Just received today in the mail from Amazon,
GENESIS II, PLANET EARTH and STRANGE NEW WORLD.
Between the Original Series and Next Generation, Gene Roddenberry attempted to launch many new tv shows with mixed results.
One of his favorite concepts was a Buck Rogers themed series, a modern man frozen in time only to be awaken in a post-apocalyptic future where nature has reclaimed the planet and new civilizations of varying levels of technology scatter the world.
The first pilot movie was called GENESIS II, starring Alex Cord (Airwolf) as scientist Dylan Hunt who is experimenting with suspended animation for future space flights, when an accident occurs and he is frozen for about 200 years. He is awaken by a civilization called PAX, and joins them using underground Sub-Shuttles to explore the planet and make contact with the outside world.
The first pilot was considered too cerbral (sound familiar?) and a second pilot was ordered. John Saxon was cast as Dylan Hunt in the new version called PLANET EARTH. The concept was the same, but way more action and slicker production values.
Roddenberry, based on the praise of the network, even went so far to develop almost a full season of scripts for series.
Unfortunately, Roddenberry had some sort of following out with the network and left the project.
But the network went ahead without Roddenberry and took one more stab at the concept, except with a few changes. The kept John Saxon, but changed all the characters names, and this time he is an astronaut who returns to Earth 200 years later and travel the planet in a cool sci-fi RV. The 3rd pilot was called STRANGE NEW WORLD and it was basically two Planet Earth scripts edited together into a two hour tv movie. Of the three, it definitely feels the most like a Star Trek episode.
Decades later, the Dylan Hunt concept was dusted off by NextGen/DS9 writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe, combined with another unused Roddenberry tv idea called Phoenix Rising, and an entirely new show was created for actor Kevin Sorbo, Gene Roddenberry's ANDROMEDA!
;-)