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Happy Near Miss Day!

Happy Near Miss Day!


Happy Near Miss Day, everyone! Yes, it's a thing. It actually commemorates the day—March 23, 1989—that a massive asteroid missed striking the Earth by just 500,000 miles. That may sound like a great distance, but it's not in the big scheme of the cosmos. To celebrate the day, we're listing a few Star Trek-centric Near Misses—of the real and fictional kind—and we invite you to add to our list in the comments section below:

Deforest Kelley as Spock
Star Trek

The Whales... Died— What if the whaling vessel chasing George and Gracie in Star Trek IV

had succeeded in harpooning the whales? What if the Enterprise crew hadn't brought the whales back to the future to communicate with the alien probe?Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike— This one not only came close to happening... it happened. Roddenberry tapped Jeffrey Hunter to play Captain Pike in the first Star Trek pilot. NBC rejected that initial pilot, but commissioned another one. Hunter opted out of his contract and... a ... certain... Canadian... with swagger... and a knack for... dramatic pauses... became Captain Kirk. Ladies and gentlemen, we present... William Shatner (who was among those originally considered to play Pike).

Worf Permanently Paralyzed— Worf faced the prospect of life-long paralyzation in the TNG episode "Ethics." Could you imagine how it would have impacted the series if Worf remained paralyzed... for a few episodes, for a season, for the rest of TNG

Martin Luther King himself, a Trek fan and admirer of Nichols', to convince her to stay by pointing out, among other things, the importance of young black people seeing a face of color on television, in a role that was not that of a maid.

By a Split Second— It's a classic dramatic trope, and not just in sci-fi... the last-minute rescue. A transporter malfunction nearly prevented Kirk from beaming off the Constellation as he rammed it into the planet killer in "The Doomsday Machine." Even though Shatner was the star of the show and they weren't going to write him off, we all sweated out this one.

NBC Canceled Star Trek After Season Two—
Star Trek
Trek
Star Trek
Trek

Hitler Wins the War— If Kirk hadn't prevented McCoy from saving Edith Keeler, America would have joined World War II too late to have made a difference. Everyone's life would have been altered and, in fact, the Federation might never have been formed.

Brando as Soran—
Star Trek.
Star Trek IV
First Contact

So, once again, happy Near Miss Day! And feel free to add your favorite near misses in the comments section below.