The existence of Star Trek: Phase II—the plans for a Star Trek continuation series in the mid-1970s that eventually gave way to Star Trek: The Motion Picture—has been known for a very long time at this point. We’ve seen concept art, we’ve seen story ideas, and we’ve seen it for long enough to see how those nuggets have gone on to influence the Star Trek that we would go on to get for another 50 years. And yet, there’s still plenty to enjoy in this new documentary about the bumpy road Star Trek almost made on the journey home back to our screens.
Produced by the Roddenberry Archive and OTOY—the companies behind those viral Star Trek short films and a litany of other archival Trek projects and videos—Lost Voyages is a 30-minute documentary that charts the story of what happened when Paramount realized the success it had on its hands when Star Trek became a syndication hit. It covers early potential movies that never happened, all the way through the ideation and early production work for the next Star Trek show—and how things fell apart when the last-minute decision was made to take one of its episodes, “In Thy Image,” and turn it into a theatrical Star Trek movie.
Alongside insight from Phase II producer Jon Povill and writers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens (and even Trek icons George Takei and Walter Koenig), Lost Voyages offers a lot of fascinating insight into how Phase II came about and gives plenty of crisp looks at behind-the-scenes material from the show’s production. Of course, in OTOY’s style with these Trek lookbacks as well, there’s plenty of 3D material replicating concept work done for the series, extrapolating how its sets might have looked like the updated Enterprise bridge (which would be iterated on and used for The Motion Picture), or imagining the finished and finalized model for the initial Enterprise refit.
While much of the history is already known about Phase II, it’s still an intriguing look back at what might have been—in a way we’ve never really seen it before.
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