In the late 1970s, Paramount wanted to bring Star Trek back in some way. They commissioned Star Trek: Planet of the Titans, the lost movie in the franchise. The film was to be a time-travel adventure, potentially turning the crew of the USS Enterprise into the Greek pantheon. There was one story that outspoken atheist Gene Roddenberry consistently tried to put into Star Trek.
In that story, the Enterprise was dispatched to meet an ancient, robotic alien spacecraft that was the source of humanity’s various myths about “god.” Yet even in the 1970s, this was a controversial plot. But Paramount had artists hard at work trying to reboot the franchise, and Planet of the Titans was supposed to be a cinematic feature that fit with the stories audiences expected from the show.
Planet of the Titans Made Star Trek’s Characters Into Gods
While there is a script for Star Trek: Planet of the Titans out in the wild, the first version of the story never made it that far. Screenwriters Chris Bryant and Allan Scott submitted a story memo for the film. Like The Motion Picture, Planet of the Titans was set well after the five-year mission. The first part of the story sounded like a typical Star Trek adventure, but then things got weird. The film borrowed ideas from the controversial book Chariots of the Gods? by Erich von Däniken, which argued that ancient cultures got their technological and architectural skills from ancient aliens. At least Bryant and Scott turned those ancient aliens into humans.
The movie began with Starfleet and the Klingons fighting for control over a planet that was believed to be the home of a near-mythical, long-dead ancient alien race called the Titans. These were apparently different titans than the actual Apollo, who appeared in the Original Series episode “Who Mourns for Adonais?” The planet was also falling into a black hole. Why two species would fight over a planet set to be destroyed is an open question. Nonetheless, the Enterprise would’ve been pulled into the black hole and emerged over a prehistoric Earth.
As Kirk and the crew tried to figure out how to get home, they would’ve been revealed to be the Titans. Kirk himself was Prometheus, bringing fire to “Cro-Magnon” man. How, or even if, the Enterprise returned to the future after that remains unexplained. None of the script pages or story documents from this version made it to the fan community. But of the two versions of Star Trek: Planet of the Titans, the missing one is the most promising.
Planet of the Titans’ Rewrite Left the Enterprise Crew in the Future
After Bryant and Scott departed the project, writer Phillip Kaufman took a pass and changed much of Planet of the Titans. The film still began with a fight over the planet, but the Enterprise was tasked with rescuing its citizens. Two aquatic aliens, whom Spock knew to be logical, wanted to go back to the planet. Kirk and Spock ended up fighting because the humans also fell victim to “the one who calls.” Spock even killed a crew member. Eventually, the Enterprise made it home and Spock, cleared of murder, went to Vulcan to undergo what would become the kolinahr.
When the black hole started moving again, Kirk and Spock were reunited on the Enterprise. The crew wore goofy headbands to protect them from being manipulated telepathically again before the Enterprise was pulled through the black hole and emerged into a desolate and dead universe in the future. The concept of the Enterprise being able to separate its saucer and star drive sections came from Kaufman’s script. Much like Star Trek: Generations, which featured Kirk, the crew crash-landed the saucer section on a planet’s surface.
But from there, the plot involved genetic manipulation, the death of humanity, Kirk’s son from the future and a suggestion that the Enterprise crew would repopulate a decimated Earth. For all the complaints some fans have about V’Ger and The Motion Picture, it’s better than what fans almost saw on the big screen. While Planet of the Titans started with an interesting premise, the script it eventually produced would’ve been the strangest Star Trek of all time.