SamBOB Lost Seasons: The Treacherous Dreams of Star Trek

Article 1: “In Thy Image” by Harold Livingston

During its original network run in the 1960s, Star Trek was famously saved from cancellation twice by fan letter-writing campaigns—an unprecedented show of audience loyalty. That passion only grew in the 1970s as the series thrived in syndicated reruns and inspired a rapidly expanding convention circuit, transforming Star Trek into a full-scale pop-culture phenomenon.

With interest at a peak, rights holder Paramount Pictures began developing a television revival titled Star Trek: Phase II. Although the project was ultimately reworked into Star Trek: The Motion Picture, numerous scripts and story treatments were written to continue the voyages of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Conceived as a second five-year mission, Phase II aimed to retain the spirit of the original series while addressing ideas suited to a 1970s audience. Returning were Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, Uhura and Christine Chapel, while Spock was written out as having returned to Vulcan.

New characters included Vulcan science officer Xon, first officer Will Decker and Deltan navigator Ilia. Long discussed largely in terms of what it became, Phase II remains Star Trek’s lost season—its unfilmed stories preserved only on the page—and presented below.

1. “In Thy Image” by Harold Livingston Concept designer Mike Minor’s initial take on the new Enterprise

(In Thy Image) was conceived as the two-hour premiere of Star Trek: Phase II and later became the foundation for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The story recalls Admiral James T. Kirk to command the Enterprise after a vast, unknown entity destroys three Klingon vessels and heads toward Earth.

Reuniting with much of his original crew, Kirk also takes on new officers as the ship ventures into deep space. Tensions arise as Kirk measures Xon against Spock and forges a mentor-student relationship with Decker, one that challenges both men’s assumptions about command.

The intruder is ultimately revealed as V’ger, a long-lost Voyager probe that has evolved into a godlike intelligence seeking its creator and judging humanity as a flawed, parasitic species. Rather than resolving the crisis through force, the story culminates in an appeal to understanding, with Kirk and his crew arguing that humanity’s capacity for growth, curiosity and self-awareness makes it worthy of survival.

Article 2: “The Child” by Jon Povill and Jaron Summers

(The Child)—later adapted for Star Trek: The Next Generation—finds the Enterprise passing through an energy cloud that impregnates Lt. Ilia with a rapidly developing life-form. Within days she gives birth to a daughter, Irska, who ages at an accelerated rate and repeatedly saves the ship from catastrophic failures.

When the Enterprise’s molecular hull begins to disintegrate, a Vulcan mind meld by Xon reveals that the child must merge with a luminous entity trailing the ship. Once this occurs, the vessel is restored, and Kirk and his officers realize that Ilia and the Enterprise had served as successive “wombs,” allowing the child to absorb human emotion, attachment and sacrifice before evolving into a higher life-form.

Article 3: “The Savage Syndrome” by Margaret Armen and Alf Harris

(The Savage Syndrome) places the Enterprise in peril when Decker, McCoy and Ilia investigate a derelict ship orbiting a dead world and discover its crew slaughtered one another in an outbreak of unexplained savagery.

The mystery deepens when a space mine detonates near the Enterprise, releasing an energy wave that disrupts the crew’s neural impulses and reduces them to violent, primitive behavior. As order aboard the ship collapses, the away team races to identify the cause and reverse the effects before the starship—and everyone on it—is destroyed by the very madness they are struggling to contain.

Article 4: “Practice in Waking” by Richard Bach

(Practice in Waking) centers on a derelict sleeper ship carrying a single passenger in suspended animation. When Scotty, Decker and Sulu beam aboard to investigate, an accidental activation of the vessel’s controls plunges them into a shared dream state, where they awaken in ancient Scotland with no memory of their lives aboard the Enterprise.

There, they encounter the same woman from the sleeper ship and find themselves defending her from a hostile mob convinced she is a witch. Back on the Enterprise, McCoy discovers that the three men’s life signs are steadily fading, realizing that the longer they remain trapped in the dream, the closer they come to actual death.

Article 5: “To Attain the All” by Norman Spinrad

(To Attain the All) finds the Enterprise trapped in another dimension and boarded by a blue-skinned being calling himself the Prince, who offers humanity the ultimate reward—the attainment of the “All”—if Kirk proves his species worthy.

Forced to comply or remain stranded, Kirk allows Decker and Xon to undergo the test, transporting them into a vast maze where their personalities begin to invert, with the Vulcan relying on intuition and the human on logic.

Article 6: “The Prisoner” by James Menzies

(The Prisoner) begins when the image of Albert Einstein appears on the Enterprise’s viewscreen, claiming that he and other early–20th-century Earth scientists were abducted and preserved by an alien “storage battery.” Though Kirk doubts the claim, curiosity leads the ship to the planet in question, where a group of famous scientists materializes in the transporter room—illusions that Xon quickly identifies as part of a trap.

Article 7: “Tomorrow and the Stars” by Larry Alexander

(Tomorrow and the Stars) sends Kirk back in time to Pearl Harbor in 1941 after a transporter malfunction, initially rendering him ghostlike and unable to interact with the physical world. He encounters Elsa Kelly, an unhappily married woman who gradually accepts Kirk’s impossible story, even as Xon and Scotty struggle to retrieve him.

Their attempts inadvertently make Kirk solid again, leading to a deepening romance and a moral dilemma familiar to Star Trek: whether Kirk should warn Elsa about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor or preserve history and return to the Enterprise.

Article 8: “Devil’s Due” by Williams Lansford

(Devil’s Due)—later reworked as an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation—begins when the Enterprise responds to a distress signal from Neuterra, a solar system that theoretically should not exist. Beaming down, Kirk and his team discover a serene, idyllic world shadowed by deep sadness.

The planet’s elder statesman, Zxoler, explains that Neuterra’s people were granted 1,000 years of peace and prosperity by a powerful being called Komether after their own scientific excesses nearly destroyed the planet—but the bargain is now coming due, and all