They Wanted to Bring Back William Shatner as Captain Kirk for Strange New Worlds

Captain Kirk died in 1994’s Star Trek Generations, hurtling to his fate — in fairly ingominous fashion — while on a collapsed catwalk. “It was fun,” he said, as William Shatner signed off for the last time as the legendary Starfleet officer.

Except, in the 32 years or so since then, we’ve gotten two new versions of James T. Kirk: The first is Chris Pine’s big-screen iteration from the J.J. Abrams trilogy, and the second is Paul Wesley’s “why is he always hanging around the Enterprise when he doesn’t even work here yet” version on the series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. (Shatner himself also returned, presumably at the very least with his lawyer’s approval, through the re-use of Original Series footage in the Deep Space Nine episode “Trials and Tribble-ations” in 1996.)

But even so, that wasn’t enough for some of the folks behind Strange New Worlds, who recently revealed to Polygon that they tried to get Shatner himself back for a guest shot on the show ever since it launched. How exactly would they have brought back the 95-year-old actor to play a character who died when he was just around 60?

Well, it turns out Strange New Worlds co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman and his writing partners had a pretty interesting idea in that regard. But they weren’t the first to attempt to lure Shatner back to the captain’s seat. While the actor has said that he’s been asked to come back as Kirk many times, it has never materialized (aside from in comics, books, and the like — and no, we’re not counting Kirk’s apparently preserved body from Star Trek: Picard). Let’s look at the most concrete examples of the near-return of the Starfleet icon…

Return to the City on the Edge of Forever

“I have been asked to come back as Kirk so many times. If Kirk is going to come back, it has to mean something.”

That’s what Shatner said at a Vancouver convention in 2025, as reported by The Direct. Interestingly, at that same appearance he mentioned that he had been approached by a current Trek series writer about a potential return. While the actor did not mention which writer, he did say he was “so impressed” by the scribe and that he would be receiving a pitch for the show the following week.

Could this have been Goldsman who The Shat was talking about? The timing would make sense, as the only series in production in 2025 were Strange New Worlds and Starfleet Academy. Plus, Goldsman is an avowed fan of classic Trek, and has added (some might say shoehorned in) various ties to The Original Series in his Trek work, so his desire to give Shatner one last turn in the role is… logical.

Assuming that is the writer the actor was talking about in 2025, it apparently never panned out. According to Polygon, Goldsman’s “biggest regret was not being able to bring William Shatner back to play a version of Kirk who decided to stay in Depression-era New York with Edith Keeler (Joan Collins), a soup kitchen operator he fell in love with in the episode ‘The City on the Edge of Forever.’” The report adds that while the Goldsman and his fellow showrunner Henry Alonso Myers “tried to make that happen every season,” including scripting versions of the story, it never panned out. And now with Strange New Worlds’ final season wrapped and waiting to air, it never will.

At first glance, it sounds like it could’ve been a really cool way to give Shatner’s Kirk — or an alt-version of him — a final farewell. But would it have been, actually? The whole point of “The City on the Edge of Forever” is that Kirk has to sacrifice his great love in order to save humanity’s future. (It’s a long story.) Wouldn’t his working his way around that decision deflate the whole concept behind what, to many fans, is the greatest episode of Star Trek ever? I guess we’ll never know at this point.

Mirror Universe Kirk… or Chef Kirk?

When Star Trek: Enterprise entered its fourth season in 2004, late showrunner Manny Coto — a Trekkie himself — planted a bunch of connections to other Star Trek shows throughout the season. But one idea — to bring Shatner back as a Mirror Universe version of James T. Kirk in a two-part episode — was not to be.

The Mirror Universe of course is that realm in Star Trek where the bad guys are running things… and the good guys are the bad guys! (What a concept.) “Shatner playing evil Kirk is more fun than Shatner playing good Kirk,” Coto said in a Blu-ray feature for the season. Going by “Tiberius” — Captain Kirk’s middle-name — this would’ve been a version of Kirk that didn’t break continuity, since the last time we saw the Mirror Universe Kirk was on the 1960s series when he was still alive and well. And in fact, the storyline that was planned would’ve revealed that it was actually Tiberius who created the Mirror Universe in the first place!

The idea reportedly came from Shatner and his writing partners Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens; the duo had joined the Enterprise writing staff that season. The pair had previously co-written, with Shatner, a ton of the actor’s Trek universe books.

But as Coto pointed out, the studio seemed to get cold feet at the idea of spending a lot of money on the episode, particularly as they probably knew the show was about to be cancelled. Was he referring to the overall production costs of such an episode, or Shatner’s asking price specifically? Probably a bit of both.

Still, Enterprise Season 4 did manage to revisit the TOS time period in a sense with the two-parter “In a Mirror, Darkly,” which was set in the Mirror Universe and featured the evil Captain Archer (Scott Bakula) and his crew discovering an Original Series-era ship that looked just like the classic Enterprise. Set phasers to nerd out.

Another story idea that never went anywhere reportedly involved the Enterprise’s “Chef” character. Chef ran the galley on Captain Archer’s Enterprise NX-01, and while he was often mentioned, he was never seen (aside from in one episode where he’s glimpsed but his face is obscured). It’s a bit difficult to find a definitive source for this one, but apparently Shatner would’ve played Chef, not Kirk. But the fact that he looked like Kirk would’ve figured into some kind of adventure where Chef would’ve had to cosplay as Kirk. (If anyone has definitive quotes from the writers or Shatner about this pitch, let us know!) Ultimately a version of this idea was used in the much-maligned Enterprise series finale, “These Are the Voyages…” where Jonathan Frakes’ Riker appeared as Chef on the holodeck. Or something. (Don’t ask.)

Happy Birthday From Star Trek 2009

When J.J. Abrams rebooted Star Trek for the big screen in 2009, Leonard Nimoy played an integral role in linking the new take on the franchise to the old. While set in yet another alternate universe — the Kelvin-verse — the original universe which featured the Nimoy, Shatner, etc. versions of the characters still existed. So when Nimoy appears in the 2009 film, he’s playing a much older version of classic Spock, albeit one who meets his younger, alternate-universe self in Zachary Quinto’s Spock.

So it would’ve made sense that Shatner too could’ve popped in for a cameo at the very least as Captain Kirk… maybe, kinda? The problem is, by the point in the timeline (nerd alert again) where Spock Prime enters the Kelvin-verse, Kirk Prime is already long dead and buried (under a pile of rocks, thanks Jean-Luc) on Veridian III. So putting aside the fact that there was already a pretty crowded call sheet of actors who needed screen time, there was also the fact that it, uh, logically wouldn’t make sense for Shatner’s Kirk to appear.

Back before the film was released, Shatner expressed his disappointment about not being cast to Extra TV: “How could you not put one of the founding figures into a movie that was being resurrected? That doesn’t make sense to me!”

The thing is, Abrams said at the time of the film’s release that a scene was written that brought back Kirk Prime, even if it ultimately wound up not working for the movie and was dropped. This would’ve been a cameo where Kirk appears in a holographic birthday message for Spock.

“It was very tricky,” he told Sci-fi Scanner (a site that now appears to be defunct), as relayed by The Guardian. “We actually had written a scene with him in it that was a flashback kind of thing, but the truth is, it didn’t quite feel right. … The bigger thing was that he was very vocal that he didn’t want to do a cameo. 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, which, frankly, he deserves.”

Abrams also pointed out that the character’s death in Generations had seriously complicated the matter.

“Maybe a smarter group of film-makers could have figured out how to resolve that,” he said.

They weren’t the first, or last, to try.