The year was 1992; rumors were running rampant as to what the next Star Trek film would be. Next Generation was drawing to a close, Deep Space 9 was ramping up...
At the radio station I worked at, our venerable Miracle Working Engineer had a niece who worked in the Star Trek offices... and he had information. Star Trek VII was to be a 'passing of the torch' film- original cast and Next Gen cast would be involved. I asked him if he were willing to see if we could get a treatment over the transom.
He said if he liked it, yes.
With no more than that information, I wrote the following. It went to the Star Trek offices. I know that De Forest Kelley and George Takei read it and really liked it. James Doohan also read it, but I don't know what he thought of it.
Naturally, it didn't get made.
In retrospect, I can see why. See if you can figure it out! Even though it's a 20 year dead project, I'm interested in hearing your criticism.
This is salvaged from 20 year old thermal fax paper. I wrote it down, errors and all, as it was submitted.
Star Trek VII
Citizen Kirk
By R. Ian Sutherland 12/3/92
Our story begins with a bar room brawl on Starbase Fastbase Earhart. A young Starfleet Lieutenant is fighting three Mer-somethings. The Lieutenant is stabbed in the back and the blade comes through the young officer’s chest. The officer laughs as he sees the knife. An ensign catches the Lieutenant as he falls. The ensign murmurs “Oh, God! Jean-Luc!” and calls for a medic.
We follow young Lieutenant Picard as he is rushed through the starbase on an anti-grav gurney to the base hospital. During transit, he flatlines and requires re-animation. Medics take him to the operating room and prepare him for immediate surgery. We hear a familiar voice state in no uncertain terms that he’s too old to play doctor anymore, but another voice informs him that he is Picard’s only hope, no one else at this starbase has performed a mechanical cardiac replacement procedure. McCoy protests at the lack of facilities and his own age, but agrees to consult.
AS the operation progresses, they discover that the mechanical heart is defective, but jury-rig it to perform properly. After several hours of surgery, the operation is declared a success.
Picard awakens to find Starfleet Academy Graduate School Commandant Uhura standing over his biobed. She informst Picard that he has been reassigned from the Exeter to the Federation Ambassadorial Staff on Vulcan where it would be in his best interests as a Starfleet officer to enroll in the Surak School for Offworlders and learn some control. Picard is disappointed, but his near death experience has shown him that he could use some improvement in the area of self-discipline.
McCoy and Uhura converse in a small lounge about their patient. She goes on to explain that Picard is brilliant and reckless and needs the control. McCoy comments that sending Picard to Vulcan might be a punishment worse than death. Uhura reminds McCoy of the number of times that he had to patch people together because of Kirk’s recklessness.
Uncomfortable with this topic, McCoy mentions the communique from Spock, inviting them to his wedding reception. Uhura hopes that it isn’t as eventful as Spock’s last wedding. The call for McCoy’s ship comes over the intercom, and it includes a request for Admiral McCoy to report to his gig for transport to the U.S.S. Constellation. When Uhura raises her eyebrow at “gig”, McCoy responds by explaining that the only good thing about being an admiral was that he never again had to have his molecules scrambled.
SIX MONTHS LATER
Planet Vulcan
Lt. Jean Luc Picard is sitting and attempting to meditate, rather unsuccessfully. His instructor lectures him gently on the purging of the passions. Picard is fed up and explodes, saying that purging may be no problem for Vulcans, but is a major problem for humans. The instructor stats that not only is control a major problem for Vulcans, but herself especially as she is half Romulan. We see that his instructor is Saavik.. She continues that discipline has been difficult for her over the years and that the events of the coming week are the culmination of decades of purging anger,
@ Sheldon: Saw Atlas Shrugged II. Not as dreadful as I, and entertaining for the cameos (Patricia Tallman is in it...), but I think you'll question the wholesale recasting as much as I did. Still meandering and repetitive, but less painful.
"This is a good story, a very good story, but it isn't worthy of a feature film." Thank you! I'd argue that it is at least as good as other odd-numbered Trek films.... and ST:The No-Motion Picture was cobbled together from a TV script, so....
I thought you'd notice the submission date. Yes, I had a mole inside the Star Trek offices, so I got news early. I had to get this in while they were still in pre-script stage, preferably before anyone had a chance to pitch. And it would've worked too, if it wasn't for those meddling kids and their sehlaht.
Season 6 was airing, they had decided that they wanted to go into production on ST VII immediately after Season 7 wrapped... my opportunity window was razor-thin.
As to continuity, that all had to come out of my noggin and the handful of episodes that I had on VHS. The internet as we know it didn't really exist yet... there may've been a gopher or ftp server somewhere that had what I needed, but Archie and Veronica were not a lot of help.
So thanks for the dodge on the Nausicaans, but that's strictly my error. The incident was mentioned in "Samaritan Snare", but I couldn't remember the name of the aliens involved. Not being a big anime geek, I had heard 'Nausicaans' as "Nauticans" and thought that they were aquatic or amphibian. When the time came... I couldn't remember their names!!! When "Tapestry" first aired a couple months after I submitted this, I kicked myself.
(That may've been yet another reason that this treatment went nowhere. Instead of capitalizing on a couple of lines in a season two Next Gen episode, we were now treading over ground that was freshly plowed so to speak. )