These are the films that wanted so desperately to boldly go out into the world of Star Trek.
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00:00Look, I wanna be Star Trek, you wanna be Star Trek, that guy in the bushes over there behind
00:04you wants to be in Star Trek as well. There's nothing wrong with that. The Star Trek bit,
00:08I should mention. With that in mind, I'm Sean Farrick for Trek Culture, and here are 10 films
00:14that wanted to be Star Trek. Number 10, Avengers Endgame. I'm not actually joking. This is one
00:20that's actually been confirmed by the Russo brothers, both of whom openly admitted to being
00:24heavily inspired by Star Trek The Next Generation. Specifically, they said that All Good Things was
00:29the main point of reference when putting the film together. Both stories see the heroes
00:33travelling to various points in time, affecting the past and future. Both also see them when,
00:37in the past, trying their hardest not to interfere with the normal flow of time,
00:41though this proves impossible in a big budget film. There's a large emphasis on technobabble
00:45in Endgame, along with the standard explanations that tended to follow Trek's technobabble,
00:49allowing for plenty of in-jokes with the audience. Finally, once all was said and done with the film,
00:54the end credits begin to roll. Oddly enough, that's when the Star Trek inspiration is most
00:58brazenly on show. When the big six stars are credited, their signatures appear on screen.
01:03While the original Avengers theme swells around them, this is a direct lift or borrow from Star
01:08Trek VI The Undiscovered Country, another nod to the Star Trek fans, and another little inclusion
01:14that makes this movie far closer to a Trek film than many in the audience ever expected.
01:19Number 9, The Questor Tapes. The Questor Tapes was a made-for-TV movie written by Gene Roddenberry
01:25himself. The original idea was a reworking of his script for Star Trek's second season,
01:29Assignment Earth. In that story, a benevolent species sends Gary Seven to protect Earth from
01:34its own mistakes. In The Questor Tapes, a benevolent race installed android protectors
01:38among humanity there to guide and lead them away from harm. In both stories, the rapid
01:43advent of technology changes the parameters of the visitors' missions. The televised version
01:48of The Questor Tapes also contains elements that would appear again in Star Trek The Motion
01:51Picture. Questor is an android lost and looking for its creator. This, of course, is highly
01:56reminiscent of V'ger, though there are also shades of Data. When a situation calls for the need to
02:02seduce a lady, Questor states that he is fully functional. The movie almost went one step
02:08further. Though Robert Foxworth, who would later appear as Admiral Layton and Administrator Velas,
02:13played Questor in the film, Leonard Nimoy was originally asked to play the part. He went so
02:18far as to take part in make-up tests before he was passed over for the role.
02:22Number 8. Forbidden Planet. Now, looking at the year of release, 1956, a very obvious question
02:28springs to mind. How could Forbidden Planet want to be Star Trek nine years before the
02:33Cage was even written? Well, this is a slightly more subjective entry than the others on the list.
02:39Forbidden Planet was, in many ways, quite ahead of its time and would easily have been an episode
02:45of the original series. Morbius, Altera, Adams, and Robby the Robot are characters right out of
02:51Star Trek's very bible. Adams is clearly an inspiration for Kirk. Encounter stranded woman,
02:56woo stranded woman, bring stranded woman away with him. Robby is also credited as one of the
03:00first depictions of an android beyond a simple automaton, serving as inspiration for Data.
03:05The core thread of the film shows the battle between the conscious and the unconscious,
03:09along with the war between the ego and id. With that, the main villain of the film is a dream,
03:14one made manifest by alien technology, and the protagonists don't understand that. Star Trek
03:20itself owes more than a little to this seminal sci-fi film, while Forbidden Planet, had it simply
03:24come along a little later on, might well have suited William Shatner and Majel Barrett in the
03:28heroic roles, and probably would have, had Gene Roddenberry had a chance to say something about it.
03:33Number seven, Enemy Mine. Enemy Mine is a 1984 film directed by Wolfgang Petersen,
03:38serving as inspiration for The Enemy, a fourth season episode of Star Trek The Next Generation.
03:43It features Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr. as Davage and Jerry, two soldiers from opposing
03:48species marooned together on a barely hospitable world. The film is Star Trek to the core. First,
03:53both parties speak in languages that are barely understandable to each other, as both attempt to
03:58overpower the other. Then, as time wears on, they learn to understand each other before cooperating.
04:04The final mission of the film sees one defecting to the other side to save a child. The film has
04:09shades of the original series episode, Arena, in which Kirk fights the Gorn of Cestus III.
04:13That story revealed that the aggression between the Federation and the Gorn hegemony stemmed from
04:17a miscommunication, something that Roddenberry often returned to in Star Trek. In fact, Star
04:23Trek The Motion Picture begins with V'ger unable to understand why it is not receiving a reply from
04:28its creator. Enemy Mine could quite easily slot into the Trek franchise with minimal changes
04:33required, which of course was part of the intentions of the time. Number six, Serenity. Serenity,
04:38the spin-off and tying up of Firefly, owes a big debt to Star Trek, as did the series before it.
04:44While Joss Whedon said that he set Firefly in a region of space that the Enterprise would have
04:48flown right past, the Alliance forces represent a twisted version of the Federation from the point
04:53of view of the worlds that didn't exactly want to be under Starfleet's heel. Serenity sees an
04:58officer hunting down River and the crew of Malcolm Reynolds' ship, armed with the full authority of
05:03the government. The Browncoats are the Separatists, so often depicted as the bad guys in franchises
05:08like Star Trek, though shown sympathetically here. The crimes of the Alliance are revealed,
05:12coated in good intentions, with disastrous results. Gene Roddenberry described humanity
05:16going through hell to reach heaven, with both ends on show in Whedon's Wild West here. Reynolds is
05:22like Kirk with a greater sense of humour, though like Kirk, Picard and the rest, he has an infallible
05:27sense of doing the right thing, even in the wrongest circumstances. It's far from perfect,
05:32but Serenity attempts to show a future where people can do the right thing, something that
05:36Star Trek has preached since its earliest days. 5. Hellraiser, Bloodline
05:42Be honest, this one's a bit of a shock, isn't it? While there was an argument to include Hellraiser
05:473 on this list, featuring Terry Farrell in her pre-Deep Space Nine days, the fourth Hellraiser
05:52film actually fits the world of Star Trek a little better than many might assume. For one,
05:57the film is primarily set in space. The film, released in 1996, the same year that Star Trek's
06:03Contact hit theatres, sees a time-hopping tale that goes from an advanced future to Earth's past,
06:08in a plot that feels more than a little inspired by the Borg's temporal plans for humanity.
06:13The film introduces Angelique, a new variation on the Cenobites and demons from Hell. With the film
06:18also featuring Adam Scott, who has a small role as the helmsman of the USS Defiant in Star Trek
06:23First Contact, there are several similarities here. Angelique is easily likened to the Borg
06:28with both attempting to use temptation to gain power. Trickery is eventually the downfall of
06:33both the Borg and the Cenobites, as the descendant of Le Marchand deduces the way to destroy the
06:38demons, while the former Drone, Locutus, destroys the Borg. Though Bloodline may be one of the
06:45outliers in this list, there are enough similarities to say that this Hellraiser film
06:49was trying its best to be a part of the final frontier. 4. Arrival
06:54In many ways, Arrival feels like a big-budget, extra-long episode of Star Trek. The story
06:59revolves around the attempt to communicate with a species not of this world, with little to no
07:04emphasis on action. In fact, many of the negative reviews of the film received highlighted its slow
07:09pace and largely dialogue-heavy script. Amy Adams stars as the linguist brought in by the military
07:14to try and find common ground with this race of aliens. She feels like a lift from episodes of
07:18the original series, something we say very much as a compliment here, for when Star Trek was at
07:22its best, it was attempting to solve the issues of the universal nature of understanding. Arrival
07:27also focuses on the topic of time, something that features again and again in Star Trek.
07:34Both Star Trek IV and Star Trek First Contact see the various crews of the Enterprise travelling
07:39through time to save humanity, with many episodes of the various series visiting it as a theme as
07:44well. All else aside, Arrival is a film that dares to take its time to tell its story. Though
07:49visually impressive, it relies less on the CGI of the world that it creates and more on the story
07:54built within said world. It falls into the same type of sci-fi in which Star Trek lies, boldly
07:59going forward rather than simply blowing things up. Number three, Silent Running. Silent Running
08:04is a 1972 film directed by Douglas Trumbull, who would go on to create the effects for Star Trek
08:10the motion picture. The film depicts Bruce Dern as Freeman Lowell, an astronaut and botanist who
08:14serves aboard the Valley Forge. It's a biodome orbiting Saturn tasked with keeping various plants
08:20and fauna alive, to later be returned to an Earth that is currently unable to manage them. The film's
08:25theme of conservationism is pure Trek, with Lowell rebelling against his human superiors to protect
08:29the plant life aboard his ship. He befriends three drones, Huey, Louie and Dewey, who help him care
08:34for the greenery, though Louie is lost along the way. While there is a logical issue within the
08:38movie, how did everyone forget that plants need sunlight to survive? It's still a surprisingly
08:43forward-thinking environmentalist film for the time. The Valley Forge's mission would be borrowed
08:48by Star Trek Discovery, this time portrayed by the USS Tikov. While the Valley Forge itself takes its
08:53name from the aircraft carrier, there is also an Excelsior-class ship serving with that name during
08:58the Battle of Chintaka in Deep Space Nine. The film may owe more to 2001 than it does to Star
09:03Trek, but it still deals with the theme of humanity's own short-sightedness, a theme that
09:07had already been and would again be visited in Star Trek many, many times.
09:122. Star Wars A New Hope
09:15Now, put down your lightsaber for a second. When George Lucas was writing his space opera,
09:20Star Trek had been around for almost a decade. The galaxy far, far away takes inspiration from
09:25some of the more militaristic elements of Star Trek while still forging an entire universe of
09:30its own. In a strange case of a snake eating its own tail, Star Wars followed on from Gene
09:35Roddenberry's works, while also inspiring Paramount to scramble to get the motion picture
09:40up and running. Lucas himself stated that Star Wars stood on the shoulders of Star Trek, as the
09:44latter had softened the audience to the idea of fantasy in outer space. While Trek had stumbled
09:49through a second life with the arrival of the animated series, its fans had kept the franchise
09:54alive long enough for other attempts at sci-fi fantasy to make a name for themselves, including
09:59the tale of young Master Skywalker. To say that there has been a rivalry between Star Wars fans
10:04and Star Trek fans is a little bit of an understatement, but the original creators both
10:09saw the merit of each other's franchises. No matter which side of the debate one comes down on,
10:13it's clear that they both owe a debt of gratitude to each other.
10:161. Galaxy Quest
10:18What list of Trek-themed films would be complete without Galaxy Quest,
10:22the 90s parody that was effectively a forerunner to Seth MacFarlane's The Orville? It's both
10:26satire and a loving tribute to the original series, while also standing as its own thoroughly
10:30enjoyable adventure. The film began life as Captain Starshine, a script by David Howard,
10:34who struck on the idea of extraterrestrials believing that the actors really were astronauts.
10:39Although this version of the story was ultimately scrapped, the idea was passed to Bob Gordon,
10:43who added far more humour than had originally been present. Harold Ramis was hired to direct,
10:47though he passed on the project after Tim Allen was cast as Nesmith. Ramis wanted action stars
10:52who could do comedy, as opposed to comedians doing an action film, though he did eventually
10:55praise Allen's performance. The film has achieved cult status as both a movie in its own right,
11:00but also as a de facto Star Trek film, with The Protector now considered another ship in Star
11:05Fleet, even if it's a little bit more like the Cerritos in terms of its standing.
11:08That's everything for our list. If you reckon we missed anything,
11:11please drop it into the comments below. Please don't forget to like, share and subscribe.
11:14Remember that if you want to get in touch with us, you can follow us over on Twitter
11:19at TrekCulture, and you can catch myself over on Twitter at SeanFerric as well.
11:22We want to take this opportunity to express our solidarity to our friends over in the Ukraine.
11:27We wish them peace, we wish them safety. Jeti dovo i prostvitati. Thanks very much.