An abandoned Star Trek: The Next Generation storyline would have formed an alliance between Starfleet and the Romulans, completely changing Star Trek history. TNG writer and producer Maurice Hurley had planned to team the ancient Star Trek enemies together to confront the Borg in season 2. Due to the 1988 Writers' Guild of America strike, this planned team-up was abandoned. Still, it's interesting to speculate how such an alliance would have played out, and how it could have fundamentally changed the trajectory of the Star Trek franchise.
Humanity and the Romulans had been enemies since the Earth v.s. Romulan War of the 22nd century, which resulted in the establishment of a Neutral Zone. Star Trek: The Next Generation season 1 ended with Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the crew of the USS Enterprise-D investigating mysterious attacks in the contested region. Maurice Hurley's original plan was to reveal that the mystery attackers were the Borg Collective, forcing Starfleet and the Romulan Empire to join forces. Both the Borg Collective and Starfleet's complex relationship with the Romulans would define the story of Jean-Luc Picard and his crew, and here's how Hurley's planned alliance would have changed TNG and beyond.
