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they had allowed Spock to remain dead after THE WRATH OF KHAN?
Yeah, yeah, I know, 30-year-old movie, spoilers are silly. But I recently learned that my stepdaughter has never seen the Trek II-IV before, so when we watched them over Thanksgiving, she was genuinely surprised to learn that Spock dies in II. She had an odd reaction to his resurrection to III; she felt it kind of cheapened the far better II. I had the same thought back in the day, and I always felt it was kind of a shame that they brought him back. Yes, Kirk & Spock (probably McCoy, Scott, and Chekov too) had all briefly seemed to die during the original run, but it was always undone fairly quickly, and generally was just an illusion anyway. Spock’s resurrection in III is different somehow; more deus ex machina, more the-status-quo-is-god. Talking about it with Cinderella the Rhymer made me wonder if the Trek franchise as a whole might have evolved differently through TNG and so forth if Spock had stayed dead.
Of course it would have. Arguably it would have been better – we’d be spared the whole silly katra thing and endless stupid continuity tricks. It would have been very different.
On the other hand, we would’ve lost Star Trek 3. I could’ve lived without that, but it gave Nimoy the chance to direct, and to make Star Trek IV, which was defintely worthwhile and may have kept the franchidse going. Without 3, maybe we wouldn’t have gotten STNG and all that followed afterwards.
A more interesting question, to me, is what would have happened if the second Star Trek series being developed for television had occurred. They published a book of the concepts and scripts from this. Some of the ideas and characters ended up in the first Star Trek movie. But the second series would’ve been more like the first – with scripts written or inspired by science fiction authors, and a different line of development for the series and the characters. We would’ve missed the whole Return of the Original Stars movies, but would’ve had something more like STNG, with a new cast. The Klingons would’ve developed in a different way, and we would have Ilia’s race as another line of standard aliens.
I seem to recall that many of the concepts and several of the scripts for Star Trek: Phase II got used in Next Generation. Certainly Data (emotionless android seeking to emulate humanity) is very like Xon (full Vulcan seeking to emulate human emotions). Will Decker was, I think, originally intended for Phase II, and Will Riker is like him in many ways.
I also think we could have had Treks III & IV without resurrecting Spock. Delete the bit in II when Spock does the mind-mind on McCoy and says “remember,” and there’s no plot thread to sew up. (And I think that the remember bit was a last-minute add anyway.) You’ll need another mechanism for Kirk et al to hijack the Enterprise, but that’s doable. And Saavik can take over Spock’s role in IV easily – that is, she can do the science bits, and mind-meld with the whale, etc).
I really wish they had left him dead. Not that I dislike Nimoy or his acting or movies IV and VI but the resurrection of Spock cheapened the impact of TWOK.
I think it might have been better if there hadn’t been a III and V, and VI wasn’t worth cheapening II, so I could have lived with it.