Section II’ and See What Might’ve Been

The existence of Star Trek: Phase II—the plans for a Star Trek continuation collection within the mid-Seventies that ultimately gave solution to Star Trek: The Motion Picture—has been recognized for a really very long time at this level. We’ve seen concept art, we’ve seen story concepts, and we’ve seen it for lengthy sufficient to see how these nuggets have gone on to affect the Star Trek that we’d go on to get for an additional 50 years. And but, there’s nonetheless a lot to get pleasure from on this new documentary concerning the bumpy highway Star Trek nearly made on the journey residence again to our screens.

Produced by the Roddenberry Archive and OTOY—the businesses behind these viral Star Trek short films and a litany of different archival Trek projects and videos—Misplaced Voyages is a 30-minute documentary that charts the story of what occurred when Paramount realized the success it had on its fingers when Star Trek turned a syndication hit. It covers early potential films that by no means occurred, all over the ideation and early manufacturing work for the following Star Trek present—and the way issues fell aside when the last-minute choice was made to take one in every of its episodes, “In Thy Picture,” and switch it right into a theatrical Star Trek film.

Alongside perception from Section II producer Jon Povill and writers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens (and even Trek icons George Takei and Walter Koenig), Misplaced Voyages affords loads of fascinating perception into how Section II took place and offers loads of crisp appears to be like at behind-the-scenes materials from the present’s manufacturing. In fact, in OTOY’s model with these Trek lookbacks as properly, there’s plenty of 3D material replicating idea work achieved for the collection, extrapolating how its units may need regarded just like the up to date Enterprise bridge (which might be iterated on and used for The Movement Image), or imagining the completed and finalized mannequin for the preliminary Enterprise refit.

Whereas a lot of the historical past is already recognized about Section II, it’s nonetheless an intriguing look again at what may need been—in a approach we’ve by no means actually seen it earlier than.

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