Re: Should Shatner return in a sequel?
A part of me would love to see Shatner as Kirk in the next movie, but there are a lot of problems with the idea. For starters, just about the last thing I want to see is more time travel or parallel universes or whatever. For another thing, I’d really like to see the new cast given a chance to fly completely on their own in an adventure that is free of the plot convolutions required to include original cast members.
On the other hand, a possible story idea did occur to me not too long ago, one in which a mysterious old man named Barona makes contact with the Enterprise and convinces Kirk to help him find Spock Prime, who disappeared shortly after helping to found a new Vulcan home world. Of course, Barona is played by William Shatner and is, in fact, Kirk Prime from the original timeline, though this is not explained until much later in the story. Eventually we learn that he has traveled back in time and across alternate realities on a mission to rescue Spock Prime and return him to where and when he belongs.
But wait, how can Kirk Prime still be alive, you ask? Was another “copy” of him retrieved from the Nexus? Was his body resurrected from beneath the rock pile on Veridian III using Borg technology? Honestly, I don’t know, and I’m not sure I would even bother to explain it in the film. J.J. Abrams has a penchant for leaving certain questions unanswered and this could well be one of them. I’m imagining that when they finally do find Spock Prime, he is as curious about the answer to that question as the audience would be, but all Kirk Prime needs to say is, “I’ll explain later.”
The key is that time travel itself is not the focus of the story. It’s a given that Kirk Prime has somehow accomplished it but the details don’t matter and are never dwelled upon. He simply turns up at the beginning of the story and departs, along with Spock Prime, at the end. It is also key that the Kirk played by Shatner is, indeed, Kirk Prime, the one and only original, just the same as the Spock played by Leonard Nimoy, and the fact that they are returning to where they both belong is the ultimate validation that the original Trek timeline/universe/reality still exists and continues on, even if that doesn’t happen to be the one we are following in the films from now on.
Finally, while Shatner and Nimoy as Kirk Prime and Spock Prime would be the motivating core of the storyline, the plot itself would revolve around the new cast and how they deal with whatever challenges ensue along the way. In fact, Shatner and Nimoy should have very little in the way of actual screen time, but as it was with Nimoy in Trek ’09, every minute of it should be significant. Pine and Quinto should not be playing second fiddle here, not should Karl Urban or any of the other supporting cast members. Their part in all of this is what the film is really about.
So yeah, I can see Shatner appearing in the new film, but I don’t think there’s any way to do it without it profoundly affecting the very nature of the story and how it’s conceived, and I’m still not sure if I think it would be worth it.
