At the height of his rising fame in 1986, former "Saturday Night Live" star Eddie Murphy was coming off of several big comedy hits for Paramount Pictures, including "48 Hrs," "Beverly Hills Cop," and "Trading Places." But Murphy was more than one of the funniest stars in Hollywood — he was also an avowed "Star Trek" fan when the franchise was hitting it big on the silver screen. Paramount already had three "Trek" movies under its belt with a fourth already in the pipeline, and executives smelled synergy.
Knowing Murphy was a fan, studio honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg had the bright idea to put "Trek" and Murphy together, and pitched the idea of having the star appear in "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home," according to StarTrek.com. A script was assembled that saw a major role for Murphy, but it wouldn't be until a 2016 interview with writer Steve Meerson in The Hollywood Reporter – celebrating the film's 30th anniversary — that we'd learn what might have been.
According to Meerson, Murphy was slated to play an astrophysicist at Berkeley in the story, which saw Kirk and the Enterprise travel back to 1986 San Francisco. Eventually, though, talks between Murphy and the studio fell through, and his part was rewritten into that of marine biologist Dr. Gillian Taylor, who would be played by "7th Heaven" star Catherine Hicks.
