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By GustavoLeao / 05:55, 18 March 2013 / Star Trek: Nemesis
More than thirty years ago, in 1975, the late Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry wrote a screenplay that he hoped would be the basis for the first Star Trek motion picture. Paramount rejected it, feeling it was too controversial. It was called Star Trek The God Thing.
In her book Inside Trek, former Roddenbery secretary Susan Sackett talks about The God Thing. Here are excerpts from the book.
It seemed simple enough. With a $3 to $5 million budget allocated,
Gene Roddenberry could write the kind of Star Trek script he has always
wanted to do. He arrived on the Paramount lot in May of 1975, ordered up
a stack of fresh white typing paper from studio supplies and began to
write Star Trek II. By June 30 he had turned out what he felt was a good
first draft of the script. The studio executives disagreed.
The story begins with Spock on Vulcan, emaciated, bedraggled, meditating with the Vulcan Masters. His thoughts are disrupted by something about to happen to Earth and his old friend Jim Kirk. He has not become truly Vulcan. Pai-ad, one of the nine Masters, speaks with him:
PAI-AD
Did you think to cast out the human within yourself? You have not.SPOCK
Then, I am nothing, Pai-ad. I cannot exist in two halves.PAI-AD
Your halves are needed, Spock. Move your thoughts with me to Earth.
The story then moves directly from Vulcan to Earth orbit and the drydocks over the San Francisco Naval Yards, where the Enterprise is being refitted. On the planet below, people are beginning to receive mental impressions of a returning God. At the same time a huge Object, one thousand times larger than a starship, is moving toward Earth, knocking off the U.S.S. Potemkin and hurtling a cluster of asteroids toward Earth. Kirk, now a grounded admiral, assembles his old crew (all of whom have risen higher in rank), and they take the newly refitted Enterprise on a mission of interception with the alien claiming to be God. The Object turns out to be more than just a vessel--it is a computer form so advanced it is a living entity itself. However, we discover that this God they've worshipped is actually the Deceiver, the computer-programmed remains of a race who were "cast out" from their dimension and into this one. At the end, Kirk wins out, the entity returns to its other dimension, and the Enterprise crew is left with a gift-- they return to Earth and discover that the "deceiver-God" entity had made them a gift of time in which they are suddenly younger and are now returning from their first five-year mission. Interestingly enough, many of these same story elements ended up in the ST-TMP script three years later.
Gene had been iconoclastically asking what if the God of the Old Testament, full of tirades and demands to be worshipped, actually turned out to be Lucifer. If so, was the serpent's offer of the Fruit of Knowledge actually a gift from the real God? Captain Kirk versus God. This was not the story Paramount had expected! The movie was postponed from fall 1975 until the following spring so that a new script could be found.
More details are given in the books Trek: The Lost Years, by Edward Gross and Lost Voyages of Trek and the Next Generation, by Bill Planer. Excerpts below.
"They turned me down a couple of times," said Roddenberry regarding a film version of the series, "then they finally said, 'Write a script and we'll give you an office on the lot and think about it.' They were not that serious about [it] when we first started. I think they had in mind a $2-$3 million picture."
William Shatner, working on the series Barbary Coast, finds GR typing away in an office, working on the script."So I said, 'There's gonna be a movie? What's it gonna be about?' He said, 'First of all, we have to explain how you guys got older. So what we have to do is move everybody up a rank. You become an Admiral, and the rest of the cast become Starfleet Commanders. One day a force comes toward Earth--might be God, might be the Devil--breaking everything in its path, except the minds of the starship commanders. So we gotta find all the original crewmen for the starship Enterprise, but first--where is Spock? He's back on Vulcan doing R&R five year mission--seven years of R&R. He swam back upstream. So we gotta go get him.' I call that show, 'What Makes Salmon Run?' So we get Spock, do battle and it was a great story, but the studio turned it down."
Although little is known about the resulting script, reports have stated that the premise questioned the very nature of God and the universe around us. Paramount was apparently not interested in a script which, essentially, pit Captain Kirk against God.
Director Richard Colla, who had helmed Roddenberry's The Questor Tapes, and a first season episode of TNG, was very familiar with that particular screenplay and recalls it fondly.
"That script was much more daring," he told journalist Edward Gross. "They went off in search of that thing from outer space that was affecting everything. By the time they got to the spaceship and got into its [the alien's] presence, it manifested itself and said, 'Do you know me?' Kirk said, 'No, I don't know who you are.' It said, 'Strange, how could you not know who I am?' So it shift-changed and became another image and said, 'Do you know me?' Kirk said, 'No, who are you?' It replied, 'The time has passed and you should know me by now.' It shifts shape again and comes up in the form of Christ the Carpenter, and says, 'Do you know me?' and Kirk said, 'Oh, now I know who you are.' And he says, 'How strange you didn't know these other forms of me.' Really, what Gene had written was that this 'thing' was sent forth to lay down the law; to communicate the law of the universe, and that as time goes on the law needs to be reinterpreted. And at that time 2,000 years ago, the law was interpreted by this Carpenter image. As time went on, the law was meant to be reinterpreted, and the Christ figure was meant to reappear in different forms. But this machine malfunctioned, and it was like a phonograph record that got caught in a groove and kept grooving back, grooving back, grooving back. It's important to understand the essence of all this and reinterpret it as time goes on. This was a little heavy for Paramount. It was meant to be strong and moving, and I'm sorry it never got made."
"I handed them a script and they turned it down,"
Roddenberry stated. "It was too controversial. It talked about concepts like, 'Who is God?' [In it] the Enterprise
meets God in space; God is a life form, and I wanted to suggest that
there may have been, at one time in the human beginning, an alien entity
that early man believed was God, and kept those legends. But I also
wanted to suggest that it might have been as much the Devil as it was
God. After all, what kind of god would throw humans out of Paradise for
eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. One of the Vulcans on board,
in a very logical way, says, 'If this is your God, he's not very
impressive. He's got so many psychological problems; he's so insecure.
He demands worship every seven days. He goes out and creates faulty
humans and then blames them for his own mistakes. He's a pretty poor
excuse for a supreme being.' Not surprisingly, that didn't sent [sic]
the Paramount executives off crying with glee. But I think good science
fiction, historically, has been used that way--to question everything."
In his book Star Trek Movie Memories, William Shatner talks about the plot of The God Thing.
"Somewhere out there," [Gene] starts off, his eyes widening as he continues, "there's this massive ... entity, this abstract, unknown life force that seems mechanical in nature, although it actually possesses its own highly advanced consciousness. It's a force thousands of times greater than anything intergalactic civilization has ever witnessed. It could be God, it could be Satan, and it's heading toward earth. It demands worship and assistance, and it's also in a highly volatile state of disrepair."
He goes on to tell me that the original crew of the Enterprise are now being embraced as heroes all over the galaxy. Spock has gone back to Vulcan to become head of their Science Academy. McCoy's married and living on a farm in the Midwest (although his wife, following in the time-honored tradition of women dumb enough to fall for an Enterprise crewman, is promptly killed off.) Everyone else has been given hefty promotions, and continues to serve on active duty. Additionally, Starfleet has offered Kirk a prestigious but deskbound admiralcy, but he's passed, preferring to retain his rank as captain while acting as a sort of consultant/ troubleshooter aboard Federation spacecraft. As we find him, he's visiting the recently overhauled Enterprise, supervising her new captain, Pavel Chekov.
Throughout the bulk of the next two hours Kirk rounds up the old crew, while studying and ultimately battling this "God thing." As the drama builds and we finally approach the craft, the alien presence manifests itself on board the Enterprise in the form of a humanoid probe, which quickly begins shape-shifting while preaching about having traveled to earth many times, always in a noble effort to lay down the law of the cosmos. Its final image is that of Jesus Christ.
"You must help me!" the probe repeats, now bleeding from hands, feet and forehead. Kirk refuses, at which point the probe begins exhausting the last of its energy in a last-ditch violent rampage, commanding the Enterprise crew to provide the assistance it needs in order to survive.
Without warning, the force summons up the last of its remaining strength to blast Sulu, severing the crewman's legs in the process. When Spock attempts to comfort the mortally wounded Sulu he, too, is blasted and left for dead. With that expenditure of energy, the vessel is weakened to the point of vulnerability, and the Enterprise unleashes a barrage of firepower that destroys the craft.
"With that," says Gene, "we begin pondering the notion that
perhaps mankind has finally evolved to the point where it's outgrown its
need for gods, competent to account for its own behavior without the
religiously imposed concepts of fear, guilt or divine intervention."
Thanks to The Complete Starfleet Library The God Thing for the book excerpts.
