As early as when participating in the World Science Fiction Convention in 1968, Gene Roddenberry , the producer of the TV series "Star Trek", proposed to make it into a movie, but it was not until May 1975 that Paramount and Roddenberry began to write the script. The budget is between US$3 million and US$5 million. On June 30, Rodden Berry completed the first draft of the script, but was rejected by the upper management of Paramount. Paramount hired Ray Bradbury , Theodore Sturgeon , and Harlan Jay Ellison to take over the new script. A supervisor suggested that Ellison read the novel "Chariots of the Gods" (Chariots of the Gods) and civilized Maya. Incorporating into the film's story, Ellison was furious and left immediately. Although the actors of the original series decided to sign up before seeing the script of the film, they had to make other plans due to the repeated delays in the shooting plan. In June 1976, the screenplay budget rose to 8 million U.S. dollars, and assistant producer Joe Pwell opened a list of 34 candidates for screenwriters, including Francis Ford Coppola , George Lucas , Ernest Lehman, and Robert Bloch . But after all, no one became the screenwriter of the film.
In 1977, in the face of the still incompetent film script, Paramount began to consider abandoning the filming plan, and instead planned to return "Star Trek" to the ranks of the TV series, and the preparations for the new series began immediately. In November of the same year, Steven Allan Spielberg 's " Close Encounters of the Third Kind " was a huge success, and Paramount found that the sensational effect created by " Star Wars " in the field of science fiction was not impossible to replicate. On November 11, Paramount announced the cancellation of the filming plan for the new drama. On March 28 of the following year, Paramount held the largest press conference after " The Ten Commandments ". At the time, the company’s president Michael Ess Na announced at the meeting that Robert Wise will direct a new film adapted from the TV series "Star Trek" with an investment budget of 15 million US dollars. Harold Livingston and others immediately set out to adapt the script of the first episode of the new series "In Thy Image". During this period, the film script was changed so frequently that it took hours to mark the version.
