How popular/well received would Phase II really have been?

[Instant Sunrise]

Not too long ago I started a testing thread exploring how fans and the public would have received Phase II had it actually gone into production.

Phase II obviously being a continuation series of TOS that was canned and had it's pilot episode reworked into TMP and TNG.

I think that the biggest points of contention for the fans would be that addition of the new characters, Decker and Ilia (who would later be reworked into Troi and Riker) would be subject of derision by fans who felt that these people were somehow intruding on this already established group of characters.

However, the character that would be most hated would be Xon, a full-blooded Vulcan who was set to replace Spock in Phase II.

I'm sure there would be other, smaller issues that fans would have, with things like the redesigned Enterprise. However, if the series floundered in it's first season like TNG did, I highly doubt fans would be as forgiving, because it is just similar enough to TOS that it would be rejected as some bastard continuation of TOS. TNG had the advantage of being a different cast and setting, so people could at least accept it as being a separate entity as TOS. With Phase II, however, it was meant to be a continuation of TOS with a lot of new elements thrown in that would wind up in TNG.

So I'm curious to know, how do people think fans would have reacted to Phase II as a new TV series?

[Stofsk]

If it kept it more to TOS than TNG did, I would have probably liked it more than TNG. TNG changed a lot about the setting. Ironically, the first season of TNG tried to be ambitious, but the stories sucked.

On the other hand, Phase II means no movies. So I don't think this would have worked out well for Trek in retrospect.

[Temujin]

Yeah, if a lot of the old crew were there to keep it as TOS like as possible, it might have worked out. But if it becomes a Rottenberry masturbatorial fantasy, then a lot of the old school fans from watching the original series and early syndication are probably going to throw it back in his face.

[Skylon]

It looks like it could have been interesting. The TMP plot would probably work better as an episode. Norman Spinrad and Theodore Sturgeon were lined up to write episodes, meaning Roddenberry still had connections to solid sci-fi writers. The question is how much of his cool-aid was he drinking at this point...

I always found the interpretation we'd have gotten of the Klingon Empire more interesting than what we got in the TNG era...Imperial Japan versus Space Vikings: http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Kitumba

[Junghalli]

I always found the interpretation we'd have gotten of the Klingon Empire more interesting than what we got in the TNG era...Imperial Japan versus Space Vikings: http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Kitumba

Yeah that sounds way better than "drunken space Vikings RAR!".

Of course the canonical worldbuilding on Klingons post-TOS being almost entirely made of suck and fail is pretty much a dead horse by now, so I won't belabor the point further.

[Uraniun235]

The biggest problem would be Xon since Spock was the most popular character of TOS. But then again, we don't know how well the actor would have performed and how competently the material would have been written, so it's possible that the show might have been able to get past that.

I'm not sure that the new cast members would represent that big an intrusion - yes, it's true that by the end of TOS we had a fairly rigidly defined cast, but early on in TOS the secondary cast was much more fluid. I don't think that would have been as big an obstacle. I guess if you really wanted to know, you could try and find reviews of TAS and see how the fans responded to Arex and M'Ress. I'm inclined to think that it would be easier to accept the new elements because there were still many familiar faces, including Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy.

I think the series would be way more sensitive to shit scripts though - they can't afford the rolling disaster that seemingly typified 1987. Hopefully, Phase II would have occurred before Gene's lawyer became a total ogre to everyone.

[Patrick Degan]

Too soon after the network run of TOS, so Xon might not have been accepted by the fans. And I've read some of the script outlines for that first season: TNG's "The Child" was a Phase II reheat. And there was a John Meredyth-Lucas script involving Kirk being projected back in time as a "ghost" to the Pearl Harbour attack and getting romantically involved with a woman in Honolulu. "Kitumba" looked promising and I've read part of that one (and it's about to be produced by the Cow Creek fanvid group, BTW), but other scripts were just typical 70s TV cheese not much better than what viewers got on Logan's Run. Also, it was wholly the wrong time to try the sort of experiment that worked for TNG. Back in that era, a series produced wholly for syndication would have gotten no consistent timeslot and would have failed in the ratings fairly quickly. Going the Phase II route would have sent Star Trek permanently into cult TV rerun limbo. It might have been getting its first film only now, as Hollywood increasingly pillages the TV graveyard for feature films since they've stopped even pretending to do anything creative anymore.

[Cecelia5578]

I've always wondered what level of special effects and production values you'd get from a late 70s Trek tv show. I'm sure the sfx wouldn't be nearly as epic as TMPs were, with a lower television budget and all, but I'm still sorta intrigued by the idea. Its weird thinking about a rehash of TOS 10 years later, and exactly what it'd look like on the tv screen week after week.

[Aaron]

Would we have gotten the cock-showcasing uniforms?

[Skylon]

Would we have gotten the cock-showcasing uniforms?

The screen tests of Xon and Ilia had them in TOS uniforms. I think they were to be retained.

[Temujin]

Aside from the scarlet uniforms introduced in TWOK, the originals were probably the best. Hell, the style looked good when used on both DS9's tribble episode and Enterprise's Mirror universe episode.

Edited for clarity.

[Aaron]

Aside from the scarlet uniforms introduced in TWOK, the originals were probably the best. Hell, the style looked good when used on both DS9's tribble episode and Enterprise's Mirror universe episode.

Edited for clarity.

I wouldn't have objected to TMP's short sleeve shirt with the original style pants. It was really the jumpsuit that was horrible.

[Instant Sunrise]

I wouldn't have objected to TMP's short sleeve shirt with the original style pants. It was really the jumpsuit that was horrible.

So horrible, in fact, that the cast threatened to walk if the uniforms weren't redesigned.

[Tsyroc]

I rather liked some of Kirk's uniforms in TPM, but the jumpsuits were horrible. Which makes me wonder why jumpsuits came back like gangbusters for TNG. The crew and civilians were wearing those things all over the place for some reason. Whoever thought that was a good idea has never had to do real work in a jumpsuit. If the thing isn't loose fitting you run into all sorts of problems when squatting, bending, and raising your arms over your head.

[Temujin]

They actually used them a fair bit in TOS as well, along with coveralls.

Ex-Astris-Scientia has a page on all the uniforms.

[Tsyroc]

They actually used them a fair bit in TOS as well, along with coveralls.

Ex-Astris-Scientia has a page on all the uniforms.

I remember the ones for TOS. Maybe they fit them better when they used them. For TNG I just remember everyone under the sun wearing jumpsuits. They looked terrible on the civies and kids.

[Fullmetal Anarchist]

As people have alluded to it's not just about the uniforms!!
In all fairness I came to trek around about The Best of Both Worlds which when I saw it on BBC2 at age 10 in 1995 turned me on to sci-fi for life. Having watched the movies before I saw TOS I can honestly say Phase II wouldn't have been as good as TNG. TMP was just about pretty effects and a launchpad for a possible new series. They did 10 times better on WOK with less than half the budget. WOK led a return to Trek in a way that TMP never achieved. If Phase II had been made it would probably have killed Trek and I would never have watched hours of great TV and found something I really loved.

[Aaron]

IIRC the TOS jumpsuits were a lot looser.

[Temujin]

They really do seem like they were designed to fit pretty well. Loose in the right places and tight in the right places. Some of them actually looked quite snazzy. I think the tapered and belted waist, the short to medium length sleeves, and the open v-neck all helped.

[OsirisLord]

I expect the same thing would happen as did with the 2009 Star Trek movie. Hard core fans would deride the new characters stomping around on sacrosanct ground and there would be much clamoring of "They changed it now it sucks!" But at the same time it would probably bring in a lot more new fans.

[Skylon]

I rather liked some of Kirk's uniforms in TPM, but the jumpsuits were horrible. Which makes me wonder why jumpsuits came back like gangbusters for TNG. The crew and civilians were wearing those things all over the place for some reason. Whoever thought that was a good idea has never had to do real work in a jumpsuit. If the thing isn't loose fitting you run into all sorts of problems when squatting, bending, and raising your arms over your head.

FYI: Those jumpsuits still saw use in the films. They were dyed, modified and used as the enlisted uniforms in the other five TOS films.

[Instant Sunrise]

Okay, having read the script for "In Thy Image," the pilot for Phase II that ended up being adapted into TMP, I am convinced that Phase II would have been a flop as a TV series.

Xon comes across as a mix of first season Data and Spock. In this script, Xon is reponsible for an incident that would become the wormhole sequence. After Xon takes over the position of science officer from Decker, he starts from scratch in reprogramming everything while the Enterprise is underway.

There are more scenes of future San Francisco, a lot of what the script called for here was recycled into Risa for TNG and later series.

Ilia wants to jump Sulu's bones for some reason. There is a bridge scene early on that establishes the Deltans, and then a recreation deck scene later on.

The relationship between Kirk and Decker is strained in the beginning, but unlike TMP it doesn't make Kirk look like an unreasonable cockass towards Decker. Kirk knows he's rusty and that Decker is inexperienced. There is a dialog scene between Kirk, Decker, Mccoy and Chapel where they straighten things out after the proto-wormhole scene.

The probe that V'Ger sends is not a huge lighting thing, it sends a bunch of mechanical probes to the enterprise. V'Ger is able to hack the Enterprises computer directly.

V'Ger and the Ilia probe are more direct with exposition. The creator is named as Nasa. (The original treatment was N'sa).

Kirk takes the Ilia probe to future SF and then to a records room with a bunch of NASA material, which eventually convinces V'Ger.

The Ilia probe tries to bang Xon, unsucessfully. The spacewalk scene and the scene where Kirk and co visit V'Ger are kinda combined into one. The prober is Voyager 18, not 6.

Overall I would say that TMP was an improvement over this script.