Gene Roddenberry killed Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 50 years before it premiered

Star Trek Phase II has long been one of those "what if" ideas that fans continue to talk about. The original follow-up show to Star Trek: The Original Series was an interesting one. The idea was to continue on the adventures of the USS Enterprise and James T. Kirk but with a slightly different crew around him. Those crew members would eventually be lost to time, but two of them would end up being used in Star Trek The Motion Picture (Willard Decker and Ilia). Beyond the cast, some concepts from the show also were adapted for the film, like the wardrobe.

It's always been an interesting concept to see and learn more about, but despite series creator Gene Roddenberry wanting to continue Star Trek to some degree, he wasn't keen on the ideas that Phase II had behind it. Paramount wanted to do the show differently and were tossing ideas at Roddenberry in an attempt to get him to join.

When Roddenberry realized what the show could become without him involved, he opted to change his mind and start working on the project. In the book, "The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams: The Complete, Uncensored, and Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek", Roddenberry reveals why he got involved, saying;

""When Paramount originally approached me to do a new series, I turned them down. I did not want to devote the tremendous amount of time necessary to produce another show. There is only one way I know to write and produce, and that is to throw my energy at the project all the time.

So when they began to think about a second series, I said I would not do it. When I turned them down, Paramount had someone else work on a new ‘Star Trek.’ It had a Vulcan captain and a lot of space cadets who seemed to mainly say, ‘Gee whiz, Captain.’"
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However, that's not entirely the truth. Roddenberry came back to "save" Phase II from writers Greg and Sam Strangis. Greg, more notably than Sam didn't have strong feelings for Star Trek, which was an issue for some. Yet, his idea wasn't bad. It sounds like the premise of Star Trek's Prodigy or even Starfleet Academy, just 50 years earlier.

In the same book, Greg shares the details of his idea and how close it came to happening, saying;

""My premise was relatively simple: It was a time when, in the future in the existing 'Star Trek,' the Klingons weren't enemies anymore and were allies. I wanted to create Starfleet Academy on a ship. You'd have a lot of younger players and older, senior leaders, and it was going to be the naval academy on a starship. I did some preliminary work and shared it with [Paramount Television executive] Lucie Salhany and whoever else was running syndication then, and it was going along swimmingly ... until I got a phone call that said, 'You're out, Gene's gonna do it.'""

When you look at just how the franchise has gone since Roddenberry's passing some 30 years ago, it's fair to say he wasn't always the best decision-maker, but he also wasn't always wrong. He hated Wrath of Khan and his involvement in The Next Generation resulted in some of the worst seasons in the show's history, with many noting that the future seasons were better. The ones Roddenberry had zero input on.

Yet, he wasn't always wrong. He fought tooth and nail to make sure that the franchise kept its initial spirit and it's always possible that the concept pitched wouldn't retain the same heart that other aspects of the franchise did. Who's to say? We never even got a concept bible, let alone any real work on the show to know if this idea would've worked.

So once again, we have a "what if" scenario to ponder about.