This HTML5 document contains 30 embedded RDF statements represented using HTML+Microdata notation.

The embedded RDF content will be recognized by any processor of HTML5 Microdata.

Subject Item

n2:

rdfs:label

Undeveloped Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes

rdfs:comment

It was prior to 1987 when Gene Roddenberry opened The Next Generation for story ideas from writers, though most of the earliest TNG plot concepts were rejected by him. (Star Trek: Communicator issue 114, pp. 56) Producer Robert Lewin later remembered, "There were a great many writers pitching to write the show. Several had story ideas with potential. He was shooting almost everything down because it didn't fit his concept of what the 24th century should be [....] The first scripts were not terribly good. I think only one was shot." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 25/26, No. 6/1, p. 85) David Gerrold recalled, "I'm meeting with writers, taking pitches, I'm told pitches are good to go to outlines; later Gene calls me into his office and says, 'We’re not buying those stories.' 'Why?' 'Their credits ar

dcterms:subject

n30:

n4:wikiPageUsesTemplate

n5: n6: n7: n8: n9: n10: n11: n12: n13: n14: n16: n17: n18: n19: n20: n21: n22: n23: n24: n25: n26: n27: n28: n31: n32: n33:

n15:abstract

It was prior to 1987 when Gene Roddenberry opened The Next Generation for story ideas from writers, though most of the earliest TNG plot concepts were rejected by him. (Star Trek: Communicator issue 114, pp. 56) Producer Robert Lewin later remembered, "There were a great many writers pitching to write the show. Several had story ideas with potential. He was shooting almost everything down because it didn't fit his concept of what the 24th century should be [....] The first scripts were not terribly good. I think only one was shot." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 25/26, No. 6/1, p. 85) David Gerrold recalled, "I'm meeting with writers, taking pitches, I'm told pitches are good to go to outlines; later Gene calls me into his office and says, 'We’re not buying those stories.' 'Why?' 'Their credits are junk.' 'Gene, what are you talking about? Their credits are not junk. These are proven writers.' [....] I was still getting calls from agents. I told them, 'I think we’ve got an edict from the studios that we’re not to talk to new writers right now.' I got called into Gene’s office again. 'Don’t you dare tell agents that! There’s been no edict. It’s my decision.' The first time he tells me that the studio says we can’t buy those scripts because the writers have junk credits. In that first meeting I said to him, 'What should I tell the agents?' He said, 'Lay it off on the studio.' So I lay it off on the studio, he calls me back into his office and says, 'How dare you lay it off on the studio? It makes me look like I’m not in control of my own show.' 'Gene, that’s what you told me.' 'I said no such thing.' 'All right, Gene, you’re the boss. Do you want my resignation?' 'No, I don’t want your resignation, you’re doing fine work,' and he started backing down." (The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years, pp. 70-71, 72-73) D.C. Fontana recollected, "If a story didn't work after it was turned in, it was cut off and shelved. We had very few of those while I was on staff." [1] Many of the first abandoned plot ideas featured Klingons. Richard Arnold explained, "Gene kept getting stories from professional writers about wars with the Klingons and he kept saying, 'Star Trek is not about Klingons!'" (Star Trek: Communicator issue 114, pp. 56) Many, many other undeveloped episodes involved the character of Jack Crusher. [2] Roddenberry frequently scrapped stories even he himself wrote. Maurice Hurley remembered, "He would come up with a story, say this is the story we want to do, then when that story was written out, he'd want to tear it up and throw it away. 'Oh, no, no. I got a better idea.'" (William Shatner Presents: Chaos on the Bridge) For TNG's first season, Fred Bronson pitched multiple ultimately never-made episodes to Robert Lewin. "I had about half a dozen stories," he noted. Bronson learned Susan Sackett had similarly been pitching ideas to Gene Roddenberry without much success, so the two decided to team up at the start of the second season. After Michael Piller arrived to take on the writing staff in the third season, numerous other undeveloped tales were offered to the series by Bronson and Sackett. "We got our appointment with Michael Piller and went in to pitch, and we had about a dozen ideas," Bronson recalled. "We went through every one of them, and it was 'No, no, no....'" Hence, most of these narratives were denied an opportunity to be produced, although the last one they suggested was subsequently bought and turned into the Season 3 episode "Ménage à Troi" . (Starburst, Special #29, p. 56) At one point in the second season, Maurice Hurley became so frustrated with the egos of the main cast that he proposed to Rick Berman a story arc that, if made, would have brought about some of the most radical changes in the format of the entire series, to allow for all the principal actors to be fired. Hurley recalled the premise: "I'll build the second season on the absolute tragedy that the Enterprise exploded by unknown cause and lost everybody, and now we must find the new Enterprise crew." (William Shatner Presents: Chaos on the Bridge) Robert L. McCullough was another writer who pitched some never-developed story ideas for the series. "I must have pitched 20 episodes," he reckoned. McCullough also implied that he pitched these concepts to Gene Roddenberry. (Starlog, issue 187, p. 55) From early 1990 , years prior to working on Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise, Mike Sussman sent three spec scripts to the TNG offices, while residing in Florida. They were all rejected, which Sussman laughed about decades later. Nowadays, he no longer has either of the three scripts and regards them as "terrible." [3] In his book Trek: The Unauthorized Behind-The-Scenes Story of The Next Generation, James Van Hise explored several never-filmed episodes written for Star Trek: The Next Generation, most notably a controversial episode written by David Gerrold, entitled "Blood and Fire". Some stories had to be abandoned because the writing staff couldn't figure out how to make them work. Ronald D. Moore archived the stories that were never produced, whose quantity wowed Brannon Braga. "I have binders of all the abandoned stories," Moore revealed, "and all the ones we bought, the ones we started to develop. But they filled, like, a three-ring binder; each season was filled with stories that we didn't get to. Some were pitches, some were internally developed, some never made it past just the one-page memo. But there are dozens, if not hundreds, of stories that we didn't do." (All Good Things (Blu-ray) audio commentary) Ronald D. Moore wanted Worf and Deanna Troi to, at one point in the series run, be married to each other. Though that ultimately didn't happen, Moore revisited the notion while writing DS9: "You Are Cordially Invited", in which Worf weds Jadzia Dax. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 503) Troi ended up marrying William T. Riker in the film Star Trek Nemesis. Another character concept that was repeatedly considered for TNG but never used in the series was a mischievous son of Guinan. The notion provided the basis for the character of Martus Mazur, in DS9: "Rivals", though the idea he was Guinan's son didn't make it into the episode's final version. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 109)