Oh, what could have been...

Spectre was created, written, and produced by Gene Roddenberry for airing on NBC May 21, 1977. This supernatural thriller starred Gig Young and Robert Culp as two paranormalists battling a great and powerful force plaguing a wealthy London financier. Directed by Clive Donner, Spectre had little in common with Star Trek or any previous Roddenberry project.

The concept promised "horrors unimaginable, a descent into a corner of hell" but rattled off as an anemic, talky 1970's melodrama.

Joel Eisner remarks, "I always liked Spectre, it had sort of a feel like a Hammer film and a Kolchak episode mixed together. I thought Gig Young was miscast, in fact I think Darren McGavin would have been a better choice, and, in lieu of the fact that Young killed himself shortly after the film aired, they would have had to recast if the show sold."

"I recently found something interesting about this film which I and several other film historians I know never knew." Eisner continued. "There was a European version of this film with extra footage and, in particular, nudity. It has always been known that many films added nude and violence for the European market. It was also known that many us TV movies were aired theatrically in England and Europe, but the addition of nudity to a TV movie is rare. In the case of this film, unknown, until recently when the Fox Movie Channel aired the film several times - mostly overnight - I hadn't seen the film for years and was surprised when I found that the print they were airing must have been the overseas version because of the several nude women that appeared in the black mass scene at the end of the film. Not just in the background but in full topless and bottomless (from the back) closeup. Not that it hurt the film, in fact, it made the scene less choppy as it originally appeared. I guess to cut out the nudity, they had to splice the scenes closer together. I hope they get around to releasing this version to disc."

After Spectre, Gene Roddenberry gave up on getting another TV series off the ground.