Much like Harrison Ford and Han Solo – or Mark Hamill and Luke Skywalker – William Shatner and his on-screen hero, James T. Kirk, have essentially gone their separate ways.
That’s not necessarily new information, given Shatner’s fan-favorite kicked the bucket during Generations, but if you’re a Trekkie hoping against hope that OG Kirk will one day return to our screens, we’ve got bad news. Via Twitter (h/t ComicBook.com), William Shatner himself went on record to confirm that he won’t be returning to any future Star Trek project – be it a movie or TV show – believing that Kirk’s journey has very much run its course. He did bite the bullet back in 2004, after all.
In his own words, Shatner told his Twitter followers that “Kirk’s story is pretty well played out at this point.” Ergo: don’t be holding your breath for the Trek veteran to return to this most beloved universe. Not now. And perhaps not ever.
No. I think Kirk’s story is pretty well played out at this point. https://t.co/30qVk9uxKN
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) March 2, 2020
This very much echoes Shatner’s previous comments about a potential second coming on Star Trek, after the acting giant told ComicBook.com last year that his return would require some form of resurrection – a resurrection that may very well undermine Star Trek: Generations.
That word, ‘resurrect.’ That’s a key word. Resurrect. You’d have to resurrect me, Shatner, in order to do the daily. I don’t know what Patrick is doing doing that. Doing a series is debilitating for a young guy, for a 25-year-old, which I was doing when I was 25 years old. It’s a physical wrecker, it’s a mental wrecker, and it’s a homewrecker ‘cause you’re working 14, 18 hours a day. And in the last series I did, Boston Legal, I had, in rush hour, a two-hour commute. So add that. So no, I would not be interested in doing a series, per se.
For Patrick Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard (another mainstay of this sci-fi juggernaut), it was simply a case of revisiting Picard years after The Next Generation had ended. But given the circumstances of William Shatner’s last appearance as Kirk, the Powers That Be would have to rewrite the rulebook. So perhaps it’s best to let this one lie.
With a second season already in the pipeline, Star Trek: Picard continues this Thursday with “Nepenthe.”
