Star Trek III - Between Screenplay and Film

 

One of the hot items in the must have division for the summer of '83 was a twenty-page story treatment entitled Star Trek III: Return to Genesis. It was purportedly a copy of the original story idea that Harve Bennett had submitted to Paramount in advance of writing the first screenplay for the third Star Trek film. But some people weren't convinced. Majel Barret had said in a public address that the treatment was real and some of its essential details, such as the blowing up of the Enterprise, would remain. But that wasn't enough for some. In February of 1984, a well-known, longtime Star Trek fan became angry when I suggested that the treatment was real and actually called Barret a liar. This individual insisted that the treatment had been written by a "talented fan." Well, at a recent Director's Guild seminar on Star Trek, Bennett himself said that the treatment was real and that its release a year in advance of the movie had caused the producers some real dismay.

Here follows a synopsis of that original idea. From it we can see how Sfar Trek III took shape and how the rough' edges of the story were smoothed out, so what didn't make sense in the treatment made perfect sense by the time it made it to the screen.

The story opens with a Romulan ship coming across the Genesis planet and beaming a party down to explore this strange, uncharted world, they immediately discover that the planet contains vast amounts of raw dilithium, the substance used to power the warp engines of starships. The Romulans also find a strange sarcophagus lying on the ground, but upon opening it they find it empty.

The regular Trek characters are seen as the Enterprise returns to Earth. Kirk has not had any response from Starfleet on his handling of the Genesis matter and McCoy is blaming himself for Spock's death, so things are rather tense. On top of this, people are starting to have visions, what they call visitations, from Spock, and are convinced that he's alive. These are not unlike the visions of Kirk in "The Tholian Web," when he was lost in the gateway to another dimension. McCoy even sees Spock in his mirror.

McCoy's depression grows worse and he requests a leave of absence on Vulcan to try to sort things out for himself. On Vulcan, Kirk and the landing party are attacked and only the appearance of Sarek, Spock's father, heads it off. This is where the first major problem in the story arises.

It seems that many young Vulcans will not accept their fate being in the hands of the "intellectually inferior Federation" due to the revelation of the power of the Genesis device. This, coupled with Spock's death, is too much for them to handle. This doesn't work for a number of reasons. First, how would they even know about the Genesis Device? It was blown apart in a remote section of the galaxy and the very existence of the device was highly classified. Surely Starfleet would have kept a tight lid on what really happened and revealed only that Spock had died during the battle with Khan. The Federation already knew that the Genesis Device could be used as an all-powerful weapon of war, but had decided not to employ it in this manner. If only to prevent anyone else from using it as a weapon, they would keep its existence a closely guarded secret It's much more than just highly unlikely that the Vulcans would know about it.

On top of this we have Vulcans reverting to savagery, a concept which is ingrained in them from childhood as being in the worst possible taste. Even the indignities of Ron Farr are kept within the family and away from the view of outsiders. That a large faction would suddenly and spontaneously rebel is applying human standards to an alien race and culture. This incident obviously hadn't been thought out too far anyway because it is never resolved in this basic story proposal. Vulcans are revolting and it's left at that.

One interesting point which does arise here is Sarek's resentment that the body of his son was not returned to Vulcan because of the off-chance that Spock might not have died. He is, after all, an alien with alien physiology. Realizing what he has done, Kirk vows to find Spock's body and return it to Sarek.

McCoy elects to remain behind and discover what information Spock left in his mind. This plot thread is also left dangling, which makes one wonder about the scene during the climax of Wrath Of Khan when Spock touches McCoy's head with the familiar Vulcan mind meld and says "remember," which by coincidence is not unlike the climax of E.T., in which the alien touches Elliott and says, "I'll be right here." Both scenes tend to carry the same implication of stay tuned for the sequel (and even though a sequel to E.T. was not overtly planned, very late in the production Spielberg was still calling the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and his First Adventure on Earth).

In the case of of Wrath of Khan, a sequel was always planned and everyone felt there was some genuine significance to the Spock/McCoy touch. Maybe Harve Bennett just forgot to put it in here, leaving it to be included in an early draft of the script.

Back at the Genesis planet, the Romulan vessel destroys a Federation reconnaissance cruiser. So far, their mining work on the planet is proceeding undetected.

At Starfleet, Kirk is in hot water for disobeying a direct order and stopping off at Vulcan. He's also in trouble because the Genesis Device was detonated and its existence has triggered intergalactic panic. The Romulans and Klingons want parity of Genesis Devices. But hold on now. How could they even know about the Genesis Device. This is top secret stuff, something which above all else the Federation would keep secret under the death penalty, not unlike General Order 7 regarding planet Tales IV (sic.). One would also expect that the Guardian planet with its time travel mechanism is also kept secret in the same manner. So there's just no way that knowledge of the Genesis Device would leak out on such an intergalactic scale. It's not logical. Spies and advanced espionage techniques might detect something, but not enough pieces to assemble into the resolution of the puzzle. The Genesis planet itself would be kept under close scrutiny until more is known about it. So all of the plot elements regarding this widespread knowledge of Genesis just don't wash. This reminds me of a Star Trek Gold Key comic book story in which some guy makes free use of it because it's completely unguarded. Uh huh. We're sure it would be.

Even if the Genesis Device were used only as it was intended, which is for terraforming planets, this would be kept secret and the Federation would just issue a statement saying a new Class M planet had been discovered, or something to that effect, the people who developed the Genesis effect and are still working on it know well its implications and would do everything they could to keep the information from getting out. With all of these considerations, there's no possibility that knowledge of the Genesis Device by everyone in the known universe could be considered plausible.

Oh yes, you want to know how they resolve the thorny issue? They don't. That plot thread isn't worked out either. It just remains rather frayed at the end.

Anyway, back at Starfleet, Kirk's request to return to the Genesis planet meets a cold response, especially when he leaps up and says, "Now you'll understand. See him there!" because he sees Spock in the office.

Kirk is reassigned and all the Enterprise personnel are scattered to other commands and duties. Alone in his room, Kirk sees Spock again, but the image fails to answer his entreaties for explanations.

One interesting facet of the story involves Sulu helping Kirk escape from the guard in his room. The rest of the familiar Enterprise crew all conspire and succeed in helping Kirk steal the Enterprise. When the Excelsior, the latest in starships, capable of warp 15, tries to pursue it breaks down because Scotty had been assigned to it before escaping and he'd sabotaged the engines! Nothing like a little mutiny to spice up a plot, or even a big mutiny.

The rest of the story is pretty simple. They reach the Genesis planet whereupon they're attacked by the Romulans. The crew evacuates the Enterprise as a large contingent of Romulans are beaming aboard. Once on the ground, they see the Enterprise explode into tiny pieces, thereby wiping out most of the Romulans.

Well, let's see now. They've mutinied against the Federation and destroyed a multi-billion dollar starship. Perhaps Kirk and company are planning to go into business as pirates? They certainly have no future left in Starfleet.

One interesting idea in all of this was that the Genesis planet was showing signs of volcanic activity and stress, which makes sense because the planet was created out of the stuff of the Mutara Nebula. The Genesis Device was never intended to do any such thing, just to terraform existing planets. When the film threw in this stuff about Genesis being unstable due to protomatter in the device, it was unnecessary and ignored the obvious.

In the original treatment, a new element of mystery was added in that someone, or some thing, is killing off the Romulan sentries one by one and has been there since before the Enterprise returned.

The stalker turns out to be a bearded, amnesiac Spock, who is subdued and beamed aboard the Romulan ship with the rest of the Enterprise party. They find the ship practically deserted and capture a female Romulan subcommander. There's a funny line in the treatment which reads: The Bird of Prey roars to life and steaks away from the Genesis planet, which is, with ILM's help, going to implode itself into a black hole.

Their ship then surrenders to a Federation ship and Spock comes around - his old self again. Kirk plans to plead nolo contendre to the charges against him, which is the only hint as to the direction Bennett may have been thinking of for Star Trek IV.

A story treatment, in case you didn't know, is a story idea written up in synopsis form. When one of these is accepted it is used as the blueprint for writing the first draft script. While it's going into script form, many changes are made along the way. Those changes are often major ones as can be seen from comparing this plot to the finished film. Romulans become Klingons (supposedly at Leonard Nimoy's request). Genesis was still a secret, one for which there were penalties for anyone who discussed it. The rampaging Vulcan idea was lost. The visions of Spock were tossed out. The ending was revised, although it still achieved the same purpose. What was retained is as striking as what was not. It's an interesting examination of the genesis and transformation of ideas as they are discussed and worked with by other hands. For instance, David was not killed in the original proposal.

It still seems, even now, as though the Enterprise was cast aside just to get a neat explosive special effect. It certainly wasn't something that Gene Roddenberry wanted to see happen. When I first saw Star Trek in 1966, I was overwhelmed by the design because somebody had finally come up with a spaceship that looked as strange as spaceships in the future will probably appear. It didn't look like a V-2 or a flying saucer. Someone had sat down and dreamed up something totally different, and without cribbing off the cover of a moldering issue of Amazing Stories for the idea.

I'm all for seeing changes in Star Trek. It wouldn't even have bothered me if they'd left Spock dead. After all, they'll have to start adding more new lead characters eventually. Shatner and Nimoy will only be able to assay their roles for another handful of sequels before they're just plain too old to play the dashing leads. Remember, we all lost ten years between the end of the original series and the release of Sfar Trek: The Motion Picture.

I think introducing new characters is much more important than running the old ones through their paces. It was the stories which were always the most important element of Star Trek for me, which is why I was glad that the silly parts of "Return to Genesis" were straightened out and thrown away. I'd like to think that I might have had some small measure of effect on that - in the early summer of '83 I sent a copy of an earlier draft of this article to Gene Roddenberry, which he kept. It included my comments on every facet of the "Return to Genesis" outline, especially the parts that didn't make sense. But if I really had any effect, I wish it would have been to keep the Enterprise from becoming a glittering light show for Paramount to use in their coming attractions, proclaiming it to be, "the last voyage of the starship Enterprise!"

Maybe blowing up the Enterprise is their idea of change, and if it means sending the characters off in new directions instead of coming back full circle to where they started, such as they did at the end of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, then perhaps that's not such a bad idea after all. I want to see Star Trek move ahead instead of finding more ways to keep running in place. Star Trek is about the future, so let's hope they give it a future of change instead of just disguising the old format under new uniforms and vessels.

 

Shuster, Hal (Ed.), "Star Trek III - Between Screenplay and Film" in Star Trek 20th Anniversary Tribute, Pop Cult, Canada, 1987, p.56-59.

 

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