It’s for the best that William Shatner didn’t appear as Captain James T. Kirk in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek movie. 15 years ago, J.J. Abrams’ 2009 reboot rejuvenated the Star Trek movie franchise after the poor performance of both Star Trek: Insurrection and Star Trek: Nemesis. Boldly deciding to recast the Star Trek: The Original Series characters and set the movie in an alternate timeline, J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek movie was able to have the best of both worlds; 40-year-old cultural icons placed in a modern action-packed blockbuster.
To pass the torch between the Star Trek: The Original Series crew and their modern counterparts, Leonard Nimoy was cast as an older Ambassador Spock, a mentor figure to both the young James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto). However, early versions of the Star Trek script also featured a cameo by William Shatner as Captain Kirk, appearing as a recording in the movie’s closing scenes. J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman eventually decided to cut the scene, which may be disappointing to fans, but it also improved the ending of Star Trek (2009) as a result.
A few months after the release of Star Trek in 2009, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci revealed that they had written a scene for William Shatner (via TrekMovie). In the scene, Prime Spock presents his Kelvin Timeline counterpart with a pendant that turns out to be a holo-emitter, containing a message from William Shatner’s Kirk. It’s revealed that the pendant was a birthday message from Kirk to Spock in which he reflects on their friendship, and reveals his desire to live out his retirement with his best friend.
William Shatner’s voice-over would then continue over the scenes of Chris Pine’s Kirk being honored by Starfleet Command for defeating Nero (Eric Bana). As Prime Kirk reflects on when he and Spock “stepped onto the Enterprise as boys“, Kelvin Kirk accepts command of the Kelvin Timeline’s version of the starship Enterprise. Touchingly, Prime Kirk acknowledges the Kelvin Timeline crew, by saying that “it’s their time now“. However, it’s also clear that the spirit of adventure is still alive in this older Captain Kirk, who closes the scene by saying:
While the scene as written is a touching little coda, acting as a melancholy farewell between the prime timeline’s Kirk and Spock, it does undermine Star Trek‘s new leads. When handing his Kelvin timeline counterpart the pendant, Prime Spock says that it’s a “dream” that the young Kirk and Spock can now fulfill. The implication being that the Kelvin timeline’s Kirk and Spock are only friends because of an obligation to mirror their prime timeline counterparts. This robs Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto’s Star Trek characters of their agency, reducing them to performing hollow William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy tribute acts.
The end of the movie is about this new crew stepping out of the shadow of the Star Trek: The Original Series cast and embracing their own future, something that would have been undercut by a surprise appearance by Star Trek‘s William Shatner. Reminding theater audiences of the original, iconic, Captain James T. Kirk at the exact moment that Chris Pine’s version takes command of the USS Enterprise would have been a serious misstep. It’s good, therefore, that the scene was cut from the finished Star Trek script, though it’s also worth noting that notoriously cameo-averse actor William Shatner may have declined to return anyway.
More than undermining Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto, William Shatner’s Star Trek scene doesn’t work because it can’t develop the character in the same way it did with Ambassador Spock. By the end of Star Trek, Spock has a new life in the Kelvin Timeline, helping the Vulcans to rebuild after the destruction of their home world. It’s an appropriate last act for Spock, and one that helps him reconcile his lifelong struggle between his Vulcan and human sides. Due to the events of Star Trek Generations, Kirk could never have had such an arc in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek movie.
Having died on Veridian III, Kirk could only appear in Star Trek as a hologram, or perhaps via archive footage from the earlier movies. Kirk’s death in Generations meant that William Shatner’s cameo could only ever be a sentimental piece of lip service to the past, rather than anything that would drive the plot forward. The proposed William Shatner cameo in Star Trek could never have had the impact of Leonard Nimoy’s appearance, which is why it was the right decision to drop it from the finished script.
Star Trek (2009) is streaming now on Paramount+.