Earlier this week was the tenth anniversary of the first Kelvin Timeline Star Trek film.

Roberto Orci, who co-wrote the film with Alex Kurtzman, spoke to TrekMovie.com about some of the Star Trek plots that never were, and some that almost weren’t, in the first of a two-part interview.

In the interview, Orci revealed that the whole film hinged on Leonard Nimoy, and that for him, there was no “Plan B”. He said: “Maybe Paramount had a plan B, but for me and Alex, it has to be Nimoy or bust...His role had to be essential, otherwise, he wouldn’t have done it. So, to have a plan B would have been disrespectful to him, and the franchise.”

Orci also revealed some of the other ideas that never made it into the film. In one version, Old Spock would turn up quite early as a mysterious character to be chased, who would reveal himself at the end. Another story had Carol Marcus as a love interest for Kirk, but it was deemed to interfere with the Kirk/Spock bromance. Carol Marcus, of course, ended up being in Star Trek: Into Darkness instead. And at one point, there was talk of an end-credits scene featuring the crew finding the Botany Bay, the ship on which Khan was exiled to Ceti Alpha V in the Original Series episode “Space Seed”.

One idea that would have really changed the perception of the film was an alternative version of the ending, which would have featured William Shatner. Of that story, Orci said: “Ultimately J.J. nixed it because he felt it was too inside baseball. I personally stand by it and we subsequently had a conversation about it where he sort of said maybe we should have done it. He was not sure. But, ultimately it was his call and if you were to ask him I think he would honestly say he was ambivalent about it to this day.”