Every Time William Shatner Almost Returned To Star Trek (But Didn’t)

For decades, William Shatner was the undisputed face of “Star Trek.” As Captain Kirk, he was a man whose mere mention would conjure up iconic imagery: the USS Enterprise, warp speed blurs, and Klingon Birds-of-Prey. With “Star Trek: The Next Generation” bringing the franchise back to new life, that began to change. In 1994, the seventh “Star Trek” feature film, “Star Trek: Generations,” made the bold decision to kill off Kirk, officially passing the torch to Captain Picard and his now equally iconic crew.

Since then, Shatner has never canonically returned as Kirk. Despite his character’s death, however, producers and filmmakers from screens big and small have tried to find ways to resurrect Shatner’s version of Kirk — even as other actors like Chris Pine and Paul Wesley have stepped in to fill his gold command uniform. They’ve even tried to find other roles for Shatner, eager just to have the former “Trek” icon back on screen.

Unfortunately, for one reason or another (and sometimes because of his own ego), Shatner still hasn’t returned to “Star Trek.” Even though he’s not above bashing several of the modern shows, like “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Star Trek: Discovery,” the actor still seems eager to return. Over the last few decades since his on-screen death, Shatner has been offered ample opportunities to come back to “Star Trek.” He’s missed out on every one.

When it was announced that filmmaker J.J. Abrams would be rebooting “Star Trek” for the big screen, Trekkies the world over worried what he would do to the canonicity of the franchise. But while Abrams did recast the entire cast of the original “Star Trek” series, he did so with an eye on continuity, using time travel for his “Trek” movie in a way that allowed original series star Leonard Nimoy to return as Mr. Spock without breaking the original canon. Some fans were then up in arms over the fact that Shatner didn’t return alongside him. The truth is that he very nearly did.

According to Abrams, William Shatner was approached to appear, but the “Star Trek” icon Shatner wasn’t happy with showing up in a cameo. “He was very vocal that he didn’t want to do a cameo,” Abrams told AMC (via TrekMovie.com). “We tried desperately to put him in the movie, but he was making it very clear that he wanted the movie to focus on him significantly.” As Abrams explained, their film’s story relied on keeping solid continuity with the older shows, and there, Kirk had already been killed off. “His character died on screen. Maybe a smarter group of filmmakers could have figured out how to resolve that.”

So what was the cameo going to be? Well, as detailed by TrekMovie, it would have been a recording of a birthday message — song and all — to Mr. Spock, revealed at the end of the film, when Nimoy’s Spock is left stranded in the alternate timeline.

Even though J.J. Abrams rejected giving Shatner a large role in his “Star Trek” reboot, it doesn’t mean that William Shatner was being considered for its sequels. Third film, “Star Trek Beyond,” had a different director, with Justin Lin stepping to replace Abrams, who was busy on “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” According to Shatner himself, there was at least one version of that script that had a role for him.

It was the summer of 2015, and Shatner was appearing at a convention. Via Comic Book.com, he acknowledged that he’d recently been contacted by Abrams, who was serving as the film’s producer. According to Shatner, Abrams rang him up and said, “I’m calling because the director of ‘Star Trek,’ the next movie, has had an idea where you might be involved, so I’m calling to find out whether you would be interested.”

As Shatner put it, he was interested in returning if the part was right. He didn’t go any further than that, though, and has never commented on what the proposed role would have been. Rumors circulated that it would have reunited Shatner’s Kirk and Nimoy’s Spock, but Shatner again declined to return. The death of Leonard Nimoy (whose last words on social media would have made Spock proud), also put a damper on the proceedings. Both actors did appear in a way, however. The final version of the film included a photograph of Shatner and Nimoy as Kirk and Spock.

In 2001, “Star Trek: Enterprise” launched as a prequel, set a century before the days of Kirk and Spock. The hope was to shake up the “Star Trek” status quo with something different. But those efforts didn’t translate to more viewers, and the series struggled through its four-season run, always on the verge of cancellation. Late in the show’s tenure, producers considered bringing in William Shatner for a guest-starring role to (perhaps cynically) goose the ratings.

The plan for bringing Shatner onto “Enterprise” wasn’t for the actor to reprise his role as Captain Kirk. After all, the series was set a century before Kirk’s Enterprise. Instead, the idea was for Shatner to play the ship’s chef; a character repeatedly mentioned by the crew, but never seen. What’s more, the character would have been Kirk’s never-before-seen great-grandfather — who would have to pretend to be the famous Enterprise captain in one potential time-twisted episode.

“Shatner was going to be ‘Chef’ — an ancestor of Kirk,” said producer Mike Sussman in a 2005 interview with Star Trek.com. “We would find out that at some point in the future, the real Kirk got into trouble, got taken out of history.” As a result, the time-traveling agent known as Daniels (Matt Winston) would enlist Chef — played by Shatner — to impersonate Captain Kirk, in order to fulfill an important moment in history. Unfortunately, as Sussman describes, Shatner didn’t seem keen on the role, and the idea was scrapped. It’s just one of many canceled “Star Trek” projects you never knew about.

The idea to have William Shatner return to the franchise to play the ship’s chef in “Star Trek: Enterprise” may have been scrapped, but producers weren’t easily deterred. They still wanted to find a way to bring the iconic actor in. After a jam session in the writer’s room, a second idea was dreamed up; one that involved a trip into the “Star Trek” Mirror Universe, the parallel reality where the Federation is an evil empire and Kirk is a tyrannical starship captain. Planned to be written by a pair of well-known “Trek” novel authors, it would have brought Kirk back as a villain.

“[Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens] were a pair of writers whom I desperately wanted to bring on the show,” said showrunner Manny Coto in the 2005 interview with Star Trek.com. “And they, it turned out, had an idea for a Mirror Universe two-parter which would feature the return of William Shatner.” The concept involved the Tantalus Field, which in the original 1960s episode “Mirror, Mirror,” was a device that served as a kind of execution chamber. 

“The idea was that the Tantalus Field was not a disintegrator; it was a humane way of dealing with prisoners, by sending them back in time to a sealed penal colony,” Garfield Reeves-Stevens said. After Captain Archer and the NX-01 Enterprise discover Mirror Kirk among that colony, the pair work together to learn more about how their two universes diverged. “And as it turns out, [Mirror Kirk] and Archer together are responsible for the creation of the mirror universe.” Shatner and the studio failed to reach a deal, though, and the episode never materialized. There’s always tomorrow.