This is one of those interesting stories of production hell - the story behind how Paramount wanted to re-launch Star Trek in 1977 with a new series that would re-unite almost all the cast from the original series; and how they ended up spending so much money on it that in the end they dropped the whole tv show idea and made it into a film. The rest, as they say, is history. (A number of the scripts already commissioned ended up being re-used for 'The next generation' fifteen years on.)