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Apr. 25th, 2014 06:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolariWelp, I just finished the Gene Roddenberry Second Draft of "In Thy Image." Most of the material I've read about it over the years says it's terrible.
It's actually not. In fact, most of it is word for word Harold Livingston's pretty darned amazing First Draft. But it's much slower...scenes Roddenberry added actually tend to bring the story to a halt to explore the world of the future.
The opening of the released movie folows Livingston's first draft pretty closely: The Klingons get attack, Epsilon 9 gets the info and sends it to starfleet, who calls Kirk pretty immediately. Roddenberry's starts with the Klingon attack, then goes to Earth, where Kirk and his lover Alexandria are skinny dipping in San Francisco. Kirk gets a Grade One Priority call to go to Starfeel Command, which they do...by traipsing slowly into San Francisco, through parkland and showing off the city. Not exactly an attention grabbing start.
Ilia tends to get more character development from the First Draft. Assumedly the "casual sensualness" of her species would have been explored thrugh the Phase II series, but in the movie, it's highly exaggerated. I'm guessing as this was a draft meant to be a movie, versus the first draft, which was mean to be a pilot episode, they had to get it in all at once. Problem is, it almost comes across as silly. Even International Ladies Man Kirk repeatedly turns her down as it's distracting even to him.
Despite some of the clunkiness though, the script does show signs of new ideas leading into the movie. As much as I like Harold Livingston's First Draft, it has a two major major flaws - a reason for V'Ger to be coming to Earth to begin with and V'gers "I'm outta here" ending.
In the First Draft, V'Ger is on it's way to the holy home of the creator, to....we don't know. But once it finds out it's infested with humans it becomes intent on wiping it out. In Roddenberry's version, its much clearer that V'Ger is heading back to meet the Creator, "Nah-sah" aka NASA. The first inklings of "learn all that is learnable" appear here.
In the First Draft V'Ger, once realizing humans built it, turns and heads home saying it can learn nothing from lower life forms. Decker remains aboard for the further adventures of Star Trek Phase II. In this draft, this script still has V'Ger turning and leaving (although even more ham handedly by just going without a word) but not before NASA says that the records V'Ger needs is within itself. And that V'Ger, given all the information from Earth, is unable to parse it. Decker beams only his mind to V'Ger, and V'Ger assimilated him, allowing him to understand the beauty and significance of organic life. It's still not perfect, but a good idea.
Decker's death signals to me that this script is definiately a movie script, versus a TV script. Decker was pretty integral to Phase II (Decker was to be Kirk's TV replacement should Shatner become unaffordable). With him gone, his story ends like in the movie.
In all, this is a weaker script than Harold Livingston's first draft, but it had better ideas, and shows a few steps into what ended up as Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
It's actually not. In fact, most of it is word for word Harold Livingston's pretty darned amazing First Draft. But it's much slower...scenes Roddenberry added actually tend to bring the story to a halt to explore the world of the future.
The opening of the released movie folows Livingston's first draft pretty closely: The Klingons get attack, Epsilon 9 gets the info and sends it to starfleet, who calls Kirk pretty immediately. Roddenberry's starts with the Klingon attack, then goes to Earth, where Kirk and his lover Alexandria are skinny dipping in San Francisco. Kirk gets a Grade One Priority call to go to Starfeel Command, which they do...by traipsing slowly into San Francisco, through parkland and showing off the city. Not exactly an attention grabbing start.
Ilia tends to get more character development from the First Draft. Assumedly the "casual sensualness" of her species would have been explored thrugh the Phase II series, but in the movie, it's highly exaggerated. I'm guessing as this was a draft meant to be a movie, versus the first draft, which was mean to be a pilot episode, they had to get it in all at once. Problem is, it almost comes across as silly. Even International Ladies Man Kirk repeatedly turns her down as it's distracting even to him.
Despite some of the clunkiness though, the script does show signs of new ideas leading into the movie. As much as I like Harold Livingston's First Draft, it has a two major major flaws - a reason for V'Ger to be coming to Earth to begin with and V'gers "I'm outta here" ending.
In the First Draft, V'Ger is on it's way to the holy home of the creator, to....we don't know. But once it finds out it's infested with humans it becomes intent on wiping it out. In Roddenberry's version, its much clearer that V'Ger is heading back to meet the Creator, "Nah-sah" aka NASA. The first inklings of "learn all that is learnable" appear here.
In the First Draft V'Ger, once realizing humans built it, turns and heads home saying it can learn nothing from lower life forms. Decker remains aboard for the further adventures of Star Trek Phase II. In this draft, this script still has V'Ger turning and leaving (although even more ham handedly by just going without a word) but not before NASA says that the records V'Ger needs is within itself. And that V'Ger, given all the information from Earth, is unable to parse it. Decker beams only his mind to V'Ger, and V'Ger assimilated him, allowing him to understand the beauty and significance of organic life. It's still not perfect, but a good idea.
Decker's death signals to me that this script is definiately a movie script, versus a TV script. Decker was pretty integral to Phase II (Decker was to be Kirk's TV replacement should Shatner become unaffordable). With him gone, his story ends like in the movie.
In all, this is a weaker script than Harold Livingston's first draft, but it had better ideas, and shows a few steps into what ended up as Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
