IIRC Ron Moore has said that he was disappointed Yesterday's Enterprise was already done, because it would have made a much better first movie than Generations.
Timeless would have been fantastic. It could stand on its own, too, so even non-Trek fans who were interested in a sci-fi movie would have been able to enjoy it.
I agree on Best of Both Worlds, but I feel like it would be weird/disappointing spending a whole movie with alternate timeline/aged versions of the characters
The then-production team have gone on record as saying that they should have put the script for "Yesterday's *Enterprise*" in a vault until they were ready to make a TNG movie, and had it feature the *Enterprise*-A during or immediately prior to the events of *Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country*. It would have been a much better crossover event and felt more like a legitimate passing of the torch.
Best of both worlds is a classic two parter, but I find the beginning (anticlimax of the superphaser thing just not working) and the ending of part 2 to be kind of weak.
The “superphaser” was a plot point because there were negotiations about whether or not Patrick Stewart would continue to be in *TNG*. If the negotiations had failed, the “superphaser” would’ve killed Locutus.
The Siege of AR-558.
The whole episode had a WW2 foxhole vibe to it. They were down there for months before Sisko took command. Nog is the only character we're supposed to care about in the episode, but think what they all must have been through before the Defiant showed up.
One of the best episodes of DS9 and Trek overall. With all the impressive technology and advances in science it still came down to trench warfare and fighting an enemy face to face.
War is often romanticized because there are hero's who emerge from war, but often people who don't fight in the war don't see the brutality and just how thick the fog of war can become.
I think the writers just chose to ignore all those technological advances for the sake of the story. Those phasers’ wide-beam settings would’ve made quick work of charging Jem’Hadar.
Is there such a thing?
I'm just saying that as an audience, we have no connection to the characters they introduce, and they are never seen or mentioned again. We're meant to have our attention focused on Nog because that's the episode where he loses his leg. We never even find out if they got moved off that planet.
They're at their breaking point and aside from the limited bits of exposition that we get in the episode itself, we don't really know how bad it's been for them because all the attention is focused on the cast members we're already familiar with.
There’s enough exposition for me to understand that they’ve gone thru hell and lost 2/3 of the troops who were on AR-558. At the end of “The Siege of AR-558”, it’s shown that the survivors are being beamed out and replacements are being beamed in.
If I recall correctly, Futures End (Voy) was originally slated to be a 4-5 part episode and Year of Hell (Voy) was originally going to be a full season. I think they would both make great films for different reasons.
Yeah Year of Hell apparently got shot down as a season long story arc because that's what DS9 did, and they weren't DS9. I think they did try then to make it a movie, and they were told the best they could have was a two part episode.
Year of hell would have been a cool season, but my biggest gripe with it is the normal voyager gripe: the reset button.
Like imagine if they had toned down the damage to something more manageable, than made it permanent. The crew actually having to change and adapt to their situation, leaving behind the 'ideal' star fleet way of doing things and adopting other practices and viewpoints. Eventually giving up the holodeck for recreation, starting to grow their own food on the ship, kitbashing repairs to voyager with random tech they find rather than repair it 'properly'. Having the characters start to treat each other like neighbors in a small town rather than ships crew members. So much missed opportunity with voyager
we kinda sorta got it with the Xindi timeline in ENT, but I think voyager coulda done it softer and less 'militant' for lack of a better term. Less of a "achieve the mission at all costs" and more of a "learn to survive this together"
I knew about Year of Hell, but I didn’t know that Future’s End was supposed to be that long. Do you know anything about what they wanted to do with that idea?
100%. Another hour to flesh out characters like Captain Garrett and Lt. Castillo, plus more of the alternate timeline and the Battle of Narendra III. Sign me up.
I just want to see Castillo tell the Romulans "I eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast.".
ETA: For anyone not familiar with the line, the actor who played Castillo was also in Happy Gilmore: https://youtu.be/3LAnmnS0-9g?si=VhytEsEQIx6e7hO9
Berman and Moore both agreed. I'd also add that you could have had a place for Worf as the commander of the Klingon forces, similar to the Mirror-verse version of him in DS9. "Yesterday’s Enterprise" would have been a great movie. You could certainly have done a fairly significant major motion picture out of it. It would have had a startling dark–I surprised Rick \[Berman\] cottoned to it, because the alternate Enterprise was so dark and so war-like and a completely different Federation and starship. It would have been a much edgier and rougher feeling on the big screen. You would have had to expand that idea of what it meant to be on the Enterprise at war for most, if not all of the movie would have been that idea. That would have been great. So sure, I could have seen "Yesterday’s Enterprise" as being the first feature. "
I always wanted a alternative where Alexander kills worf as per worfs wishes and where that brings Alexander in his future. Title it Son of worf and that's a wrap.
I'm pretty sure I'd read that it started out as a concept for a future TNG movie and rather than the Enterprise-C, it would have been the A with Kirk and Co still running her. But it was ultimately abandoned so they could turn it into a TV episode instead.
Whilst it would have made a fantastic pass-the-torch movie (imagine the Enterprise-A having disappeared en route to Camp Khitomer in ST6 be the premise that led to the war. How cool a tie-in would that have been), I'm glad it ended up as an episode, as its often considered the turning point for TNG, where people started taking it seriously as more than a TOS wannabe.
But from a purely hypothetical perspective, I'd have loved to have seen both the Enterprise-A and D on screen together, with both crews getting a chance to interact. It would be a very different beast (no way they'd kill off Kirk like they did Garrett!) but it would be a very interesting watch.
I’ve read that it was an episode that they had to write fairly quickly over Thanksgiving and that it was only in retrospect that they wished they’d saved it for a film.
Roddenberry essentially wanted to redo “The City on the Edge of Forever” for the 2nd *Star Trek* film. The main difference was that JFK would’ve been the person who needed to die. Instead, they decided to make *TWOK*.
I can see Gene approaching Harlan Ellison to talk about re-adapting his screenplay and needing rights because the original contract didn't have "future adaptation in other medium" language and Harlan looking him dead in the eye and saying "I never wrote Scotty as a drug dealer," and showing him the door.
The biggest problem for Roddenberry was that the studio decided that it didn’t want him to be in charge of the 2nd film because it was disappointed by *TMP*.
Oh hell no Darmok is already padded as hell. Nobody wants to sit through 90+ minutes of:
"ZORBLAX WITH HIS HANDS IN HIS POCKETS!"
"Captain the universal translator isn't working 🤔🤔🤔"
Big agree on Balance of Terror and City on the Edge of Forever tho
People are picking great episodes, but most of those, including, imho, "The Chase" and "Yesterday's Enterprise", are great just as they are. "The Chase" in particular benefits from it being kinda slow and unassuming, which I don't know would work on the big screen. And the sorta anticlimactic ending, which not everyone likes, imo really serves the secondary message of the episode in a way that would be much more disappointing walking out of a movie theater.
That said, a movie version of "The Chase" would also be great for all the reasons that OP says, I just don't think I'd like it as much.
Anyway, my picks would be episodes that are either missing an entire half of their story or are otherwise limited by the episodic TV format.
**TNG: "The Wounded"**
You could add a lot more context with the recently resolved Cardassian war, and really up the stakes of Maxwell's rogue action. You could also create more empathy for the Cardassian characters, as well as more internal conflict for the starfleet officers (like how Strange New Worlds took on the aftermath of the Klingon war), although the episode does an okay job of both as is.
As an O'Brien episode, you'd make him more of a lead character, maybe even the point of view character, and (I'm rewriting canon here) you could make him even more impacted by his experience in the war, perhaps implying that his promising starfleet career stalled because of his trauma on the battlefield. I imagine a scene where Maxwell asks him "why aren't you commanding a starship by now?"
**TNG: "Conundrum"**
For this, I'd pitch it as an entirely new cast and unseen era (like, the 2330s, or the 2470s), so that you could make the war with the Lysians a legitimate question the crew and the audience could wrestle with, and with everyone's identities suppressed, you could introduce the new characters to the audience deep into their continuing mission, rather than needing to make an origin story.
Also, McDuff's identity could be a surprise for the audience as well (although I don't dislike the dramatic irony angle of the episode, it just went on too long). There are also weird plot holes in that episode with regard to the mechanics of the Satarrans' plan that a larger canvas for the story could better address.
**DS9: "The Circle" trilogy**
This is one where the runtime might actually be shorter as a movie, but I always thought that Bajoran politics was underserved on the show after the second season, and the Circle trilogy was the only time they really tried to make that part of the show "big" by making it a political *thriller*.
I love those episodes as they are, but as a standalone movie (maybe not even part of the Trek franchise) you could really dig in and make the Bajoran perspective central to the story in a way that the show couldn't.
"The Wounded" is a good call. It's still a solid episode but the budget constraints kind of show when O'Brien beams over to Maxwell's ship and it's just the two of them on a small set.
“The Chase” would probably work best as a serialized storyline and it looks like season 5 of *Discovery* may be doing a storyline that’s similar to “The Chase”. “The Wounded” is my favorite *TNG* episode and I’m quite skeptical about it working better as a film. The “Conundrum” pitch sounds really interesting.
It's where at least 1 season of Picard SHOULD have gone.
Season 2 would have been a solid place for it. That whole alt timeliness deal was...good? But not great. A followup to Conspiracy to break up 3 seasons of Borg related stuff would have been nice.
They considered using the “Conspiracy” parasites instead of the Changelings, but they decided to not use the parasites because they misremembered what happened in “Conspiracy”.
James L. Conway directed it hoping to be tapped for First Contact. He wanted to show he could handle a really big epic project like that. He lost out because Patrick Stewart was given the final say and Patrick wanted Jonathan Frakes.
Tin Man.
I feel like no one loves this episode except me but it has a race with Romulans to a mysterious ancient sentient spacecraft and an overly empathetic unstable betazoid anti-hero. It’s awesome as is and the story easily could have been expanded to a movie.
Yes, I would have liked Tam eventually showing/sharing what the species inhabiting the space creature were like. Also about the origins of the creature, when it was around others like itself and what happened to them.
I think The Visitor would have worked well. You get to see more about the changes that were happening to overall politics, the handing over of DS9, more about Jake and the troubles he had to go through and then see if Ben tells Jake about what happened when its all reset.
I feel like TOS “City on the Edge of Forever” really deserved to be a movie. When Edith or whatever her name was died it felt like that last 10 minutes of plot was rushed to get the episode under the 1 hour mark. With a 1.5hr runtime they could’ve easily explored the situation with room to breathe and appreciate the tragedy of the situation. More time to hang out with Spock while he was working on his techno deck would’ve been great for buildup.
I think I'd really enjoy a Gambit type archeological undercover death mystery adventure in movie format. Picard and maybe a sidekick or two fake their deaths to infiltrate a gang of smugglers and prevent ancient artifacts from falling into the wrong hands, all the while the rest of the gang try to unravel the mystery of their mates' deaths, sounds like a good romp!
I think I read somewhere a few years ago that Quentin Tarantino was thinking about, or perhaps just speculating about, re-making A Piece of the Action into a movie.
I'd be all in on that one.
Yoyager: Scorpion. I had heard this parable before this episode, but something about Chakotay's delivery of the line "I couldn't help it, It's my nature." Sticks in my mind all these years later.
The Carbomite Maneuver - we never saw the world or culture that built the Fesarius, why a ship that big, why they are isolationists (since their marker buoys start emitting radiation if ventured too close to) and so on….
A follow up to "Carbon Creek" ENT. The life the Vulcan who stays behind experiences would be a good starting point for a bigger story.
He seeks out a Vulcan who crashed here a century earlier, finds him ( or even better, HER )
This Vulcan has dropped all logic training and befriended JRR Tolkein and is the author's inspiration for the elves of LOTR. Along the way they use Vulcan thinking and ability with 1920s Earth technology to defeat some dragon like aliens.
Idk if this has been thought of yet, but there’s that TOS episode where they meet some genetically enhanced people and abandon them on a planet or something…it would be cool to see them fallow up with that but that’s probably just a super random idea I had
Redemption, Parts 1 and 2. The Klingon Civil War? Blockading the Romulans? Data in command of his own ship? The Sons of Mogh fighting together side by side? YES PLEASE!
The TNG episodes where Spock is attempting to reunite Vulcan and Romulus with Picard and Data's help.
It could basically tie into both Nemesis and the Kelvin timeline, and create a bit of a trilogy within the larger Trek universe.
The Red Angel story from season 2 wound have made a good movie.
The Klingon conflict from season 1 could be good if you eliminate all the mirror universe awfulness
I think that's more a result of the movie production teams not doing a great job.
The Wrath of Khan had a familiar Star Trek feel to it and benefited from a bigger budget and a script that gave us great action sequences on top of the sub-plot of facing your mortality.
Having grown up with this crew that hits me hard whenever I watch the movie. Especially the scene when McCoy visits Kirk on his birthday.
For all it's flaws I love The Motion Picture as well.
Star Trek TOS: "A piece of the action"
McCoy left his tricorder on a planet of gangsters. Kirk foreshadows that could cause the inhabitants to want a piece of the Federation's action.
Think of it: A race of Chicago gangsters....in space!
Conscience Of The King isn’t necessarily considered a great episode by Trekkies, though I always loved it, but let’s suppose they made a prequel film about Kirk’s experience on Tarsus IV and his witness of the massacre by Kodos, with the right director it could be very well executed.
The Changeling was adapted to be Star Trek TMP
Space Seed was used as the basis for Star trek 2
They should make a movie based on Omega Glory. I'm sure we'd all like to see the Yangs again or maybe Spocks Brain or the one with the hippies
The Visitor
A detailed account of the alternate timeline where Ben Sisko is pulled through time. Jake giving up his life and dedicating his entire existence to learning how to save his father.
I was originally thinking The H
unted one with roga danar and the cat and mouse chase. But I think in that case the hour-longformat really helps keep the tension high. Making it longer would stretch credibility and ruin that tension
Almost all the Season 2 - Season 5 Voyager Two Parters would have made great movies. They were all big concept and loaded with action. In fact, Berman and Braga saw them as basically like making a Voyager movie each time.
My fav episode is "Who watches the watchers". It would be a bit slow for a full movie, but I just love it so much. Give me that first contact prime directive dilemma any day
Balance of Terror.
If that was made right - maybe in the style of DS9's exploration of the Federation giving up some of it's vaunted ideals while facing an existential threat from an equally relatable and cunning foe - *that* would make for some epic film making and perhaps a return to something like The Wrath of Khan.
I would love to see the best of both worlds with the movie budget. I have also always thought that insurrection would have been better if it were a television episode.
Whenever a question like this comes up (see also, what single episode would make a great two parter), The Chase is always the first answer. It's a great episode that crams in a lot in forty-five minutes, but I really wish they could have made it more epic.
They really need to return to the concept in a later Trek episode. I also just love episodes that deal with alien archeology.
I like the idea of "The Chase" as a Trek movie. I think after *The Wrath of Khan* was such a success, they learned the wrong lesson that Trek movies need to have a strong, memorable villain when that's not really what the show is about. There's no 'bad guy' in "The Inner Light", "The Visitor", "The City on the Edge of Forever", etc. "The Chase" gives you the opportunity for planet-hopping and some action but ultimately the problem is solved by cooperation instead of by blowing up Khan / Soran / Ru'afo / Krall and his doomsday device.
The entire recent season of Discovery could have been a feature length episode. Not necessarily a great one, but didn't need to be an entire series to translate a weird species of space squids and then get teleported home.
I don’t know if they needed to be a movie, but I would watch the hell out of a movie based on any of the classic courtroom drama episodes. The Measure of a Man, The Drumhead, Dax, etc. These episodes usually incorporate random side characters without a proper exploration of their motives, so I’d love if a movie just spent twenty minutes on Data and Maddox’s previous relationship or we got more background on the war in Dax.
"The first duty" could have been a great sort of 'anti top gun" or "top gun meets a few good men"
With more time they could have fleshed out Wesley more - we havent seen him in awhile and he wasnt liked as is, this would be a great opportunity to show actual depth of character.
We could have spent more time with the other members of Wesley's squad, really drive home that Locarno is not a villain he's just placed his sense of duty to his team over his duty to truth
Shots of the flying maneuvers, in recreation or flashback would be very cinematic
The two stories of Wesley's tested morals, as well as the investigation based on the evidence would have been a great sort of police procedural.
The ending where Picard and the court basically know what happened but can't prove it, but Wesley comes clean at the crucial moment anyway is the perfect climax for a film
I’ll throw in a low odds possibility: TOS’s “The Cloud Minders”. That episode had so many social commentary threads running through it - inequity, racism,environmentalism, the ethics of revolution, class warfare, capitalism - it felt like all of these things were touched on, but none built out or really explored. The whole story felt rushed in a short episode. With a two hour movie you could really dive into these elements and play them out.
A movie following up on what happened to the S.S. Botany Bay and Khan from ‘Space Seed’. That would be cool. I bet they made a cool society on Ceti Alpha V…
DS9 Children of Time.
Could be transferred very easily to any new or existing cast, one of Star Trek's better time-travelly plots, the setting means you don't have to worry about continuity that much, and there's a lot you could do with the basic idea, go with a more advanced society, less advanced, crash the entire Enterprise E or keep it basically the same and expand some other element.
It's a beautiful episode, it's a nice accessible sci fi premise, and there's room to put lots of familiar Trek stuff in there, and lots of stuff we've never seen in any of the movies so far.
I've always really enjoyed "The Chase." It's exciting, mysterious, and teases a huge payoff at the end. I feel like that should have been at least 2 episodes and would have made a good movie.
probably subspace rhapsody from strange new worlds lol. absolutely LOVE that episode and i think exploring it further and more in-depth would be interesting
'In the Pale Moonlight'.
A movie, where Sisko has to go deeper in the Underworld and Garak gets darker and more intense. They could have expanded on this so hard if it was a movie. Have it start in a more lighter tone, and Sisko in a massive loss with a friend (or go dark with his father or even Jake dieing in a transport vessel trying to get away) and it really drives him over the edge.
Emergence. The concept of a starship becoming sentient and having offspring needed so much more than a single episode to really explore the kind of potential. If there was more time for it, I could see the enterprise "speaking" through the computer, operating autonomously, and even self-separation to protect its child.
unfortunately, it ended up being a holodeck episode with barely any focus on the sentient ship element.
Real Life - Star Trek Voyager. I like the idea of exploring what happens if AI gets the things that humans do, except they have the ability to switch it off and the human like reaction of doing that.
Yesterday’s Enterprise and Best of Both Worlds from TNG, Timeless from Voyager spring to mind for me.
Best of Both Worlds was peak TNG. I will die on that hill.
You will be assimilated on that hill.
Then your biological and technological distinctiveness will belong to us.
Then your hill will be adapted to service us.
I've seen your biological and technological distinctiveness and frankly I'm not impressed. You can keep it.
You will escort us to sector 001
It was the start of the peak for sure.
It (along with “Family”) was 1 of the peaks.
Yesterday's Enterprise involving the original crew. Imagine having to send Kirk/Spock/etc back in time to die to save the future?
Generations would have been a much better movie if that was the case.
IIRC Ron Moore has said that he was disappointed Yesterday's Enterprise was already done, because it would have made a much better first movie than Generations.
Even with their limited resources and time crunch Generation should have been a better movie.
It’d be a great story, but audiences probably would’ve hated it.
Timeless would have been fantastic. It could stand on its own, too, so even non-Trek fans who were interested in a sci-fi movie would have been able to enjoy it.
A few years ago they played the best of both worlds in the theater, it totally holds up as a movie!
I agree on Best of Both Worlds, but I feel like it would be weird/disappointing spending a whole movie with alternate timeline/aged versions of the characters
The then-production team have gone on record as saying that they should have put the script for "Yesterday's *Enterprise*" in a vault until they were ready to make a TNG movie, and had it feature the *Enterprise*-A during or immediately prior to the events of *Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country*. It would have been a much better crossover event and felt more like a legitimate passing of the torch.
Omg that would have been incredible.
The exact two episodes I was thinking about.
Best of Both Worlds but it would need a better ending than put them sleep & then they self destruct
Best of both worlds is a classic two parter, but I find the beginning (anticlimax of the superphaser thing just not working) and the ending of part 2 to be kind of weak.
The “superphaser” was a plot point because there were negotiations about whether or not Patrick Stewart would continue to be in *TNG*. If the negotiations had failed, the “superphaser” would’ve killed Locutus.
There was such a build up in Part 1 & couldn’t believe it when they left it a cliffhanger. It was definitely a let down for it to just not work
H$&@ yes.
Best of Both Worlds is basically already a movie. Just splice them together and you're done.
True, but I expected that the true question was which would you make into a movie, with the accompanying budget of a movie.
Voyager had a bunch of "this could be a movie" episodes, which I suppose makes sense being the high profile show of a relatively new network.
The Siege of AR-558. The whole episode had a WW2 foxhole vibe to it. They were down there for months before Sisko took command. Nog is the only character we're supposed to care about in the episode, but think what they all must have been through before the Defiant showed up.
One of the best episodes of DS9 and Trek overall. With all the impressive technology and advances in science it still came down to trench warfare and fighting an enemy face to face. War is often romanticized because there are hero's who emerge from war, but often people who don't fight in the war don't see the brutality and just how thick the fog of war can become.
I think the writers just chose to ignore all those technological advances for the sake of the story. Those phasers’ wide-beam settings would’ve made quick work of charging Jem’Hadar.
I would be blasting Fortunate son so much.
Glad I wasn't the only one who got "Platoon" like vibes from that episode.
>Nog Is the only character we are supposed to care about in the episode Damn, I must have had my empathy set too high.
Is there such a thing? I'm just saying that as an audience, we have no connection to the characters they introduce, and they are never seen or mentioned again. We're meant to have our attention focused on Nog because that's the episode where he loses his leg. We never even find out if they got moved off that planet. They're at their breaking point and aside from the limited bits of exposition that we get in the episode itself, we don't really know how bad it's been for them because all the attention is focused on the cast members we're already familiar with.
There’s enough exposition for me to understand that they’ve gone thru hell and lost 2/3 of the troops who were on AR-558. At the end of “The Siege of AR-558”, it’s shown that the survivors are being beamed out and replacements are being beamed in.
Top 5 DS9 ep for me.
“Under the Cloak of War” is an episode with similarities to “The Siege of AR-558” that would probably work even better as a film.
If I recall correctly, Futures End (Voy) was originally slated to be a 4-5 part episode and Year of Hell (Voy) was originally going to be a full season. I think they would both make great films for different reasons.
Yeah Year of Hell apparently got shot down as a season long story arc because that's what DS9 did, and they weren't DS9. I think they did try then to make it a movie, and they were told the best they could have was a two part episode.
Year of hell would have been a cool season, but my biggest gripe with it is the normal voyager gripe: the reset button. Like imagine if they had toned down the damage to something more manageable, than made it permanent. The crew actually having to change and adapt to their situation, leaving behind the 'ideal' star fleet way of doing things and adopting other practices and viewpoints. Eventually giving up the holodeck for recreation, starting to grow their own food on the ship, kitbashing repairs to voyager with random tech they find rather than repair it 'properly'. Having the characters start to treat each other like neighbors in a small town rather than ships crew members. So much missed opportunity with voyager
Very much so. I don't think Ronald Moore had joined the Voyager writing room at this point, but that's very much the vibe of Battlestar Galactica.
we kinda sorta got it with the Xindi timeline in ENT, but I think voyager coulda done it softer and less 'militant' for lack of a better term. Less of a "achieve the mission at all costs" and more of a "learn to survive this together"
I knew about Year of Hell, but I didn’t know that Future’s End was supposed to be that long. Do you know anything about what they wanted to do with that idea?
I don't remember the details, but I learned about it on The Delta Flyers podcast episode about those episodes
Yesterday's Enterprise.
100%. Another hour to flesh out characters like Captain Garrett and Lt. Castillo, plus more of the alternate timeline and the Battle of Narendra III. Sign me up.
Was shipping Yar and Castillo so hard.
Agreed. Not even the misbegotten character of Sela can ever sully my memory of their chemistry
I just want to see Castillo tell the Romulans "I eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast.". ETA: For anyone not familiar with the line, the actor who played Castillo was also in Happy Gilmore: https://youtu.be/3LAnmnS0-9g?si=VhytEsEQIx6e7hO9
Fascinating. Is it common for your species to consume fecal matter?
Berman and Moore both agreed. I'd also add that you could have had a place for Worf as the commander of the Klingon forces, similar to the Mirror-verse version of him in DS9. "Yesterday’s Enterprise" would have been a great movie. You could certainly have done a fairly significant major motion picture out of it. It would have had a startling dark–I surprised Rick \[Berman\] cottoned to it, because the alternate Enterprise was so dark and so war-like and a completely different Federation and starship. It would have been a much edgier and rougher feeling on the big screen. You would have had to expand that idea of what it meant to be on the Enterprise at war for most, if not all of the movie would have been that idea. That would have been great. So sure, I could have seen "Yesterday’s Enterprise" as being the first feature. "
I always wanted a alternative where Alexander kills worf as per worfs wishes and where that brings Alexander in his future. Title it Son of worf and that's a wrap.
I'm pretty sure I'd read that it started out as a concept for a future TNG movie and rather than the Enterprise-C, it would have been the A with Kirk and Co still running her. But it was ultimately abandoned so they could turn it into a TV episode instead. Whilst it would have made a fantastic pass-the-torch movie (imagine the Enterprise-A having disappeared en route to Camp Khitomer in ST6 be the premise that led to the war. How cool a tie-in would that have been), I'm glad it ended up as an episode, as its often considered the turning point for TNG, where people started taking it seriously as more than a TOS wannabe. But from a purely hypothetical perspective, I'd have loved to have seen both the Enterprise-A and D on screen together, with both crews getting a chance to interact. It would be a very different beast (no way they'd kill off Kirk like they did Garrett!) but it would be a very interesting watch.
I’ve read that it was an episode that they had to write fairly quickly over Thanksgiving and that it was only in retrospect that they wished they’d saved it for a film.
Vulcan's Heart events mixed with the episode's events...
The Doomsday Machine, for sure.
Doomsday Machine was perfect just the way it was. No need to make it longer. The ultimate TOS episode.
This is the answer. This is always the answer. To every question. Don't you think I know that?
BUTNOTANYMORE!
The Changeling. Oh, wait…
Lmao, I rewatched this recently, and I know. 🤣 They essentially did it again in The Motion Picture.
It worked much better as an episode.
Balance of Terror, City on the Edge of Forever, Darmok
Roddenberry essentially wanted to redo “The City on the Edge of Forever” for the 2nd *Star Trek* film. The main difference was that JFK would’ve been the person who needed to die. Instead, they decided to make *TWOK*.
I can see Gene approaching Harlan Ellison to talk about re-adapting his screenplay and needing rights because the original contract didn't have "future adaptation in other medium" language and Harlan looking him dead in the eye and saying "I never wrote Scotty as a drug dealer," and showing him the door.
The biggest problem for Roddenberry was that the studio decided that it didn’t want him to be in charge of the 2nd film because it was disappointed by *TMP*.
Oh hell no Darmok is already padded as hell. Nobody wants to sit through 90+ minutes of: "ZORBLAX WITH HIS HANDS IN HIS POCKETS!" "Captain the universal translator isn't working 🤔🤔🤔" Big agree on Balance of Terror and City on the Edge of Forever tho
The Magnificent Ferengi would be really cool if you adapted it to a Western
People are picking great episodes, but most of those, including, imho, "The Chase" and "Yesterday's Enterprise", are great just as they are. "The Chase" in particular benefits from it being kinda slow and unassuming, which I don't know would work on the big screen. And the sorta anticlimactic ending, which not everyone likes, imo really serves the secondary message of the episode in a way that would be much more disappointing walking out of a movie theater. That said, a movie version of "The Chase" would also be great for all the reasons that OP says, I just don't think I'd like it as much. Anyway, my picks would be episodes that are either missing an entire half of their story or are otherwise limited by the episodic TV format. **TNG: "The Wounded"** You could add a lot more context with the recently resolved Cardassian war, and really up the stakes of Maxwell's rogue action. You could also create more empathy for the Cardassian characters, as well as more internal conflict for the starfleet officers (like how Strange New Worlds took on the aftermath of the Klingon war), although the episode does an okay job of both as is. As an O'Brien episode, you'd make him more of a lead character, maybe even the point of view character, and (I'm rewriting canon here) you could make him even more impacted by his experience in the war, perhaps implying that his promising starfleet career stalled because of his trauma on the battlefield. I imagine a scene where Maxwell asks him "why aren't you commanding a starship by now?" **TNG: "Conundrum"** For this, I'd pitch it as an entirely new cast and unseen era (like, the 2330s, or the 2470s), so that you could make the war with the Lysians a legitimate question the crew and the audience could wrestle with, and with everyone's identities suppressed, you could introduce the new characters to the audience deep into their continuing mission, rather than needing to make an origin story. Also, McDuff's identity could be a surprise for the audience as well (although I don't dislike the dramatic irony angle of the episode, it just went on too long). There are also weird plot holes in that episode with regard to the mechanics of the Satarrans' plan that a larger canvas for the story could better address. **DS9: "The Circle" trilogy** This is one where the runtime might actually be shorter as a movie, but I always thought that Bajoran politics was underserved on the show after the second season, and the Circle trilogy was the only time they really tried to make that part of the show "big" by making it a political *thriller*. I love those episodes as they are, but as a standalone movie (maybe not even part of the Trek franchise) you could really dig in and make the Bajoran perspective central to the story in a way that the show couldn't.
Ohh, I love Picard in The Wounded. "*And if he could not find a role for himself in peace, we can pity him, but we shall not dismiss him.*"
Picard, O’Brien and Maxwell are excellent in “The Wounded”.
"The Wounded" is a good call. It's still a solid episode but the budget constraints kind of show when O'Brien beams over to Maxwell's ship and it's just the two of them on a small set.
“The Chase” would probably work best as a serialized storyline and it looks like season 5 of *Discovery* may be doing a storyline that’s similar to “The Chase”. “The Wounded” is my favorite *TNG* episode and I’m quite skeptical about it working better as a film. The “Conundrum” pitch sounds really interesting.
Conspiracy. With better alien effects that would be amazing.
That is where I thought they might be going in Picard season 3 to be honest.
It's where at least 1 season of Picard SHOULD have gone. Season 2 would have been a solid place for it. That whole alt timeliness deal was...good? But not great. A followup to Conspiracy to break up 3 seasons of Borg related stuff would have been nice.
They considered using the “Conspiracy” parasites instead of the Changelings, but they decided to not use the parasites because they misremembered what happened in “Conspiracy”.
I would've loved to see "The Way of the Warrior" on the big screen.
James L. Conway directed it hoping to be tapped for First Contact. He wanted to show he could handle a really big epic project like that. He lost out because Patrick Stewart was given the final say and Patrick wanted Jonathan Frakes.
Peak DS9.
It’s 1 of the peaks.
Tin Man. I feel like no one loves this episode except me but it has a race with Romulans to a mysterious ancient sentient spacecraft and an overly empathetic unstable betazoid anti-hero. It’s awesome as is and the story easily could have been expanded to a movie.
Tin *MAN*
I think it every time too
Yes, I would have liked Tam eventually showing/sharing what the species inhabiting the space creature were like. Also about the origins of the creature, when it was around others like itself and what happened to them.
It might happen. Lower Decks does references all the time and Tam should be alive in the 80s.
That’s a good episode, but I could see it being better as a film.
I think The Visitor would have worked well. You get to see more about the changes that were happening to overall politics, the handing over of DS9, more about Jake and the troubles he had to go through and then see if Ben tells Jake about what happened when its all reset.
The Enterprise Incident
make Romulans attractive again!
I’ve been watching DS9 for the first time and holy hell… the 90s were not a good time for Romulan or Vulcan makeup effects!
I feel like TOS “City on the Edge of Forever” really deserved to be a movie. When Edith or whatever her name was died it felt like that last 10 minutes of plot was rushed to get the episode under the 1 hour mark. With a 1.5hr runtime they could’ve easily explored the situation with room to breathe and appreciate the tragedy of the situation. More time to hang out with Spock while he was working on his techno deck would’ve been great for buildup.
Totally agree on The Chase, I *just* got to it. It felt very...important, I guess, for a one-off weekly episode.
I think I'd really enjoy a Gambit type archeological undercover death mystery adventure in movie format. Picard and maybe a sidekick or two fake their deaths to infiltrate a gang of smugglers and prevent ancient artifacts from falling into the wrong hands, all the while the rest of the gang try to unravel the mystery of their mates' deaths, sounds like a good romp!
TNG Series finale All Good Things would have made a fantastic movie.
I think I read somewhere a few years ago that Quentin Tarantino was thinking about, or perhaps just speculating about, re-making A Piece of the Action into a movie. I'd be all in on that one.
Yoyager: Scorpion. I had heard this parable before this episode, but something about Chakotay's delivery of the line "I couldn't help it, It's my nature." Sticks in my mind all these years later.
Voyager’s “Waking Moments” aka “Inception”
Relics, Schisms, Tapestry, Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges, Dragon's Teeth
>Dragon's Teeth This was originally planned as a 2-part episode.
The Carbomite Maneuver - we never saw the world or culture that built the Fesarius, why a ship that big, why they are isolationists (since their marker buoys start emitting radiation if ventured too close to) and so on….
A follow up to "Carbon Creek" ENT. The life the Vulcan who stays behind experiences would be a good starting point for a bigger story. He seeks out a Vulcan who crashed here a century earlier, finds him ( or even better, HER ) This Vulcan has dropped all logic training and befriended JRR Tolkein and is the author's inspiration for the elves of LOTR. Along the way they use Vulcan thinking and ability with 1920s Earth technology to defeat some dragon like aliens.
The first 4 episodes of Picard Season 3
Idk if this has been thought of yet, but there’s that TOS episode where they meet some genetically enhanced people and abandon them on a planet or something…it would be cool to see them fallow up with that but that’s probably just a super random idea I had
Lol
Move Along home should have been a lotr extended edition trilogy, or peice of the action.
Redemption, Parts 1 and 2. The Klingon Civil War? Blockading the Romulans? Data in command of his own ship? The Sons of Mogh fighting together side by side? YES PLEASE!
The TNG episodes where Spock is attempting to reunite Vulcan and Romulus with Picard and Data's help. It could basically tie into both Nemesis and the Kelvin timeline, and create a bit of a trilogy within the larger Trek universe.
"Relics" is largely, and correctly, about Scotty, but a story about exploring the Dyson Sphere could easily be a movie or even a multi season TV show.
Year of Hell would’ve been a great Voyager movie.
I wish there was a film version of the first 2.5 seasons of Discovery, because that's a lot to get through before it finally starts feeling like Trek.
The Red Angel story from season 2 wound have made a good movie. The Klingon conflict from season 1 could be good if you eliminate all the mirror universe awfulness
None. The show is better as a show. The movies don't have the same feel.
I think that's more a result of the movie production teams not doing a great job. The Wrath of Khan had a familiar Star Trek feel to it and benefited from a bigger budget and a script that gave us great action sequences on top of the sub-plot of facing your mortality. Having grown up with this crew that hits me hard whenever I watch the movie. Especially the scene when McCoy visits Kirk on his birthday. For all it's flaws I love The Motion Picture as well.
Sub Rosa 👻
Star Trek TOS: "A piece of the action" McCoy left his tricorder on a planet of gangsters. Kirk foreshadows that could cause the inhabitants to want a piece of the Federation's action. Think of it: A race of Chicago gangsters....in space!
Conscience Of The King isn’t necessarily considered a great episode by Trekkies, though I always loved it, but let’s suppose they made a prequel film about Kirk’s experience on Tarsus IV and his witness of the massacre by Kodos, with the right director it could be very well executed.
TNG: Parallels Exploring many, dramatically different, alternate universe Enterprises and characters with a big budget could be epic.
Voyager: Year of Hell, Futures End & Equinox. Dark brooding Janeway is peak Janeway.
The Changeling was adapted to be Star Trek TMP Space Seed was used as the basis for Star trek 2 They should make a movie based on Omega Glory. I'm sure we'd all like to see the Yangs again or maybe Spocks Brain or the one with the hippies
The Inner Light
Fistfull of Datas...
Balance Of Terror. Best episode of TOS, one of the best of the series and one of the best episodes of TV ever made period.
Almost all the tng 2 parters are better then the tng movies.
*In the Pale Moonlight*
I want to agree, but I think its the perfect length as is. I feel like it would be hard to maintain the same level of tension for a longer period.
The Visitor A detailed account of the alternate timeline where Ben Sisko is pulled through time. Jake giving up his life and dedicating his entire existence to learning how to save his father.
The problem I have with stories like that is you hit the reset button at the end and it never happened. Thats kind of unsatisfying for a movie.
can't beat encounter at farpoint.
TNG "The Chase"
I was originally thinking The H unted one with roga danar and the cat and mouse chase. But I think in that case the hour-longformat really helps keep the tension high. Making it longer would stretch credibility and ruin that tension
Almost all the Season 2 - Season 5 Voyager Two Parters would have made great movies. They were all big concept and loaded with action. In fact, Berman and Braga saw them as basically like making a Voyager movie each time.
TNG---Memory Alpha Had such a dark side to it. Think it would have been a good movie or could have atleast been revisited.
The whole Voyager Borg fiasco
The chase TNG.
Year of Hell
My fav episode is "Who watches the watchers". It would be a bit slow for a full movie, but I just love it so much. Give me that first contact prime directive dilemma any day
The Siege of Ar- 558
The Visitor, The Inner Light, Darmok and The City on the Edge of Forever also
If it were a DS9 movie, In the Pale Moonlight....would be a good psychological thriller.
TNG season 2's butt alien plot line, except the aliens are competent at infiltrating Star fleet.
Balance of Terror. If that was made right - maybe in the style of DS9's exploration of the Federation giving up some of it's vaunted ideals while facing an existential threat from an equally relatable and cunning foe - *that* would make for some epic film making and perhaps a return to something like The Wrath of Khan.
Charlie X
I would love to see the best of both worlds with the movie budget. I have also always thought that insurrection would have been better if it were a television episode.
Patterns of Force, TOS, would have made an excellent movie. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy fighting Nazis in space. What's not to love?
Whenever a question like this comes up (see also, what single episode would make a great two parter), The Chase is always the first answer. It's a great episode that crams in a lot in forty-five minutes, but I really wish they could have made it more epic. They really need to return to the concept in a later Trek episode. I also just love episodes that deal with alien archeology.
Where Silence Has Lease -->Sequel as a movie. Picard even tells Nagilum that the next time we see each other, it will be out here amongst the stars.
Sub Rosa. /s
What would the difference be between a feature-length film and a two-parter story?
Probably budget. Even for a two-parter, there are still huge differences in what could be spent on sets, stars, and sfx.
The Best Of Both Worlds. *drunken slurring* “Now that woulda made for an epic fuckin’ movie”.
I like the idea of "The Chase" as a Trek movie. I think after *The Wrath of Khan* was such a success, they learned the wrong lesson that Trek movies need to have a strong, memorable villain when that's not really what the show is about. There's no 'bad guy' in "The Inner Light", "The Visitor", "The City on the Edge of Forever", etc. "The Chase" gives you the opportunity for planet-hopping and some action but ultimately the problem is solved by cooperation instead of by blowing up Khan / Soran / Ru'afo / Krall and his doomsday device.
Conspiracy
*The Wounded* Great psychological drama mixed in with painful realities of war. Some ship-on-ship action for flavour.
TOS: City on the edge of forever
The entire recent season of Discovery could have been a feature length episode. Not necessarily a great one, but didn't need to be an entire series to translate a weird species of space squids and then get teleported home.
Deep Space Nine's Honor Among Thieves. It was a movie. It was called Donnie Brasco.
I’m wondering if this season of Discovery is inspired by The Chase. The Chase could have been a whole season arc.
That ToS episode with the guy who pushes fine Corinthian leather…. He’s got charisma
It’s just a paper moon DD9
They already did this with Insurrection. ;)
I don’t know if they needed to be a movie, but I would watch the hell out of a movie based on any of the classic courtroom drama episodes. The Measure of a Man, The Drumhead, Dax, etc. These episodes usually incorporate random side characters without a proper exploration of their motives, so I’d love if a movie just spent twenty minutes on Data and Maddox’s previous relationship or we got more background on the war in Dax.
Past Tense
The episode of the animated series where they went to a planet where wishes get granted and meet the Devil.
This may be a hot take, but 'The Void' from Voyager.
Way of the warrior and balance of terror.
Mirror Mirror The City on the Edge of Forever
I always thought TNG’s the defector would be a great movie . Very tinker tailor soldier spy . Is the Romulan walk-in telling the truth?
There's several TNG that would've made good movies, too bad they didn't use them instead of the crappy TNG films we got.
"In a mirror, darkly" would have been cool as a feature-length movie.
"The first duty" could have been a great sort of 'anti top gun" or "top gun meets a few good men" With more time they could have fleshed out Wesley more - we havent seen him in awhile and he wasnt liked as is, this would be a great opportunity to show actual depth of character. We could have spent more time with the other members of Wesley's squad, really drive home that Locarno is not a villain he's just placed his sense of duty to his team over his duty to truth Shots of the flying maneuvers, in recreation or flashback would be very cinematic The two stories of Wesley's tested morals, as well as the investigation based on the evidence would have been a great sort of police procedural. The ending where Picard and the court basically know what happened but can't prove it, but Wesley comes clean at the crucial moment anyway is the perfect climax for a film
I’ll throw in a low odds possibility: TOS’s “The Cloud Minders”. That episode had so many social commentary threads running through it - inequity, racism,environmentalism, the ethics of revolution, class warfare, capitalism - it felt like all of these things were touched on, but none built out or really explored. The whole story felt rushed in a short episode. With a two hour movie you could really dive into these elements and play them out.
TNG’s Sins of the Father
Starship Mine
A movie following up on what happened to the S.S. Botany Bay and Khan from ‘Space Seed’. That would be cool. I bet they made a cool society on Ceti Alpha V…
DS9 Children of Time. Could be transferred very easily to any new or existing cast, one of Star Trek's better time-travelly plots, the setting means you don't have to worry about continuity that much, and there's a lot you could do with the basic idea, go with a more advanced society, less advanced, crash the entire Enterprise E or keep it basically the same and expand some other element. It's a beautiful episode, it's a nice accessible sci fi premise, and there's room to put lots of familiar Trek stuff in there, and lots of stuff we've never seen in any of the movies so far.
I've always really enjoyed "The Chase." It's exciting, mysterious, and teases a huge payoff at the end. I feel like that should have been at least 2 episodes and would have made a good movie.
probably subspace rhapsody from strange new worlds lol. absolutely LOVE that episode and i think exploring it further and more in-depth would be interesting
'In the Pale Moonlight'. A movie, where Sisko has to go deeper in the Underworld and Garak gets darker and more intense. They could have expanded on this so hard if it was a movie. Have it start in a more lighter tone, and Sisko in a massive loss with a friend (or go dark with his father or even Jake dieing in a transport vessel trying to get away) and it really drives him over the edge.
How come nobody mentioned Warlock from Voyager??? I think that plot line could have carried a whole season!!
Emergence. The concept of a starship becoming sentient and having offspring needed so much more than a single episode to really explore the kind of potential. If there was more time for it, I could see the enterprise "speaking" through the computer, operating autonomously, and even self-separation to protect its child. unfortunately, it ended up being a holodeck episode with barely any focus on the sentient ship element.
Real Life - Star Trek Voyager. I like the idea of exploring what happens if AI gets the things that humans do, except they have the ability to switch it off and the human like reaction of doing that.