Starship Exeter—The Atlantis Invaders: Annotated

[Maurice]

I think the notion that every government of every planet that the Federation people find themselves needing to do business with in the 23rd century would meet their (or our) standards of modernity and fairness or else is one of the big things that makes modern Star Trek so antiseptic, unimaginative and often boring.

Among other things, it really limits the potential for Trek to comment dramatically (as distinct from preening and preaching) about current day issues because it's a way in which the Trek universe diverges so far from contemporary human reality that Our People are spared confrontation with a lot of really bad shit that exists in the real world as a result of our political and economic systems.

I'd love it if in SNW Pike had to deal with some of the shit we saw in "The Cage" version of the galaxy at large - slavery, feudalism - but he won't. There's no easy, apparent profit for CBS in changing up the recipe for Mom's Macaroni and Cheese.

In TOS there was a suggestion that if we ever went back to Earth we'd find a pretty idyllic and progressive world. Consequently, there was never a good enough reason for the story ever to go back to Earth.*

Yeah. I wanted to portray that threre were bad guys on the Federation side and even former Starfleet people who would contaminate a planet at the cost of the health of the indigenous people for the sake of personal profit. I didn't hit it as hard as I meant to, though.

On the subject of Cutty, I had a lot of fun with him and, after hanging around on the set for most of a week, a really different idea of the character's potential based on getting to know Mike Buford than I had before. I worked from my own ideas about the characters' backstories based on what there was of their behavior in "The Savage Empire," and figured as long as a plot point didn't require me to explicate it there shouldn't be problems if, for example, Jimm figured Cutty for a lifelong bachelor and I assumed he'd been married three times.

Funny, but before it was spelled out I sort of imagined he and Harris had been an item at one point, and even when I decided against that I still wrote them like an old married couple who bickered over everything mostly out of habit.

 

[gmlego]

I've been meaning to put this out for a few years (and shared it with one or two people), but here's the abandoned script for the planned 3rd episode of Starship Exeter, titled "The Atlantis Invaders".

From my intro:

[...]even though “Atlantis” was shelved, never to be filmed, enough people have asked about it that I finally queried Jimm as to if I could release my script and he said he didn’t mind. I was a tad concerned that the script was in my 2nd-And-A-Halfth draft state (officially draft 4, revised) with shipboard scenes finalized but all the off-Exeter stuff awaiting another pass.

Then it occurred to me that the script’s unfinished state could be more interesting than a polished draft, as some future fanfilm makers might find it valuable to see a script in the middle of its evolution, especially if fully annotated so they could understand what was planned, why it's in the shape it's in, and how a lot of the story and structural concerns were addressed or not yet addressed. Heck, if it wasn’t educational it might at least a serve as a warning that writing screenplays is not as simple as it looks.​

Director Scott Cummins wrote a nice foreword about why no part of the episode got filmed, and gives some insight on how tight a race it was to get even @Serveaux 's "The Tressaurian Intersection" in the can.

It was planned that Executive Producer Jimm Johnson would give me an afterword before I put this out there, but he's busy with some life things at the moment. So when he gets that to me I'll update the document to give him the last word.

So for what it's worth... here's the script, complete with concept sketches, deleted material, experiments, et al. A look at a might've-been.

STARSHIP EXETER
"The [annotated] Atlantis Invaders"
A Work In Progress
(link)

NOTE: the original file was over 30mb, so I posted one 6x smaller.
But it's still too big to embed. Sorry!

Sample pages
View attachment 16693 View attachment 16694 View attachment 16695​

Awesome!! Thank you very much!!

 

[STEPhon IT]

Maurice, I've heard producers don't like writers reading what the other writer had done because it could lead them to a similar plot and the same resolutions. What measures did you do to avoid repeating the other draft from Hackett? Also, I like how you handle Star Trek terms in CAPS and shared notes about it. I'm wondering if that was a writing technique used in TOS scripts in the 60's?

 

[Kor]

For some time I've been thinking it would be nice if The Atlantis Invaders could be adapted into a fan comic, like the TOS-Exeter crossover comics done a while back on startrekanimated.com.

Kor

 

[USS Intrepid]

For some time I've been thinking it would be nice if The Atlantis Invaders could be adapted into a fan comic, like the TOS-Exeter crossover comics done a while back on startrekanimated.com.

Kor

That would be ace.

 

[Maurice]

Maurice, I've heard producers don't like writers reading what the other writer had done because it could lead them to a similar plot and the same resolutions. What measures did you do to avoid repeating the other draft from Hackett? Also, I like how you handle Star Trek terms in CAPS and shared notes about it. I'm wondering if that was a writing technique used in TOS scripts in the 60's?

I read "The Mighty Galvanaut" and the Hackett-Johnson draft of "Atlantis", then contacted Jimm Johnson and offered my services. I just started writing "Atlantis" from scratch without looking back at the previous draft except to find a few character bits that Jimm pointed me to and to check some names and stuff. I wasn't deliberately trying not to repeat stuff, but as I thought the previous script was a mess there wasn't much point in referring to it.

Generally in screenplays you capitalize the first appearance of a character or an important item or prop so that the production people can easily spot its introduction. Like this...

ANOTHER ANGLE. JASPAR REINER. He’s dressed professionally,
suit and tie. He studies the stamp intensely.

JASPAR​

My whole life I’ve only seen it
through glass. Can’t believe my
father was the last to touch it.​

WIDER TO REVEAL THE SCENE.

This is no robbery. Jaspar stands behind the opened case.
Across the case from him are two uniformed Guards (TRUCK
GUARD 1 and TRUCK GUARD 2). With them is PETRA (Jaspar’s
former assistant) whose look and very distinctive GLASSES
must be instantly recognizable later.

PETRA​

I’m so happy for you, Mister
Reiner!​

ENTER MÜLLER, 25 years older, dressed well but from another
time, and leaning on an expensive antique CANE.

MÜLLER​

Welcome back, Jaspar. How kind of
you to arrive a week early and
spare me the fuss of actually
having to be ready for you.​

Jaspar ignores the barb and turns his back to Müller and us,
moving to ARMORED ATTACHÉ CASE held by one of the Guards.​

 

[Maurice]

So I just got ONE piece I designed for the Exeter sets: a part of Cutty's station. I designed all the custom seated eye-level screens there. This one panel is visible in many shots, but a revised version of it with different labels was made for two inserts shot during pickups. You can see it in its first of who closeups a few seconds after this point in the film (opens vid on YouTube).




EDIT: The second closeup is in Act IV where the panel flickers out just before Cutty says, "That's it. External sensors are down. We're flying blind."

 

[F. King Daniel]

I love how Trekkies are so hardcore we recreate the original graphics complete with huge proportional inaccuracies and incorrect deck counts rather than create a corrected version. It really does help with the TOS atmosphere.

 

[Maurice]

I love how Trekkies are so hardcore we recreate the original graphics complete with huge proportional inaccuracies and incorrect deck counts rather than create a corrected version. It really does help with the TOS atmosphere.

Dennis did an overhead panel with the Jefferies elevations as seen in TMoST and "The Enterprise Incident", but it would have looked weird to have those mixed in with the simplified silhouettes seen on the multiple seated eye-level displays reproduced on the set. So I figured for this to "fit" it needed to use the same silhouette.

In-story I tend to go with @Shaw 's idea that these represent distinct pressurized hull components, not decks.

 

[STEPhon IT]

Dennis did an overhead panel with the Jefferies elevations as seen in TMoST and "The Enterprise Incident", but it would have looked weird to have those mixed in with the simplified silhouettes seen on multiple of the seated eye-level displays reproduced on the set. So I figured for this to "fit" it needed to use the same silhouette.

In-story I tend to go with @Shaw 's idea that these represent distinct pressurized hull components, not decks.

In retrospect, was there something you would've like to add or improve on your Defense Displays? Cutty's station was a nice addition to the bridge, like the fanfilm, it was subtle and I believed when I first viewed this station may have been included in other Starship Class vessels. This was a wonderful touch and fitting for a potential 3rd figure of the BIG 3 in Starship Exeter.

 

[Maurice]

Not really, except there were two screens I designed that didn't get used.

At the time I didn't know exactly how they did the blinky panels on TOS (a metal grid of 1"x1" cells) and I'd just have applied that knowledge to some of the designs. The whole idea was to make it look like a TOS spinoff/sequel shot around 1969 so we all wanted to hew to that look.

 

[DarKush]

Skimming, I saw a lot of discussion about Cutty. I really liked that character and even wrote a character inspired by him for one of my fan fiction stories.

 

[STEPhon IT]

Me too, I thought Maurice was attempting to make Cutty a character the reader should look at and have us understand why our Captain has this person as his closest confident. Cutty doesn't hold back in telling him what he feels he should know despite at times hates when he does it. There's another gentleman who had developed a series of pieces for Starship Exeter and I had the honor to read them, I thought they were good as a rough draft, his version was more in tuned to making Garrovick and Harris as the big two. I was telling him he could do so much more with the Cutty character by making him more like a detective when it came to affairs dealing with unlawful actions.

Maurice expanded Cutty's dimensions in his draft and brainstorms inspired by Michael Buford's performances; who I thought made a strong effort to make his character larger than it was.

 

[Maurice]

Maurice expanded Cutty's dimensions in his draft and brainstorms inspired by Michael Buford's performances; who I thought made a strong effort to make his character larger than it was.

It would have been difficult to be “inspired by Buford‘s performances” since he had so little to do in “The Savage Empire“, and I wrote “The Atlantis Invaders” well before TTI was shot. I liked the casualness he put across in the former.

 

[STEPhon IT]

I wish the Johnsons return to the fanfilm arena, I don't care how old they are, and make your script a top priority and make this thing. With your insight on this script and Joshua's continuing passion in getting the itch to return, I can imagine it could happen. I wonder what Jim thinks? I believe he visited the studios with his family during one of Michael King's Valiant shoots in Oklahoma, I don't recall the year but from the pics I saw Jim looked thrilled. I would love to know his thoughts and would he be up for it?

 

[Bixby]

I do understand their reluctance, it's been over 10 years since their last film.
They're supposed to be playing relatively young-looking characters, the bridge crew should be in their 20s, and Garrovick, Cutty and the other department heads should look in their 30s and early 40s at the most.
We all get older, put on some pounds and wrinkles, and lose some hair. The Johnsons probably wince like I do to see some fans in their 50s sitting in chairs and playing the roles designed for early 20s lieutenants.

 

[Maurice]

I suspect it will not happen. Pretty much everyone has moved on.

 

[Mudd]

Michael came across strongly as a personality to me in "The Savage Empire," despite the fact that as Maurice notes he had very little to do. I think he just seemed more natural than most of the others. B'fuselek was the other character that I gravitated to early on, because what initially fascinated me about the show was how successful it was as a period pastiche of TOS and the Andorian was such a TOS character. It was easy to see where he'd fit in the formula of the series from week to week. And I was advised by the brothers Johnson - and rather forcefully by Josh, interestingly - to cut back on him. "He's the fourth most important regular, not the second."

After hanging out with Mike Buford for three or four days, I came up with a potential backstory for him - were there ever a future need for one - that wasn't like the character notes I'd been given at the start but which I thought suited Mike's temperament and experiences better.

 

[STEPhon IT]

Michael came across strongly as a personality to me in "The Savage Empire," despite the fact that as Maurice notes he had very little to do. I think he just seemed more natural than most of the others. B'fuselek was the other character that I gravitated to early on, because what initially fascinated me about the show was how successful it was as a period pastiche of TOS and the Andorian was such a TOS character. It was easy to see where he'd fit in the formula of the series from week to week. And I was advised by the brothers Johnson - and rather forcefully by Josh, interestingly - to cut back on him. "He's the fourth most important regular, not the second."

After hanging out with Mike Buford for three or four days, I came up with a potential backstory for him - were there ever a future need for one - that wasn't like the character notes I'd been given at the start but which I thought suited Mike's temperament and experiences better.

What was the genesis of how you got involved and what were your contributions to the projects?

 

[Mudd]

When Jimm Johnson made it known that he was doing a second Exeter I emailed the show's website and sent him some CG animation of the Enterprise I was working on. He thought they might need some star backgrounds, etc. Eventually I did most of the outer space effects and wrote the script for "The Tressaurian Intersection" with input from the Johnsons and Maurice.