Failed Star Trek Series 03: Star Trek: Planet of the Titans

In the mid-1970s, long before Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released, Paramount nearly produced a bold feature film titled Star Trek: Planet of the Titans. Intended to be the franchise’s first cinematic venture, the project evolved into an ambitious yet ultimately doomed attempt to bring the crew of the original Enterprise to the big screen. The film was to have been directed by British filmmaker Philip Kaufman, with a script by Chris Bryant and Allan Scott. The premise was metaphysical, sprawling, and, in hindsight, perhaps too bold for its time.

The story would have involved the Enterprise encountering a mysterious, ancient alien race—the "Titans"—who were said to be the progenitors of advanced civilizations across the galaxy. The crew would explore a black hole and be sent back in time, where they would influence early human evolution. At one point, the story allegedly had the crew meeting early Homo sapiens and introducing fire, effectively turning the Starfleet crew into humanity’s mythic gods. The film would have blurred lines between science fiction, mythology, and cosmic mystery, prefiguring themes later explored in films like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Prometheus.

The project made it to early design and pre-production stages. Concept art by Ralph McQuarrie—famous for his work on Star Wars—envisioned a radically different Enterprise with a triangular secondary hull and aggressive, angular nacelles. The designs remain popular among fans, and elements of them later inspired Star Trek: Discovery’s 32nd-century vessels.

Despite the early enthusiasm, the project was cancelled in 1977 just weeks before production was scheduled to begin. Paramount executives worried the story was too esoteric and inaccessible, especially in the shadow of the massive success of Star Wars, which had just premiered. They opted instead to create a new television series, Star Trek: Phase II, which itself would be cancelled in favor of a feature film—eventually becoming Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979.

Although Planet of the Titans was never made, its DNA lingered. The fascination with ancient alien influences resurfaced in The Next Generation episode “The Chase” (TNG S6E20), which revealed that humanoid life in the galaxy had been seeded by an ancient race. Likewise, the time-travel-black-hole concept would echo in the 2009 Star Trek reboot. Even McQuarrie’s Enterprise concept appears briefly in the “Star Trek: Discovery” Season 1 episode “Into the Forest I Go” (S1E9), shown among holographic ship schematics.

The project has no canonical episodes since it was never produced, though its influence on later Star Trek stories is undeniable. Some consider Planet of the Titans a foundational ghost of the franchise’s evolution—an unrealized myth that helped shape the stories that did eventually make it to screen.

Works Cited

Altman, Mark A., and Edward Gross. The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams. Thomas Dunne Books, 2016.

Gross, Edward, and Mark A. Altman. Star Trek: The Oral History. Forge Books, 2016.

Cushman, Marc, and Susan Osborn. These Are the Voyages: Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek in the 1970s. Jacobs Brown Press, 2013.

Kaufman, Philip. Interview by Empire Magazine. “The Star Trek Movie That Never Was.” Empire, Apr. 2012.