Michael Piller Once Pitched Star Trek: TNG Sequel To TOS Episode

[archersangel]

Once again our friends at the TrekDocs account on Twitter have revealed an interesting document from their Trek archive. This time it comes in the form of a 1990 memo from Star Trek: The Next Generation showrunner Michael Piller to executive producer Rick Berman, who at the time had the final say on what got on the air for Star Trek. The memo covered possible episodes for the second half of the fourth season of TNG. It briefly discusses progress on a couple of ideas that eventually became “Qpid” and “Devil’s Due,” but the main thrust of the memo was an interesting new pitch from Piller.

A return to the ‘Action’

Dated October 17, 1990, Michael Piller’s memo to Rick Berman is titled “HIGH CONCEPT.” Here is Piller’s opening teaser pitch for his new episode idea:

We’re in space… an unidentified ship confronts us, it appears an old starship. The voice on the audio channel identifies himself as Captain James T. Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise. End of tease.

Piller goes on to describe the episode as a “return to the planet” (Sigma Iotia II) from the classic original Star Trek episode “A Piece of the Action,” which is the one where Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise find a society that had molded itself on a book about Chicago gangsters, left behind by a Starfleet vessel a century before.

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cross-posted to my journal & startrek