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thecurioustale · 1 month ago

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I Watched Videos of Star Trek Films that Don't Exist, and They're Surreal AF

If I were ever going to make a Star Trek film, I know what the premise would be. I've thought about it a lot over the years. I have the whole beginning of it completely storyboarded and blocked out in my mind. This opening sequence is a set piece with mystery, action, and adventure, and really it's an entire, self-contained story unto itself.

I'm going to talk about all of that, and show you a video that is screwing with my mind, and more besides, under the fold!

CAPTION: J.M. Colt stands with her hands behind her back in the Roddenberry Archive video "765874."

The Inspirational, Infatuational J.M. Colt

My Star Trek film would feature the original Star Trek character of J.M. Colt in the starring role.

(Tangent: If you're not a hardcore Trekkie, you may have never heard of Colt. She only appeared in the original Star Trek pilot "The Cage" (the one featuring Captain Pike), and was basically the most peripheral member of the Enterprise crew to still get her name in the credits. She was the captain's new yeoman (a secretarial personal assistant), the previous one having recently been killed on a landing mission. Pike was feeling guilt over his last yeoman's death, and for protective patriarchal reasons he didn't like it that his new yeoman was female. Meanwhile, Colt herself was head-over-heels crushing on Pike, which led to some deep awkwardness between the two of them. Although Colt had very little to do in the story, she was one of the officers to get kidnapped by the Talosians and held prisoner alongside Pike, in the Talosians' misguided hope that Pike would pick one of his female shipmates to mate with and create a self-sustaining line of humans for the Talosians' zoo. This is all a bit chauvinistic and patronizing of course, but the dynamics between them are a natural enough thing in human behavior, and in any case—and more importantly—Colt behaved with professionalism and bravery throughout the entire episode, including choosing to stand her ground in the face of death when Number One set the phaser to overload to deprive the Talosians of human zoo animals.)

We never saw Colt again after "The Cage," except in a few beta-canonical comics and novels. In the original Star Trek series she was replaced by Yeoman Janice Rand, who gave off very different vibes. Colt is also not present as a character in the present-day Star Trek: Strange New Worlds show (notwithstanding the easter egg of an unrelated alien extra named "Colt" on the background of the Enterprise bridge in one scene of Season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery) , so most Star Trek fans today don't even know Colt exists.

But she certainly made an impression on me! Some of it was actor Laurel Goodwin's beauty, I guess. Other than her being skinny and not especially tall, Colt is basically my ideal of a beautiful partner, and she was one of many visual influences on my creation of Silence Terlais.

But it's not just beauty: There is something tantalizing about a character whom we are introduced to, and whom come to like, but never get to truly "know" because they aren't developed very far, or aren't the center of attention, or the media they're in ends. I feel this way about Tasha Yar from Star Trek: The Next Generation as well. She died in the first season, so there's a huge "What if?" hanging over her. That's what Colt is for me: "What if?"

Because Colt had so little time with us and was then cast away and forgotten, my imagination is free to run wild about who she might have become and what she might have achieved. And maybe it's for the best this way. I don't like how they treated Yeoman Rand in the series, and I'm sure they would have done much the same to Colt. And for all that disrespect she wouldn't have gotten much screentime anyway. So, if anything, maybe it's better that Colt only ever appeared once and was left an immaculate mystery ever after, unsullied by '60s misogyny and 2010s cynicism alike.

More so than beauty, then, this tantalizing sense of mysterious incompleteness is the biggest reason why I actually based not one but two characters in The Curious Tale off of J.M. Colt: There's Jayem Colt (not so subtle, eh?), who keeps the red hair but is much older (about 55 – 60 in our years) and is the captain of one of Silence's sandships. This Colt later goes on to join the Handsel Band as one of its leaders. And then there is Ravel Vraske, who has brown hair but otherwise looks reminiscent of the original Colt and is about the same age as her. Ravel is one of the last survivors of deceased Guard of Galavar Zirin Aloryane's doomed-before-the-story-begins project to bring the Galance Ideal to Relance and therein sway the nations of the world to join Gala without using force or violence. Ravel proves indispensable in the Handsel Band and over time becomes its best "swayer."

But the original J.M. Colt remained a tantalizing figure for me too, all through the years. I like to imagine that she built a great career in Starfleet and rose to become the captain of her own starship one day.

Star Trek: J '79

It's no secret that I think Star Trek: The Motion Picture is the greatest Star Trek film ever made by an order of magnitude, and one of the best science fiction films of all time.

At the end of that film, as you may recall, the lost NASA probe Voyager 6—elevated by an alien machine civilization into this massive, conscious entity—has returned to Earth to complete its centuries-old mission of learning all that is learnable and returning that information to its "creator."

In the film, we never actually learn whether this happens. Decker inputs the final command personally, and he and Probe-Ilia physically join with "Vejur" (or "V'Ger" if you like) and transcend the Universe. Presumably, Vejur would have transmitted its information before it went, since that was its purpose after all, but we're never told either way. (And while some fans speculate that it didn't happen, due to Vejur destroying its own antenna lead and fixing on Decker as the one to deliver its report to, neither of these speculations necessarily precludes the possibility that Vejur still transmitted its report.)

I like to imagine that it did happen, that Earth was inundated with hundreds of years worth of learning from a Galaxy-spanning scientific demigod of its own creation, and that this was a major reason as to why and how the Federation became so much more advanced and prosperous over the next hundred years by the time Star Trek: The Next Generation came around. I like to imagine that it would have taken the Federation's best minds many decades to delve into all the information that Vejur sent, all its secrets and mysteries (still not fully comprehending everything), and I expect that the ensuing discoveries would have caused great upheaval and transformation as the Federation assimilated all that knowledge. And I like to imagine that Vejur's treasure trove of information led to a great many starship expeditions to investigate curious things that Vejur documented across the Galaxy.

My Star Trek film concept would take this premise and run with it. The movie I envision making mostly draws from the aesthetic and tonal palette of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (hence the working title of "J '79"), right down to those groovy Starfleet uniforms and those luscious '70s décor styles. And it would keep the film's sense of wonder and optimism, humanism and discovery, mystery and exploration—which has often been lacking in Star Trek media. But my movie would also draw somewhat from the underappreciated horror vibes from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which is probably the scariest and most gruesome of the thirteen Star Trek films to date, even though most people remember it as an action film.

But, basically, I would pitch my Star Trek film as a direct sequel to Star Trek: The Motion Picture—except with a different ship and crew.

The Opening Set Piece of Star Trek J '79

In the darkness of space, a Constitution Class Refit starship appears without any fanfare. It's not the Enterprise; it's another ship; but it looks just like the Enterprise we know from the original movies.

There is no star nearby. In the distance there is a modestly glowing, magenta nebula which provides a pale, wan light that just barely describes the contours of a rogue planet that's dark purple, black, and brown. There's no captain's log, no speaking of any kind.

We cut to the planet's surface, as a sizable landing party beams down in the foreboding style of the middle TOS Star Trek films. The planet is silent, all except for the tiniest rustle of a breeze. The atmosphere is completely minimal and unbreathable, but neither is it noxious, so instead of wearing full-helmet suits the landing party only has nasal breathers—plus jackets since it's very cold.

There is no life. But there are spectacular, ancient ruins, in stone so black and glassy that it's like looking into the void. Domes and pyramids and viaducts, all standing or lying in ruin amid countless years of sand and rock.

The landing party members perform their initial scans and report to the Captain, who sends them off in various directions to explore different points of interest. He remains behind to check out some smaller ruins in the immediate vicinity, and one of the other officers stays with him—a redheaded female officer whose name you can probably guess. He asks her advice, and what she gives him is sound and wise, but also rather limited, as a good advisor arguably should be: not packaging instructions so as to be the de facto leader themselves, but identifying relevant information and leaving it to the actual leader to make the decisions.

Vejur had learned of a magnificent, vast civilization, unspeakably ancient and now long gone, but remembered by a number of present-day civilizations through their monumental ruins. A bit like the Iconians or the Tkon Empire, for example, if you know your Star Trek lore—but not actually either of those civilizations. Older than both! None survives today who knows what these ancients called themselves, so they are referred to only by the descriptions left in text and tablature: the Feathered Builders. (A bit Chozolike, if you will, but also clearly not the Chozo.)

This starship, it turns out—I've toyed with calling it the Constitution but have never settled on a name that completely satisfied me—has been on a mission for nine months trying to track down one of the Feathered Builders' major planets. The most important planets were all "lost" countless ages ago, making it difficult to gather information about the Feathered Builders' civilization or learn the secrets of their technology. The Federation had never even heard of the "Feathered Builders" until Vejur came along and did its thing, but once they did learn they put Starfleet on the case, and the Constitution has managed to finally track down one of the lost capital planets.

This all comes out in expository dialogue as the Captain and Colt explore some of the ruins.

As the investigation ensues, we begin to see the Captain making some questionable leadership decisions. Colt advises him where she can, but he's in command and he has the final say.

I'm going to spare you some spoilers (I'll explain why later), and instead I'll just say that, eventually, the landing party is able to activate an ancient device in the ruins that causes a massive tumult and brings to life an image of one of these Feathered Builders, somewhat similar to the Tkon guardian portal from the TNG episode "The Last Outpost." This custodial being speaks with the Captain, explaining that the Feathered Builders evolved and department from three-dimensional space-time. But the Captain doesn't acquit himself to the custodian's liking and the conversation gradually deteriorates until reaching the breaking point, where the Feathered Builder custodian decides not to provide the Starfleet officers with the information they are seeking. Instead, it commences to sweep up all of the ruins on the planet, violently spiriting them away to some other plane of existence so that the humans can never do anything with them.

At the last moment, Colt intervenes and takes over, trying to salvage the situation by revealing to the custodian and to us in the audience that she is the real captain of the Constitution and that this had been a field training exercise for the person we had thought was the Captain, who turns out to actually be her first officer. Colt pleads with the custodian to reconsider its decision, but the custodian is unmoved and soon every trace of artifice on the planet is completely gone, leaving the landing party alone with nothing but sand and rock: another dead end in nine long months full of them. Though at least they didn't lose their skins!

And from there the opening set piece moves forward into the movie proper, with Colt back on the ship explaining to her first officer that she plans not to recommend him for promotion, etc., and setting the main events of the movie into motion. It turns out that Colt is actually one of Starfleet's training captains, known for taking marginal command candidates under her wing and discerning which ones can be forged into captains and which ones just aren't fit for it despite being close. And this poor fellow is one of the ones who isn't quite there. He's not a villain, not evil, not stupid. He's just not quite good enough. We're always told that it's hard to be a starship captain and that very few people can pull it off, but we're rarely actually shown this reality in Star Trek. I thought this would make for a powerful thematic statement befitting of the opening scene of my movie, given the overall story of said movie.

Making Do with Reality

Of course, they're never going to approach me to direct Star Trek. And I succeeded a long time ago in divorcing my creative ambitions for science fiction out of Star Trek and putting them into my own science fiction series, Galaxy Federal.

So what I've done, in dribs and drabs over the past few years, is adapt my Star Trek movie concept for use in a future Galaxy Federal novel. Not the "Inaugural Novel" that I've been actively working on, but another novel that is very much on the way-back burner. And that's why I didn't want to share some of the spoilers with you, just in case that book ever actually does get written.

Cherry Ilyapa is a good replacement for Captain J.M. Colt. I had already, independently written Cherry as a "training captain" in the aforementioned sense: The Admiralty frequently sends her marginal first officers and entrusts Cherry to develop a nonbinding but influential assessment as to whether these officers should be entrusted with their own command or not. In fact, I think that's where I originally got the idea for the Star Trek movie to open with a fake-out that somebody else is the Captain instead of Colt.

It's quite gratifying how much of this set piece adapts with no difficulty at all into the Galaxy Federal world. The only things I really miss from Star Trek are the transporters, which Galaxy Federal doesn't have, and of course Colt herself. Though, I must say, Cherry is an excellent substitute for Colt if a substitute must be had. Also, and no spoilers, but the good thing about my plans for the Galaxy Federal franchise is that different novels aren't necessarily going to be published in chronological order. My Star Trek movie idea book can be set either before or after the events of the Galaxy Federal Inaugural Novel, as needed.

In many ways, the Galaxy Federal world is a better fit for my story idea than the Star Trek world is. That probably shouldn't come as a surprise; it's only natural that "the kind of story I would want to tell" would fit more easily into "a fictional world that I created myself." Star Trek has some tropes and tonalities that don't really agree with me, whereas Galaxy Federal has things exactly the way I want them. I'm not really into the pulpy, action-oriented side of Star Trek. I'm not very impressed by Star Trek's usual lack of visual ambition (The Motion Picture being a major exception). And I don't like how incestuous the Star Trek universe has become, with a small number of fan-popular characters (e.g. Data), polities (e.g. the Borg), places (e.g. the Mirror Universe), organizations (e.g. Section 31), and events (e.g. the Battle of Wolf 359) becoming entangled more and more messily and gracelessly with subsequent canonical (and fanonical) productions as the years roll on. In Galaxy Federal I can have my preference of never doing this, and instead let new stories spread out into their own space freely rather than make constant callbacks and plot tie-ins to previous canon. A little callback is necessary for franchise coherence and desirable for aesthetic or narrative purposes, but Star Trek has gone way overboard ever since Star Trek: Voyager.

Anyway! My Star Trek movie / Galaxy Federal book would be another grand epic adventure in the vein of the Inaugural Novel, as opposed to some of the lower-spec concepts I have for other Galaxy Federal novels, and it's nice to have something big like that on the horizon, even if I'm not actively working on it.

The Roddenberry Archive and the Memory Wall

The whole reason I am writing this post in the first place is that yesterday I saw an amazing video.

Two years ago, I read an article that threw my brain for a major loop: I saw behind-the-scenes photos of J.M. Colt on the set of "The Cage," in uniform and all that...except that these photos were from the 2020s.

This really screwed with my grip on reality, in both a good and a bad way. "The Cage" was produced in the 1960s. What was this sorcery? Well, upon closer inspection here's what had happened:

For many years now, an organization called The Roddenberry Archive has existed to collect and preserve relics of the lifetime of work of Gene Roddenberry. The Archive is a project of some of the biggest creative names in Star Trek, including Michael and Denise Okuda, Doug Drexler, and others. You can read more about them on their About page.

As a part of their preservation efforts, they have sought to bring Roddenberry's work to life in various ways, including in the form of audiovisual "experiences" that, essentially, are like movie trailers that recreate the vibes of prior incarnations of Star Trek. That's what led, for example, to the recreation of J.M. Colt standing on the 1960s bridge of the Enterprise in the 2020s. They were recreating that environment, and they had just so happened to pick the character of Colt—of all people!—to use as their filming model. Partly this was because one of the people closely involved with bringing the project together is the actor and producer Mahé Thaissa, who bears a passable resemblance to J.M. Colt, especially with a wig and the uniform. It was convincing enough that I genuinely read her as Laurel Goodwin's J.M. Colt!

Recently, they've been at it again with an initiative called 765874. And again they are using Colt as their central character, now with added Spock. Yesterday, YouTube showed me this:

youtube

This is mind-blowing! That thumbnail you see above isn't from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It's modern work; it's what the Roddenberry Archive is trying to do.

The video scans like a wordless movie trailer. It's very surreal, with the only live characters being Colt and Spock, interspersed with a variety of alien landscapes and a bunch of images connecting various events from Star Trek's history. Even the title of the experience, "765874 - Memory Wall" is deep lore. The Wall of Memories was a sequence planned for Star Trek: The Motion Picture that was cut in development and replaced with the famous "Spock Walk" scene (where Spock rides a thruster suit into the heart of Vejur and witnesses a visual record of Vejur's entire journey). It's a fitting title!

These little trailers—these "experiences"—are wonderful. Like I said before, they are extremely surreal to me. I cannot overstate this. They mess with my brain powerfully, in both good ways and bad. This kind of experience is magical for me. They're a little bit like eating faerie crack I guess, lol. The videos are unsettling, compelling, and thoroughly engrossing. And I prize this, because this experience is very hard to come by for me. Not much can make me question my grip on reality, let alone in an area that I'm passionate about like Star Trek (I don't even dare to hazard a guess as to how many hard disk sectors of my brain are dedicated to Star Trek lore).

These Roddenberry Archive experiences depict past Star Trek media that never existed and will never exist, with incredibly lifelike representations. And they feature as their starring character, of all the characters they could have possibly picked, the profoundly obscure character of J.M. Colt, who I just so happen to have a lifelong fixation with. But this Colt never speaks in these experiences, and never appears on screen in any given shot for more than a moment, and we never really know what she's doing. And all the individual shots are so short that you can never fully get your grip on them...sort of as if you can't look directly at them. It's all a mystery!

You can perhaps see why this is so incredibly trippy for me. My brain parses this stuff as real pieces of past Star Trek media that I somehow missed, giving them the quality of dreams. Yes, that's it. These things are like dreams to me! Except they're real. Except not quite.

It's kind of a delight that, after all these years, J.M. Colt is just randomly appearing in the real world in glimpses of period-accurate Star Trek productions, just like I had always imagined. Giving Star Trek: The Motion Picture new life in this way, when the actual franchise completely ignores it, and making J.M. Colt the face of that...just wow! It's a little slice of "What if?" brought to life in the best way! And, albeit obliquely, if I squint hard enough it's almost like I can see my own Star Trek movie concept brought to life.

I wish the people doing this work would talk to the suits and buy a license to make an actual Star Trek movie or a Netflix miniseries or something!

There are several more of these audiovisual experiences, including a very recent video celebrating the 30th anniversary of Star Trek: Generations (which was just a couple days ago) by showing Spock visiting Kirk's grave. You can find them on the Roddenberry Archive website or in this YouTube playlist. (There's a wonderful interview with William Shatner in the playlist that I also watched yesterday, where he talked about some things that I'd never heard him talk about before, and I've seen a lot of Shat interviews.) And here's a wonderful feature article on the website of their technical partners, OTOY, with a lot more information about the project.

But, in closing...what a strange treat! What a surreal delight. And what a cool opportunity to share my own Star Trek movie idea (or at least a small piece of it) for the first time.

#JM Colt #Star Trek #The Roddenberry Archive #OTOY #Mahé Thaissa #Star Trek: The Motion Picture #Galaxy Federal #Silence Terlais #Surrealism #The Curious Tale #Star Trek fanfiction #Youtube #Unification #Star Trek Unification #765874 #The human adventure is just beginning.

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