10 Films That Wanted To Be Star Trek
These are the films that wanted so desperately to boldly go out into the world of Star Trek.
Transcript
00:00 Look, I wanna be Star Trek, you wanna be Star Trek, that guy in the bushes over there behind
00:03 you wants to be in Star Trek as well.
00:05 There's nothing wrong with that.
00:07 The Star Trek bit, I should mention.
00:09 With that in mind, I'm Sean Ferrick for Trek Culture, and here are 10 films that wanted
00:14 to be Star Trek.
00:16 Number 10, Avengers Endgame.
00:18 I'm not actually joking.
00:20 This is one that's actually been confirmed by the Russo brothers, both of whom openly
00:23 admitted to being heavily inspired by Star Trek The Next Generation.
00:27 Specifically, they said that "all good things" was the main point of reference when putting
00:31 the film together.
00:32 Both stories see the heroes travelling to various points in time, affecting the past
00:35 and future.
00:36 Both also see them, when in the past, trying their hardest not to interfere with the normal
00:40 flow of time, though this proves impossible in the big budget film.
00:43 There's a large emphasis on Technobabble in Endgame, along with the standard explanations
00:47 that tended to follow Trek's Technobabble, allowing for plenty of in-jokes with the audience.
00:51 Finally, once all was said and done with the film, the end credits begin to roll.
00:55 Oddly enough, that's when the Star Trek inspiration is most brazenly on show.
01:00 When the big six stars are credited, their signatures appear on screen.
01:03 While the original Avengers theme swells around them, this is a direct lift or borrow from
01:08 Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country.
01:10 Another nod to the Star Trek fans, and another little inclusion that makes this movie far
01:15 closer to a Trek film than many in the audience ever expected.
01:19 Number 9, The Quester Tapes.
01:21 The Quester Tapes was a made-for-TV movie written by Gene Roddenberry himself.
01:25 The original idea was a reworking of his script for Star Trek's second season, Assignment
01:29 Earth.
01:30 In that story, a benevolent species sends Gary Seven to protect Earth from its own mistakes.
01:35 In The Quester Tapes, a benevolent race installed android protectors among humanity there to
01:39 guide and lead them away from harm.
01:41 In both stories, the rapid advent of technology changes the parameters of the visitors'
01:46 missions.
01:47 The televised version of The Quester Tapes also contains elements that would appear again
01:50 in Star Trek The Motion Picture.
01:52 Quester is an android lost and looking for its creator.
01:55 This, of course, is highly reminiscent of V'ger, though there are also shades of Data.
01:59 When a situation calls for the need to seduce a lady, Quester states that he is fully functional.
02:06 The movie almost went one step further.
02:08 Though Robert Foxworth, who would later appear as Admiral Layton and Administrator V'Las,
02:13 played Quester in the film, Leonard Nimoy was originally asked to play the part.
02:17 He went so far as to take part in make-up tests before he was passed over for the role.
02:22 Number 8.
02:23 Forbidden Planet
02:24 Now, looking at the year of release, 1956, a very obvious question springs to mind.
02:29 How could Forbidden Planet want to be Star Trek nine years before the cage was even written?
02:35 Well, this is a slightly more subjective entry than the others on the list.
02:39 Forbidden Planet was, in many ways, quite ahead of its time and would easily have been
02:44 an episode of the original series.
02:46 Herbius, Altera, Adams and Robbie the Robot are characters right out of Star Trek's
02:51 very bible.
02:52 Adams is clearly an inspiration for Kirk.
02:55 Encounter stranded woman, woo stranded woman, bring stranded woman away with him.
02:58 Robbie is also credited as one of the first depictions of an android beyond a simple automaton,
03:03 serving as inspiration for Data.
03:05 The core thread of the film shows the battle between the conscious and the unconscious,
03:09 along with the war between the ego and id.
03:11 With that, the main villain of the film is a dream, one made manifest by alien technology
03:16 and the protagonists don't understand that.
03:19 Star Trek itself owes more than a little to this seminal sci-fi film, while Forbidden
03:23 Planet, had it simply come along a little later on, might well have suited William Shatner
03:27 and Majel Barrett in the heroic roles, and probably would have had Gene Roddenberry have
03:31 a chance to say something about it.
03:33 Number 7.
03:34 Enemy Mine
03:35 Enemy Mine is a 1984 film directed by Wolfgang Petersen, serving as inspiration for The Enemy,
03:40 a fourth season episode of Star Trek The Next Generation.
03:43 It features Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr. as Davij and Jerry, two soldiers from
03:48 opposing species marooned together on a barely hospitable world.
03:51 The film is Star Trek to the core.
03:53 First, both parties speak in languages that are barely understandable to each other, as
03:57 both attempt to overpower the other.
03:59 Then, as time wears on, they learn to understand each other before cooperating.
04:04 The final mission of the film sees one defecting to the other side to save a child.
04:08 The film has shades of the original series episode "Arena", in which Kirk fights the
04:12 Gorn of Cestus III.
04:13 That story revealed that the aggression between the Federation and the Gorn hegemony stemmed
04:17 from a miscommunication, something that Roddenberry often returned to in Star Trek.
04:22 In fact, Star Trek The Motion Picture begins with V'ger unable to understand why it is
04:26 not receiving a reply from its creator.
04:29 Enemy Mine could quite easily slot into the Trek franchise with minimal changes required,
04:33 which of course was part of the intentions of the time.
04:36 Number 6.
04:37 Serenity
04:38 In Serenity, the spin-off and tying up of Firefly owes a big debt to Star Trek, as did
04:42 the series before it.
04:44 While Joss Whedon said that he set Firefly in a region of space that the Enterprise would
04:47 have flown right past, the Alliance forces represent a twisted version of the Federation
04:52 from the point of view of the worlds that didn't exactly want to be under Starfleet's
04:57 heel.
04:58 Serenity sees an officer hunting down River and the crew of Malcolm Reynolds' ship,
05:02 armed with the full authority of the government.
05:03 The Browncoats are the separatists, so often depicted as the bad guys in franchises like
05:08 Star Trek, though shown sympathetically here.
05:10 The crimes of the Alliance are revealed, coated in good intentions with disastrous results.
05:15 Gene Roddenberry described humanity going through hell to reach heaven, with both ends
05:19 on show in Whedon's Wild West here.
05:21 Reynolds is like Kirk with a greater sense of humour, though like Kirk, Picard and the
05:25 rest, he has an infallible sense of doing the right thing, even in the wrongest circumstances.
05:30 It's far from perfect, but Serenity attempts to show a future where people can do the right
05:35 thing, something that Star Trek has preached since its earliest days.
05:39 5.
05:40 Hellraiser, Bloodline
05:41 Be honest, this one's a bit of a shock, innit?
05:44 While there was an argument to include Hellraiser 3 on this list, featuring Terry Farrell in
05:49 her pre-Deep Space Nine days, the fourth Hellraiser film actually fits the world of Star Trek
05:54 a little better than many might assume.
05:56 For one, the film is primarily set in space.
05:59 The film, released in 1996, the same year that Star Trek First Contact hit theatres,
06:04 sees a time-hopping tale that goes from an advanced future to Earth's past, in a plot
06:08 that feels more than a little inspired by the Borg's temporal plans for humanity.
06:13 The film introduces Angelique, a new variation on the Cenobites and demons from Hell.
06:18 With the film also featuring Adam Scott, who has a small role as the helmsman of the USS
06:22 Defiant in Star Trek First Contact, there are several similarities here.
06:26 Angelique is easily likened to the Borg Queen, with both attempting to use temptation to
06:30 gain power.
06:31 Trickery is eventually the downfall of both the Borg and the Cenobites, as the descendant
06:36 of Le Marchand deduces the way to destroy the demons, while the former drone, Lecutus
06:41 (John Luke Picard) destroys the Borg.
06:43 Though Bloodline may be one of the outliers in this list, there are enough similarities
06:47 to say that this Hellraiser film was trying its best to be a part of the final frontier.
06:52 4.
06:53 Arrival
06:54 In many ways, Arrival feels like a big-budget, extra-long episode of Star Trek.
06:58 The story revolves around the attempt to communicate with a species not of this world, with little
07:03 to no emphasis on action.
07:05 In fact, many of the negative reviews of the film received highlighted its slow pace and
07:09 largely dialogue-heavy script.
07:11 Amy Adams stars as the linguist brought in by the military to try and find common ground
07:15 with this race of aliens.
07:17 She feels like a lift from episodes of the original series, something we say very much
07:20 as a compliment here, for when Star Trek was at its best, it was attempting to solve the
07:24 issues of the universal nature of understanding.
07:27 Arrival also focuses on the topic of time, something that features again and again (pun
07:32 not intended) in Star Trek.
07:34 Both Star Trek IV and Star Trek First Contact see the various crews of the Enterprise travelling
07:39 through time to save humanity, with many episodes of the various series visiting it as a theme
07:43 as well.
07:44 All else aside, Arrival is a film that dares to take its time to tell its story.
07:48 Though visually impressive, it relies less on the CGI of the world that it creates, and
07:53 more on the story built within said world.
07:55 It falls into the same type of sci-fi in which Star Trek lies, boldly going forward rather
08:00 than simply blowing things up.
08:02 Number 3 – Silent Running
08:04 Silent Running is a 1972 film directed by Douglas Trumbull, who would go on to create
08:09 the effects for Star Trek the Motion Picture.
08:11 The film depicts Bruce Dern as Freeman Lowell, an astronaut and botanist who serves aboard
08:15 the Valley Forge.
08:16 It's a biodome orbiting Saturn tasked with keeping various plants and fauna alive to
08:21 later be returned to an Earth that is currently unable to manage them.
08:24 The film's theme of conservationism is pure Trek, with Lowell rebelling against his human
08:28 superiors to protect the plant life aboard his ship.
08:31 He befriends three drones, Huey, Louie and Dewey, who help him care for the greenery,
08:35 though Louie is lost along the way.
08:37 While there is a logical issue within the movie – how did everyone forget that plants
08:40 need sunlight to survive?
08:42 – it's still a surprisingly forward-thinking environmentalist film for the time.
08:46 The Valley Forge's mission would be borrowed by Star Trek Discovery, this time portrayed
08:50 by the USS T'Kov.
08:51 While the Valley Forge itself takes its name from the aircraft carrier, there is also an
08:55 Excelsior-class ship serving with that name during the Battle of Chintaka in Deep Space
08:59 Nine.
09:00 The film may owe more to 2001 than it does to Star Trek, but it still deals with the
09:04 theme of humanity's own short-sightedness, a theme that had already been and would again
09:09 be visited in Star Trek many, many times.
09:12 Number 2 – Star Wars, A New Hope
09:15 Now, put down your lightsaber for a second.
09:18 When George Lucas was writing his space opera, Star Trek had been around for almost a decade.
09:22 The galaxy far, far away takes inspiration from some of the more militaristic elements
09:27 of Star Trek, while still forging an entire universe of its own.
09:30 In a strange case of a snake eating its own tail, Star Wars followed on from Gene Roddenberry's
09:35 works, while also inspiring Paramount to scramble to get the motion picture up and running.
09:40 Lucas himself stated that Star Wars stood on the shoulders of Star Trek, as the latter
09:44 had softened the audience to the idea of fantasy in outer space.
09:48 While Trek had stumbled through a second life with the arrival of the animated series, its
09:52 fans had kept the franchise alive long enough for other attempts at sci-fi fantasy to make
09:57 a name for themselves, including the tale of young Master Skywalker.
10:01 To say that there has been a rivalry between Star Wars fans and Star Trek fans is a little
10:06 bit of an understatement, but the original creators both saw the merit of each other's
10:11 franchises.
10:12 No matter which side of the debate one comes down on, it's clear that they both owe a
10:14 debt of gratitude to each other.
10:17 Number 1 – Galaxy Quest
10:18 What list of Trek-themed films would be complete without Galaxy Quest, the 90s parody that
10:22 was effectively a forerunner to Seth MacFarlane's The Orville?
10:25 It's both satire and a loving tribute to the original series, while also standing as
10:29 its own thoroughly enjoyable adventure.
10:31 The film began life as Captain Starshine, a script by David Howard, who struck on the
10:35 idea of extraterrestrials believing that the actors really were astronauts.
10:39 Although this version of the story was ultimately scrapped, the idea was passed to Bob Gordon,
10:43 who added far more humour than had originally been present.
10:46 Harold Ramis was hired to direct, though he passed on the project after Tim Allen was
10:49 cast as Nesmith.
10:50 Ramis wanted action stars who could do comedy, as opposed to comedians doing an action film,
10:55 though he did eventually praise Allen's performance.
10:57 The film has achieved cult status as both a movie in its own right, but also as a de
11:00 facto Star Trek film, with The Protector now considered another ship in Starfleet, even
11:06 if it's a little bit more like the Cerritos in terms of its standing.
11:08 That's everything for our list, if you reckon we missed anything, please drop it into the
11:11 comments below.
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11:18 at Trekultru, and you can catch myself over on Twitter at SeanFerric as well.
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11:33 (upbeat music)