Week in Geek
Screenwriter Mark L. Smith has revealed details of the violent, sweary script he co-wrote with Tarantino for Captain Kirk and Co. – and explains why it's unlikely to get made
Not long ago, the idea of Quentin Tarantino making a Star Trek movie seemed as far away as a tribble that would one day be captain of the Starship Enterprise. Maybe that's why QT shelved his long-discussed “R-rated,” ultra-violent take on Gene Roddenberry's Apollo-era optimism – or maybe he just thought he had other projects worth prioritizing.
Back in 2017, Tarantino publicly floated the idea of a feature-length riff on the original 1968 series episode “A Piece of the Action,” set on an Earth-like planet where a 1930s gangster culture prevails. At the time, the space saga was in mainstream blockbuster mode on the big screen thanks to the JJ Abrams-produced film series, and was just beginning to find its footing on television again with the first season of Star Trek: Discovery. It wasn't a time when the franchise seemed to fit Tarantino's intense but blithely garrulous magpie-eyed style.
A few years later, Star Trek seems to be in a much more creative environment. “Strange New Worlds,” which is deeply retro (I can still hear the unexpected brilliance of that great Season 2 musical episode in my brain), exudes an almost Tarantino-esque sense of cosmic opulence and is so confident about it is about adding fresh twists to a series that is now well over half a century old. Even Black Mirror has found that it's great fun to satirize the original series' cheesy idealism. Maybe Tarantino was on to something after all?
Author Mark L. Smith, who was hired by Paramount to write a long-abandoned Star Trek script that the Pulp Fiction filmmaker was set to direct, seems to think so. Speaking to Collider, he confirms that the film was bloodthirsty and not a bit sweary.
“I think his vision was just to work hard,” Smith revealed. “It was a hard R. It was supposed to be some pulp fiction violence. Not a lot of the language – we saved a few things just for special characters to kind of tie it into the Star Trek world – but it was really the edginess and kind of Tarantino flavor that he brought to it. It would have been cool.”
How close did this thing come to being made? Smith points out that the project – one of several abandoned films planned at some point as a follow-up to 2016's Star Trek Beyond – was actually abandoned because QT couldn't wrap its head around the idea of it being his tenth and last film should be film.
“It was such a special, different kind of story that Quentin wanted to tell that it met my expectations,” Smith said. “So I wrote that, Quentin and I went back and forth, he wanted to do a few things on it, and then he started thinking about the number – his sort of unofficial number of films.
“I remember we were talking and he said, 'If I can only imagine that Star Trek could be my last film, the last thing I ever did.' Is that how I want to end it?' And I think that was the dent he could never get across. So the script is still on his desk.
“I know he said a lot of nice things about it. I would love it if it happened. It's just one of those I can never imagine. But it would be the greatest Star Trek film. Not because of my writing, but simply because of what Tarantino wanted to do with it. It was kind of a crazy thing.”
The fact that there is an actual script somewhere will fuel the nerdy fantasies of those of us who like to imagine those “lost” films that were never made. But it sounds very much like Smith's script was written entirely for Tarantino, meaning it's highly unlikely it will ever see the light of day now that the director has announced that something called “The Movie.” Critic” will be his tenth and final film.
Maybe that's for the best. Whatever you think of Tarantino, he's the only director out there who can pull off such quality riffs with glorious fringe movie magic; The culture-loving author with the uncanny alchemical ability to transform trashy midnight madness cinema into critic-baiting, Oscar-winning film gold. Asking someone else to direct the Star Trek script would be like finding a stash of unreleased Beatles songs and suggesting that someone other than John, Paul, George and Ringo release a new album.
On the other hand, we already know that Tarantino doesn't seem too worried that he won't be long in coming as long as he's allowed to continue creating in other media. If Smith's script doesn't work as a feature film, is there any reason it couldn't be re-engineered for a future small-screen episode? After all, in the modern era of Star Trek, stranger, wonderful things seem to be happening every minute.
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