Star Trek: William Shatner's Up for More Kirk (Listen Up, Paramount!)

Posted in: Paramount+, TV | Tagged: star trek

Star Trek: William Shatner's Up for More Kirk (Listen Up, Paramount!)

Star Trek legend William Shatner says he's open to doing more Kirk and getting back to the captain's chair at the age of 95. Maybe SNW S05?

Published Tue, 07 Jul 2026 08:37:08 -0500
by Tom Chang
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Article Summary

• William Shatner says he’s open to playing Captain Kirk again, arguing even at 95 he still fits Star Trek’s war-and-peace hero.
• Strange New Worlds bosses tried to bring Shatner back for an alternate-reality Star Trek story with Kirk meeting Pike.
• The article revisits Kirk’s Generations death, the 2009 reboot cameo talks, and Picard’s tease that his body was recovered.
• With Star Trek TV in limbo, Paramount is urged to move fast and give Shatner one last meaningful Kirk return before it’s too late.

Death is never really final in the realm of Star Trek, as we've had concept films and the magic of CG and AI that saw William Shatner's James T. Kirk and Leonard Nimoy's Spock back together again (with stand-ins) thanks to OTOY and the Roddenberry Archive. While it's not really considered Star Trek canon within the Paramount realm, it's fun to think about, especially since the franchise deals with infinite possibilities. As Strange New Worlds winds down its final two seasons, we're already up to three different sets of actors playing The Original Series characters in the timeline.

And with production on the franchise wrapping in SNW's final two seasons, and Starfleet Academy canceled, the future currently lies in the vague new cinematic reboot after the Kelvin crew's last film, 2016's Star Trek Beyond. With nothing much else to lose, SNW showrunners Akiva Goldsman and Henry Alonso Myers revealed that before filming officially wrapped, they were trying to get William Shatner for one more TV story that would have seen Kirk back in the Great Depression in an alternate reality of what if he stayed behind in the TOS episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" and seeing the 95-year old Shatner meeting Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) and company, but sadly things never panned out. With Star Trek's 60th anniversary, Shatner spoke with TV Guide (via TV Insider) on what it would take to get him back into the captain's chair one last time.

Star Trek: The Original Series Star William Shatner on What It Would Take for Kirk's Return

It's been a question that's been bombarding the Canadian actor since 1993's Star Trek: Generations, which saw Kirk save the galaxy one last time, alongside U.S.S. Enterprise-D Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart), before falling to his death at a chasm on Veridian III, stopping Dr. Tolian Soren (Malcolm McDowell) from committing further genocide to get to the Nexus. "It's easy to say money, but you know, the longer I played Kirk, I was allowed to put various shades of character in there. I think Captain Kirk — as the captain of the deadly instrument of war, as well as a ship of peace — could reside in somebody like me very well," Shatner said. "I mean, I still have the aggression and the instinct for battle, and I've gotten myself into very dangerous things. But there is a planing, a smoothing of all those heights and peaks of attitude and activity that comes with age, as [opposed to] aggression, which is sort of a youthful characteristic. Even at 95, I think Captain Kirk would be a really good captain of a spaceship capable of war and peace."

There was a previous attempt in the form of a proposed scene in J. J. Abrams' soft reboot of Star Trek in 2009 that would have seen his Kirk wish Spock (Nimoy) a happy birthday, but Shatner wasn't exactly keen on doing a glorified cameo, wanting to at least be as important to the story as Spock was. There was another tease in the form of season three of Picard that saw the Daystrom Station, Starfleet's top-secret facility housing some of the biggest off-the-books projects within the Federation, along with other relics of interest like Kirk's body that's been recovered from Veridian III, that opens the door to a story that may never come since Paramount never greenlit Legacy, Picard showrunner Terry Matalas' proposed sequel series.

Honestly, if Shatner is interested in a return, the TV end of Star Trek is currently paused indefinitely as Paramount burns off episodes; we're still a long way from SNW season five, with season four set to premiere. Shatner isn't getting any younger, and more foot-dragging isn't going to make this happen any more likely. The Unification short film didn't even involve Shatner physically, as he agreed to have his likeness superimposed onto a stand-in. If there's anyone who could churn out one more episode, last-second even if it's a bottle episode, then there's no reason why Paramount couldn't get Goldsman, Myers, and Shatner to pull off one more episode, and you wouldn't even need to rebuild all the sets if you just get enough budget to recreate 20th-century Kirk, the Guardian of Forever, and the sets for an away mission. You can even throw in a TOS set recreation for good measure. For more on Shatner's life and career, you can check out the full interview.

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