Star Trek: The Next Generation Almost Wiped Out All Vulcans

While he didn’t write the teleplay, Eric Stillwell co-developed the story that would become the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” He was a major fan of The Original Series and came up with a wild story involving Vulcans using the Guardian of Forever, a portal that allows explorers to travel through time and space. By accident, a Vulcan science team visiting the ancient past of their own planet ends up killing Surak, completely changing their planetary history.

Depending on how much Star Trek you’ve watched, you probably have a few questions, including who the heck Surak is and why he’s so important to Vulcan history. In the early days of their development, Vulcans were not a logical race: instead, they were driven by emotions and were extremely violent in almost every possible way. Surak was a prominent leader who preached the benefits of forsaking violence and embracing logic, and this time period is later referred to as the “Time of Awakening.”

In this earlier vision for the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” the plot was driven by a simple question: what would the Vulcans have been like without the Time of Awakening? Picard and crew quickly discover that in this altered reality, there is functionally no difference between the Vulcans and the Romulans (more on this in a bit). In fact, the Vulcans have created an aggressive empire that has taken on the entire galaxy and has dwindled the Federation down to a few sad remnants. 

Why would the famous Star Trek good guys the Vulcans be almost exactly like Romulans without the teachings of Surak? In the deep Star Trek lore, the Romulans are Vulcans…specifically, modern Romulans are descendants of Vulcans who hated Surak’s teachings and left the Vulcan planet shortly after Surak’s death. They ended up colonizing Romulus and Remus, the latter of which featured heavily in the plot of Star Trek: Nemesis.

So, how does the “Yesterday’s Enterprise” story we never got to see end? Spock’s famous father Sarek had been on the ship to welcome the Vulcan science team back from their voyage into the past, and he ends up traveling into the past and replacing Surak. By taking the famous Vulcan’s place, Sarek is able to restore the timeline, and the fact that he has to abandon all of his friends, family, and duties in the future makes this a very noble sacrifice.

As you can tell, this Star Trek story idea had very little in common with the “Yesterday’s Enterprise” final broadcast episode, though this version did similarly bring Denise Crosby back to play Tasha Yar. However, we can’t get over how epic in scope this episode could have been, tying together elements of The Original Series and The Next Generation while sacrificing a famous character and nearly destroying two races (the Romulans would never come to be and the Vulcans as we know them would never come to exist).

Part of us wishes we could have experienced this episode that never was. The other part of us, however, has taken the message of the final episode to heart: wanting to change the past is dangerous, and it never works out the way you’d expect.