Following Roddenberry’s 1991 death, Trek novelist Michael Jan Friedman was approached by Paramount-owned Pocket Books to novelize Roddenberry’s “God Thing” script for publication. Friedman says he was “dismayed” when he read Roddenberry's screenplay:

It was disjointed — scenes didn’t work together, didn’t build toward anything meaningful. Kirk, Spock and McCoy didn’t seem anything like themselves. There was some mildly erotic, midlife-crisis stuff in there that didn’t serve any real purpose. In the climactic scene, Kirk had a fistfight with an alien who had assumed the image of Jesus Christ.

Friedman created an outline for the book but ended up not writing it because Roddenberry’s lawyer and widow objected to the additions Friedman had in mind to expand the story to the length of a novel. Friedman remembers that because Pocket Books and Majel Roddenberry could not agree on the book’s direction, the novelization was scrapped.

According to Roddenberry associate Jon Povill, a number of “Trek” vets – among them Harlan Ellison, Norman Spinrad, John D.F. Black, Richard Matheson and Ted Sturgeon – may have pitched Roddenberry ideas for a Trek movie during this period.

In late summer Povill himself pitched Roddenberry a time-travel movie that sent the Enterprise to Ancient Vulcan to prevent a desperate wartime decision that precipitated terrible consequences for the planet in the Kirk-Spock era.

While Roddenberry deemed Povill’s Ancient Vulcan pitch better suited to the small screen, the following December Roddenberry invited Povill to help him write another time-travel script – this time about a desperate Montgomery Scott traveling back to 1937 and creating a chain of events that prevents World War II, John Kennedy’s assassination and the creation of The United Federation of Planets. In this script Einstein, Kennedy, Churchill and Hitler all get to tour the Enterprise. Diller passed on this script as well.

What an awful title.

Sir Paul McCartney wanted Star Trek creator to make Wings space movie

Sir Paul McCartney once wanted to make a space film about his band Wings.

The Beatles star was a fan of Star Trek and asked its creator Gene Roddenberry to pen a galactic story about the band, according to a titbit in new book The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete Uncensored, Unauthorised Oral History Of Star Trek – The First 25 Years.

In an excerpt of the book in The Hollywood Reporter, it was revealed that there were plans for Macca and Gene to team up.

Gene’s executive assistant Susan Sackett said: “Paul contacted him and was a Star Trek fan. He invited us to a concert, which was great, and we met backstage.

“Paul hired Gene to write a story about the band and it was a crazy story. Paul gave him an outline and Gene was supposed to do something with it. It was bands from outer space and they were having a competition.”

However, as talk grew about bringing back Star Trek, the plan fell by the wayside and Gene never completed his tale.

Susan said: “I have no idea whatever happened to that. It’s probably stuck in a file, like the end of Raiders Of The Lost Ark.”