I love the idea of a second five year mission. The characters were designed with the possibility that both Shatner and Kelly might not sign on for more than 13 episodes so they had Decker and Chapel in the wings to step up if that happened. The notion that Trek could continue without any of the original leads was probably quite fanciful. Most of us were skeptical when TNG started because of that as well.
I've read through the draft scripts and they seem fun enough but there is nothing special there IMO. Exactly what vibe the series would have carried is hard to say. The sets in TMP were awesome but something more akin to season one of TNG might have been more likely, which wasn't great. Battlestar Galactica, being made at the same time as Phase II, had a more professional vibe than TNG season one but it was very expensive to make and re-used special effects repeatedly.
Comparing Phase II to TNG, they did give each of the main characters a second string to their bow, with Chekov now in security, Uhura confirmed as a computer expert, and they planned to steer Ilia into a counselling role on top of her navigator role. It's possible that they would have had a more ensemble feel, like TNG with Shatner and Collins taking the lead. It's easy to cringe at the mention of Collins now, but he was an engaging lead in Tales of the Gold Monkey (a sort of mixture between Indiana Jones and Casablanca).
Rand was back in her role as Yeoman Rand, although the bible stated that there would also be others, so it's likely she would have appeared only occasionally and possibly in competition with some younger pretenders to Rand's throne. Perhaps Rand would have been reserved as a guest star for when the Yeoman had to step up as a more significant character, a bit like Marella in the early episodes of Airwolf.
I think leaving poor Chapel as second fiddle to McCoy would have been a shame. She needed an additional niche so that she could occasionally step out of his shadow. I think they should have enhanced her research credentials, perhaps focusing on alien tech and cybernetics, like Korby.
The fan-made recreations of Phase II script ideas were great fun so it's not as if it wouldn't have been groovy. I just wonder if storytelling techniques were good enough to make the most of it in the early eighties.
I'd love to see an animated second five year mission with modern storytelling techniques and a focus on Klingon politics and Orion pirates.
