phase II was simply a 1970s continuation of Star Trek, but, this time, with a few new characters onboard a revamped classic Enterprise.

Those characters included Will Decker, Lt. Ilia, and Xon, a full-blooded Vulcan who was trying to figure out how to live with humans. Leonard Nimoy’s involvement with Star Trek: Phase II was very touch-and-go throughout this process, and the invention of Xon was largely to compensate for Spock’s absence. At certain points in the negotiations, Nimoy was to be an occasional guest star, and at other points, not in the show at all. As such, Alan Dean Foster’s original treatment for the pilot episode “In Thy Image” contains references to a character simply called “Lt. Vulcan.” Xon was actually cast and was to be played by actor David Gautreaux. Eventually, he was given a much smaller role of Commander Branch in The Motion Picture.

Sets were constructed for Phase II as Paramount was considering using the rebooted Star Trek series to launch a new TV network. The pre-production of Star Trek: Phase II continued for most of 1977, meaning the success of Star Wars at the box office that May wasn’t the only reason Paramount switched gears and turned the project into a movie. Instead, soaring costs, and the decision not to launch a larger Paramount TV channel, all led to Phase II getting consolidated into a film project. Yes, Paramount saw that science fiction was big at the box office thanks to Star Wars and Close Encounters, but ultimately moving forward with one big Star Trek movie, rather than an entire new series, was a way to cut everyone’s losses.

The Motion Picture materializes

The story for Star Trek: The Motion Picture comes largely from the pilot episode for Phase II, “In Thy Image,” which originally was connected to a story idea suggested by Gene Roddenberry called “Robot’s Return.” For those who have seen the movie, the plot is familiar: a massive AI called V’Ger returns to threaten Earth in search of its creator, but it is utterly unaware that biological beings created it in the first place.

Turning Star Trek: Phase II into The Motion Picture was a messy process, but it was a relatively quick one. While the idea of a new Star Trek film or TV had been gestating since 1973, Star Trek: Phase II metamorphosed from a new TV series, to feature film projection in just a few months; from the end of 1977 to the beginning of 1978. Legendary director Robert Wise (The Day the Earth Stood Still, West Side Story) was brought on to helm the project, and a year later, Star Trek: The Motion Picture hit theaters, creating a mixed reception among fans and critics alike.

Although The Motion Picture was profitable, the studio viewed all the various stops and starts throughout the years as part of the budget, meaning it was a very expensive movie, or a very expensive never-made TV show, depending on how you looked at it. Today, many Trek fans tend to defend the ponderous or slow nature of The Motion Picture on the grounds that it felt truer to the spirit of the TV series, at least philosophically. And, fascinatingly, thinking of The Motion Picture as merely a big-budget episode of the classic show is exactly what it was. Because, in another pop culture timeline, this could have easily been the pilot episode for another TV series, and Trek’s leap to the big screen would have been delayed, or perhaps prevented altogether.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture streams on Paramount+.