Star Trek: The Motion Picture’s original draft had a more impotent V’ger

In Star Trek: The Motion Picture V’ger was an entity that threatened the existence of Earth and only confrontation could resolve it.

Every Star Trek fan that has seen Star Trek: The Motion Picture (and isn’t that most of us) remembers the final confrontation with the crew of the Enterprise and the vessel threatening to destroy Earth. The scene with Decker and Ilyia uniting with it gave a perfect imitation of man’s need for a higher power and God’s need for man. But that isn’t originally how the story would have played out.

Captain Kirk had outwitted computers aboard the Enterprise in Star Trek: The Original Series, and that was the intention here. Though V’ger was still threatening Earth, only because it didn’t know any better, in the first draft of the screenplay, there isn’t even a glimpse of it for the viewers to see. Instead, Kirk talks to V’ger in what William Shatner called “chewing scenery through a long-winded speech about the inherent goodness of man.” The speech works and V’ger backs down, leaving Earth safe.

The tepid ending felt anticlimactic, especially since V’ger would have essentially been a figurehead, and it’s hard to feel terrified when you don’t get to see what’s causing the terror. It’s kind of like going all the way to Oz and not getting to pull back the curtain and see the Wizard.

In addition, Decker wouldn’t have joined with V’ger, giving the entity the connection it had been searching for all along. It would have been difficult for viewers to accept that a speech about man’s goodness would have satisified the probe’s desire for that type of connection.

Written by Harold Livingston, the first draft was initially given the thumbs-up by even Gene Roddenberry. And though Star Trek: The Motion Picture wasn’t an excellent movie, the original ending would have made it that much more worse and certainly not worthy of the big screen. After all, we’d already seen Captain Kirk confronting computers, and there would have been no doubt who would have won.