William Shatner is inextricably linked with Star Trek the same way Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford and linked to Star Wars.
You truly can't talk about one without discussing the other. However, one of the most notable absences from JJ Abrams' revitalisation of Star Trek is how notably absent Shatner has been whilst Leonard Nimoy's Spock has been, for the most part, front and centre.
Round about the time the first of Abrams' Trek was announced, Shatner was a little bit miffed that he wasn't called. With the untimely passing of Leonard Nimoy last year, it seemed that was it for the original cast featuring. Or was it?
Rumours surfaced late last year that screenwriter / star Simon Pegg had written a cameo for Shatner in Star Trek Beyond, although they've now been firmly squashed. In a recent interview, Shatner explained all.
"It would have been interesting to see what their fertile imaginations could have done with somebody who is 20 years older than when Captain Kirk died [in Star Trek Generations] and how they would have explained the difference in appearance. But that never came up. I’m sure they must have thought of it one time or another but I never had a substantial conversation about replaying the role."
In a way, that makes sense. Putting Original Kirk, or Kirk Prime, into the mix would have been distracting and, well, how would they make it work? We had a wild theory that Chris Pine's Kirk would be shown an elderly version of himself via some sort of temporal anomaly and that's how they'd crowbar it in, but honestly, it just doesn't work.
Shatner's Kirk is in the past and the future Kirk, for better or worse, is Chris Pine. What do you think? Should they have put William Shatner into Star Trek Beyond? Let us know in the comments!
Via SFX
