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 technique to Star Trek: The Motion Picture—has been identified 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 might go on to get for an additional 50 years. And but, there’s nonetheless lots to get pleasure from on this new documentary in regards to the bumpy street Star Trek nearly made on the journey dwelling 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 grew to become a syndication hit. It covers early potential films that by no means occurred, all through the ideation and early manufacturing work for the subsequent 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 provides quite a lot of fascinating perception into how Section II took place and provides loads of crisp appears to be like at behind-the-scenes materials from the present’s manufacturing. After all, in OTOY’s fashion with these Trek lookbacks as effectively, there’s plenty of 3D material replicating idea work performed for the collection, extrapolating how its units may need appeared 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 identified about Section II, it’s nonetheless an intriguing look again at what may need been—in a manner we’ve by no means actually seen it earlier than.

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