• Hi Guest!

    The costs of running this forum are covered by Sea Lion Press. If you'd like to help support the company and the forum, visit patreon.com/sealionpress

Scenes We'd Like To See: Alternate Movies, Television & Other Pop Culture Miscellanea

Was reminded today of the test footage shot for the 1968 adaptation of Planet of the Apes, and subsequently how having a full scene filmed as a proof of concept almost looks like a glimpse from a familiar film from an ATL. The familiar elements are there, Charlton Heston as an astronaut (Thomas here, not Taylor) who is forced into a crash landing on his mission and finds a planet where primitive humans are treated as animals by civilised apes. The similarities largely end there, as here the ape society is portrayed as being technologically on par with twentieth century humanity - as it was portrayed in the early iterations of the script from which it was adapted, written incidentally by Rod Serling. The ape makeup of John Chambers, of Star Trek and the Iran hostage crisis fame, is here much more simplistic and closer to human appearance. We even get some alternate casting of Edward G. Robinson as Dr. Zaius and then unknowns James Brolin and Linda Harrison as Cornelius and Zira.

 
Came across an interesting one today, while cooking breakfast.

The second series of Hancock's Half Hour was being recorded at the same time as Tony also had a gig in the West End. Fighting between the theatre and the BBC reached a point where The Lad did a runner. Walked out of a rehearsal at the theatre, and went missing for over a fortnight. The BBC only found out when a policeman with tickets for the first recording of the series asked when he was due back. When the Beeb asked "from where?" they discovered that a fellow copper had seen Hancock boarding a plane at London Airport.

At incredibly short notice, Harry Secombe stepped into the breach. The first episode, he essentially played Tony. While the rest of the cast referred to him as Harry, and there was no attempt to pretend he was Hancock, Secombe's lines in the script were written for Tony. The voice introducing the prgramme to the Light Programme audience merely states that Tony is indisposed, and Mr William Kerr has had to resort to mooching off of Harry, in Hancock's Half Hour. Galton and Simpson, with no idea when - or if - Tony was coming back, engaged in a hasty rewrite of the next couple of episodes. These see a slight change in tone: while broadly similar to Hancock, there's a move towards Harry playing Harry, rather than a Tony stand-in.

All three episodes have been lost, but Harry was sufficiently successful that Galton and Simpson decided that if Tony did not reappear for the recording of the fourth episode, the show was to be renamed Secombe's Half Hour. Whether word of this somehow reached The Lad or not, he appeared at the studio just in time, and it remained Hancock's Half Hour.

I only discovered this because the scripts have been rerecorded by the BBC, with Andy Secombe playing his father, and they're up on iPlayer, with an added introduction, where the producer discusses the reason why Harry is playing the lead.

In another universe, it may be a little known fact that the first series of Secombe's Half Hour actually starred Tony Hancock.
 
Last edited:

My deep & abiding love of The Lad Himself makes that a rather dystopic TL for me, although with definite grounds for good AH.

HHH only reached the pinnacle of excellence once the triumvirate of Tony/Sid/Bill (as a moron) became established and Galton & Simpson ceased trying to squeeze in a 'love interest'; although ironically, that is what allowed Grisly (Hattie Jacques) as a new character to shine.

And without G&S being able to observe 'their' actors interacting to such perfection, would the idea of an intentionally character-conflict comedy like Steptoe & Son ever have occurred to them?

Butterflies there are both huge and international, since Steptoe was bought by the US as Sanford & Son which pioneered much of bringing African-American comedy to the 'mainstream' (ie, whites could get it, but still actually funny).
 
After brief mention today of the decline in UK news coverage in the decades since the 1990s (from @Elektronaut and @Thande), I've found myself wondering of the consequences of no Broadcasting Act 1990.

No Channel Five, of course, but that is of little consequence. No requirement for the BBC and others to source 25% of their output from independent production companies. The rules for awarding ITV franchises would not be changed and mergers would not become the norm from 1994, so we might not now be in the situation where, aside from last bastions of freedom STV and UTV, ITV has become exactly what it was designed not to be. The Independent Broadcasting Authority would not be replaced with the toothless Independent Television Commission. Channel 4 would not have lost its original remit to providing an alternative to ITV and provisioning for programming aimed towards minority interests.

I seem to recall the IBA were also opposed to the merger of Sky Television and British Sky Broadcasting, so that has the potential to become a major issue. It does beg the question of how much the 1990 Broadcasting Act was an enabling force for the rise of Murdoch or how much was it just a formality for the way the wind was blowing anyway. Perhaps the only way to prevent the broad changes put into law by the Act is to prevent Murdoch getting a foothold of respectability in the UK with the purchase of The Times.
 
Last edited:
I had this idea of a crossover between Star Trek and Star Wars Expanded Universe. Star Wars E.U "outbound flight" gets hrough a wormhole at the edge of Star Wars galaxy, a wormhole that carry it to the Star Trek universe.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Outbound_Flight_Project

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperspace_disturbance_beyond_the_edge_of_the_galaxy
(that was a wormhole, baby !)

Against Spock advice and Prime Directive, Kirk decides the Star Wars rebels - fighting for their survival at the time of Return of the Jedi - needs Starfleet help. So a massive Star Trek fleet enters the wormhole (think Interstellar !) and arrives in the Star Wars universe just in time for the Battle of Endor. While they do not take part in that battle, contacts are made with Luke, Leia and Hans (that handshake between Han and Kirk is a virile one).
Starfleet and the New Republic gets an agreement: Starfleet will help stabilizing their galaxy by patrolling it.
Meanwhile
- Kirk can't get his eyes out of Leia, and Hans is not really happy about it.
- Spock finds that he can sense and master "The Force", to the Jedi astonishment.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/New_Republic/Legends

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Remnant
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Gilad_Pellaeon

Starfleet will help the New Republic fighting Grand Admiral Thrawn (with Kirk famously shouting "Thraaaaaaaaaaaaaawn !" at the battle climax - sorry, couldn't help !) the Imperial Remnant led by Pellaeon, and finally, the Yuuzhan Vong.
 
Last edited:
Half of the original Power Rangers walked in the hope of getting some proper pay - Saban just recast them. After all, the show still will have Tommy the Money-Spinner, Kimberly his girlfriend, and Billy for the sciencey stuff.

If the three strikers can convince the others to walk as well, and possibly just convincing a fourth will cause the other two to go with it due to peer pressure, or even just getting Jason David Frank to walk with them, Saban might blink. Thus, the Power Rangers are getting a proper wage! A large chunk of Mighty Morphin's second year changes, as that's seven episodes that aren't spent on introducing new people and Tommy never becomes leader (a dubbed-in change after Austin St John left) and so forth...

...and then S3 sees the cast change, starting Power Rangers' habit of new people & props every year, because Saban's not going to want to keep paying them that wage and is, let's be honest, ruthless and petty enough to boot them.

In the short term, this probably helps: ratings declined from midway through S2 up until the cast change in Turbo. A fresh new look and cast probably bounces the ratings back up and is milked for hype. The downside is you can't get that bump for Turbo, so the ratings continue to gently decline and may kill the franchise by the time of the Disney buyout. Meanwhile, everything from Not-Mighty Morphin S3 to Lost Galaxy is vastly different because the recurring characters and villians in the first six years won't be, due to the desire to change things hitting earlier.
 
very odd take: what if JJ Abrams had done a straight-forward Star Trek sequel to DS9 / Voyager and done his wacky “time-travel reboots the series vaguely” shtick with, er, Star Wars - which I imagine would be old Harrison Ford sent back by a Force Storm to watch as, hmm, Captain Phasma[0] destroys Endor with Star-Killer Base[1] and Robert Boulter, Alden Ehrenreich, and Billie Lourd sort of scramble around?

I vaguely think this could make both series better? Captain Rey at least moves Trek past weird-prequel territory, while hmm, reboot Star Wars def. has Startrooper Solo defecting and Prince Luke Organa and Leia Skywalker growing up on Tattooine and learning to use a lightsaber and FUCK NOW I WANT THIS[2]

[0] phasma is actually a decent equivalent to nero (underrated) as a low-level grunt who is empowered by time-travel, and also she deserves more screen-time anyway

[1] probably better thematic sense if luke gets sent back and tatooine goes bye-bye, but I do get the sense that Ford was The One Actor Abrams Wanted To Work With in the same way Nimoy was

[2] this begs the obvious question of Rian Johnson's ESB[3] now that he is literally remaking ESB; Leia confronting her father with foreknowledge is already a different story and actually fits sort of well with TLJ - I guess she convinces him to kill Palpatine but Vader doesn't repent? also donald glover so #lit

[3] literally what the fuck are the episode numbers now

Using this an an excuse to bump this thread, that's an interesting idea that as you say might make both series better. Though arguably it would be better for Star Trek than for Star Wars. I think the biggest hurdle might be Abrams himself - he wanted to make Star Wars, even when he was making Star Trek, and he plastered that onto an idea that had been floated about in Star Trek since (if I remember correctly) the 1990s. Nemesis might have already killed the possibility of doing a sequel to The Next Generation-era programmes, and it would be unlikely that Paramount would want to take the risk on doing the next again generation for their big-budget movie extravaganza. Even if the idea flies, the end result will likely be very similar to the 2009 Star Trek film, just without the characters from TOS. The question I would ask is who would be the Nimoy/Ford equivalent in this film. Nimoy himself strikes me as being potentially the most likely, and if not him then probably Patrick Stewart.

Doing a vague Star Wars reboot would be a very ballsy move by whoever made it, and much like the Starfleet Academy idea for Star Trek the idea of a sequel to Return of the Jedi had been one of those ideas that was already there as an idea. I'm just picturing this as being Solo: A Star Wars Story writ large. I can also see a Star Trek (2009) style Star Wars film really getting a fan backlash, but more importantly and significantly not doing as well as The Force Awakens - Sending the franchise back to the drawing board.

In the unlikely event we get Abrams Star Trek/Star Wars switcheroo, we might end up with the oddity of a successful Star Trek film series consisting of a main series and various spin-offs releasing annually or biannually and Star Wars after a few reboot films going to a streaming series set in the 'Prime Universe'.
 
Using this an an excuse to bump this thread, that's an interesting idea that as you say might make both series better. Though arguably it would be better for Star Trek than for Star Wars. I think the biggest hurdle might be Abrams himself - he wanted to make Star Wars, even when he was making Star Trek, and he plastered that onto an idea that had been floated about in Star Trek since (if I remember correctly) the 1990s. Nemesis might have already killed the possibility of doing a sequel to The Next Generation-era programmes, and it would be unlikely that Paramount would want to take the risk on doing the next again generation for their big-budget movie extravaganza. Even if the idea flies, the end result will likely be very similar to the 2009 Star Trek film, just without the characters from TOS. The question I would ask is who would be the Nimoy/Ford equivalent in this film. Nimoy himself strikes me as being potentially the most likely, and if not him then probably Patrick Stewart.

Doing a vague Star Wars reboot would be a very ballsy move by whoever made it, and much like the Starfleet Academy idea for Star Trek the idea of a sequel to Return of the Jedi had been one of those ideas that was already there as an idea. I'm just picturing this as being Solo: A Star Wars Story writ large. I can also see a Star Trek (2009) style Star Wars film really getting a fan backlash, but more importantly and significantly not doing as well as The Force Awakens - Sending the franchise back to the drawing board.

In the unlikely event we get Abrams Star Trek/Star Wars switcheroo, we might end up with the oddity of a successful Star Trek film series consisting of a main series and various spin-offs releasing annually or biannually and Star Wars after a few reboot films going to a streaming series set in the 'Prime Universe'.

solid takes

I suspect the main reason Reboot Star Wars doesn’t *work* is because the bit everyone would want to retcon is, er, chronologically first - but I think A Newer Hope would probably do at least as well as Rogue One out of sheer want-to-see inertia.

suppose it probably also has to be taken into account that the fan backlash basically substitutes for the “wasn’t it essentially a reboot anyway” shtick that went on irl, although probably intenser

successful forward-moving Trek movie franchise leads to, dunno, Cumberbatch as Actual John Harrison in the next one?
 
There were plans to adapt The Last Full Measure during the production of Gods and Generals so by the end, along with Gettysburg there would be a completely trilogy of the Eastern Theater of the ACW but the critical panning and box office bombing of G&G put all stops to that. It's probably for the best it wasn't made since it likely would have had all the same problems Gods and Generals did from both a historical and film structure perspective (Lost Cause sympathies, trying to cram two years of a war until a movie).

Somewhat of a shame since I can't think off the top of my head many ACW films that depict the later two years of the Eastern Theater.
 
Grab Bag of Star Trek PODs

  1. The Outer Limits never cancelled - if NBCs science fiction anthology series had seen a second season as successful as its first would we have ever seen Star Trek? Presuming it got a third season, and potentially in colour, would "The Cage" have wound up as an episode of The Outer Limits like so many other pilots that were never picked up?
  2. "The Cage" picked up for full series - what if the original pilot, dismissed OTL as 'too cerebral' had been picked up for a full series. Would Star Trek have still been as successful with Jeffrey Hunter and Majel Barrett leading as Captain Pike as Number One? Would it have been cancelled after a season or two, and would it have had the lasting impact of the version we got based on "Where No Man Has Gone Before"?
  3. Phase II goes ahead - what if the decision to follow on the success of Star Wars and make a theatrical film was never made and there was a sequel series featuring the original crew airing in the late 1970s? How long might this mix of The Original Series and early The Next Generation lasted? What would be the lasting impact on the franchise if when Phase II comes to an end the success of a theatrical film and the viability of a show without the original cast were still unknown variables?
  4. No WGA strike on 1988 - what if the Writers Guild of America strike in 1988 can be delayed or avoided? Would The Next Generation then introduce their new recurring villains in an arc across seasons one and two? Would they not need to resort to dusting off a few unproduced scripts for Phase II due to a lack of time?
  5. Captain Riker - what if Patrick Stewart had not not returned to the series on a regular basis following season three? Would this open the door for frequent cast rotation and actually lead to the series lasting longer since the cast salaries after nearly a decade would be less of an issue?
  6. Deep Space Nine gets cold feet - what the studio lost all faith in the premise of Deep Space Nine and it was re-tooled to a more traditional series? Strapping engines to the station and setting off through the wormhole to explore the Gamma Quadrant and do battle with the Borg on a regular basis?
  7. Voyager has some bite - what if Braga and/or Moore had their way with the Delta Quadrant series and serialised aspects, interpersonal conflict between characters, and an almost post-apocalyptic lack of supplies had become the watchwords of Voyager rather than status quo ruling as God for seven seasons?
  8. Enterprise simmers for a while - what if UPN had agreed to Berman & Braga's desire to allow the franchise to rest a bit after the end of Voyager to avoid 'franchise fatigue'? Would this allow some of the ideas for the programme to develop and not have things like the Temporal Cold War shoe-horned in? So that by the time the series airs it is more akin to the OTL fourth season than the first?
  9. The Most Ambitious Crossover Event in History - what if the tenth Star Trek film had been a success, and the next release were a crossover as a final hurrah for The Next Generation era of show? Possibly produced as one and split over two films as was the trend of the mid-00s?
  10. Discovery changes it up - what if the original idea behind Discovery, that each season would be a new story in a different era (akin to American Horror Story, Fargo, or True Detective) set in the Star Trek universe? Would it have made the second season more like the first and not find its feet as a Star Trek series first and foremost?
 
Grab Bag of Star Trek PODs

  1. The Outer Limits never cancelled - if NBCs science fiction anthology series had seen a second season as successful as its first would we have ever seen Star Trek? Presuming it got a third season, and potentially in colour, would "The Cage" have wound up as an episode of The Outer Limits like so many other pilots that were never picked up?
  2. "The Cage" picked up for full series - what if the original pilot, dismissed OTL as 'too cerebral' had been picked up for a full series. Would Star Trek have still been as successful with Jeffrey Hunter and Majel Barrett leading as Captain Pike as Number One? Would it have been cancelled after a season or two, and would it have had the lasting impact of the version we got based on "Where No Man Has Gone Before"?
  3. Phase II goes ahead - what if the decision to follow on the success of Star Wars and make a theatrical film was never made and there was a sequel series featuring the original crew airing in the late 1970s? How long might this mix of The Original Series and early The Next Generation lasted? What would be the lasting impact on the franchise if when Phase II comes to an end the success of a theatrical film and the viability of a show without the original cast were still unknown variables?
  4. No WGA strike on 1988 - what if the Writers Guild of America strike in 1988 can be delayed or avoided? Would The Next Generation then introduce their new recurring villains in an arc across seasons one and two? Would they not need to resort to dusting off a few unproduced scripts for Phase II due to a lack of time?
  5. Captain Riker - what if Patrick Stewart had not not returned to the series on a regular basis following season three? Would this open the door for frequent cast rotation and actually lead to the series lasting longer since the cast salaries after nearly a decade would be less of an issue?
  6. Deep Space Nine gets cold feet - what the studio lost all faith in the premise of Deep Space Nine and it was re-tooled to a more traditional series? Strapping engines to the station and setting off through the wormhole to explore the Gamma Quadrant and do battle with the Borg on a regular basis?
  7. Voyager has some bite - what if Braga and/or Moore had their way with the Delta Quadrant series and serialised aspects, interpersonal conflict between characters, and an almost post-apocalyptic lack of supplies had become the watchwords of Voyager rather than status quo ruling as God for seven seasons?
  8. Enterprise simmers for a while - what if UPN had agreed to Berman & Braga's desire to allow the franchise to rest a bit after the end of Voyager to avoid 'franchise fatigue'? Would this allow some of the ideas for the programme to develop and not have things like the Temporal Cold War shoe-horned in? So that by the time the series airs it is more akin to the OTL fourth season than the first?
  9. The Most Ambitious Crossover Event in History - what if the tenth Star Trek film had been a success, and the next release were a crossover as a final hurrah for The Next Generation era of show? Possibly produced as one and split over two films as was the trend of the mid-00s?
  10. Discovery changes it up - what if the original idea behind Discovery, that each season would be a new story in a different era (akin to American Horror Story, Fargo, or True Detective) set in the Star Trek universe? Would it have made the second season more like the first and not find its feet as a Star Trek series first and foremost?

Some awesome and thought-provoking stiff here Ryan, and I Have Some Thoughts that just need to wait until I'm over this wretched virus to write up
 
Fox had been interested in going back to Planet of the Apes since the 80s and so there was lot of false starts and potential remakes/alternate sequels to the original film that came up in between the end of the original series and the Burton remake. One would have been an alternate sequel to original film and was pitched as pretty much "Spartacus on the Planet of the Apes".

Oliver Stone was going to direct one staring Schwarzenegger that would have involved time travel and (because it's Oliver Stone) conspiracy theories.

In Chris Columbus's version you can see the basis for the Burton film taking shape but that's probably because it began incorporating unused elements from the original novel.

Rise was also originally just going to be a killer chimp movie before someone pointed out them they were just doing a PotA film in all but name.
 
I have an idea for a Doctor Who themed TL which is much more interesting than my previous one. If it comes to anything, I do not know. I will need to think a bit more about it. What I don't want is to end up doing another one with really long entries. That was a bit of a slog.
 
I have an idea for a Doctor Who themed TL which is much more interesting than my previous one. If it comes to anything, I do not know. I will need to think a bit more about it. What I don't want is to end up doing another one with really long entries. That was a bit of a slog.

Why not do it as a list, with each Doctor having a footnote?
 
Why not do it as a list, with each Doctor having a footnote?

Might be a prospect. The ideal length to me would be along the lines of @Ncw8's "Shuffling the Doc" TL from AH.com which conveyed as much as my "The Doctor Is Who?" TL in a fraction of the space; I think his updates were only a couple of paragraphs but that was really all they needed.

I haven't thought it all the way through yet. I have a reasonably clear idea of things up to the mid 1980s and having discussed my preliminary thoughts with Ncw8, have some notion of where to take it. That being said, with my previous TL, it went through a lot of changes while I was in the process of writing it.

Maybe I'll put up a new thread in the next few days.
 
Might be a prospect. The ideal length to me would be along the lines of @Ncw8's "Shuffling the Doc" TL from AH.com which conveyed as much as my "The Doctor Is Who?" TL in a fraction of the space; I think his updates were only a couple of paragraphs but that was really all they needed.

Thanks - it was partly out of necessity as I haven’t really mastered the technique of writing longer pieces. In Shuffling the Doc I think keeping it brief actually worked quite well. The main trick in the timeline was that the stories could be shuffled as well. Basically I played mix and match - take the title of one story and match it to the plot of another (The Web of Fear was obviously about giant spiders, right?) - and that worked best if I didn’t go into detail.

As I said in the PM, I’m looking forward to what you make of your new timeline.
 
Hmm. I'm really having quite a hard time getting all of this down. Keeping it brief is proving much more difficult than I expected it would be and trying to write it has largely ceased to be enjoyable.

Would it be of interest if I outlined my ideas in a non-narrative form?
 
Back
Top