While I do kind of like the movie, the original script was way better

Do you agree?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_running#Production

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In an interview with Starlog magazine in the late 1970s, Douglas Trumbull revealed that the plot of the movie in the original version of the script was quite a bit different from what was actually filmed. In the original version the space freighters were on permanent duty, carrying biological domes. When they are finally told to blow the domes and return to Earth, it is because the freighters are going to be scrapped.

The Freeman Lowell character in the original version was an older, more curmudgeonly man who simply did not want to return to Earth and be forced into retirement, so he steals the Valley Forge and heads off into deep space. As in the filmed version, he reprograms the robots for some companionship. The subplot involving the plants dying due to a lack of light was involved, but his main interest in the plants was simply as a means of extending his limited food supplies. Eventually he receives a signal from an alien ship and decides to approach it, making humanity's first contact with aliens. The conclusion was a race between Lowell, who was trying to contact the aliens, and the human boarding party trying to retake the ship. Finally, in desperation, Lowell detaches one of the domes with one of the robots aboard seconds before he is killed by the boarding party. The dome drifts off into deep space, where it is found by the aliens. The film would have ended with a confused Dewey "introducing" itself to the equally baffled aliens by presenting them with a "family photo" of Lowell and the drones taken earlier in the story.
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