Kirk's fate before Generations
- Thread starter tim0122
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Well I’m getting ready to turn 52, so you must be ancient.
Not a comic book / superman fan i take it?
A fan of both…perhaps 30 years ago.
yeah, thats when he was famous in those circles.... . 25-40 years ago.
I always liked the idea that we never knew what happened to Kirk after that final log entry at the end of TUC. That his fate was just kinda left up to each persons own imagination with just little clues or offhand mentions here and there.
The fact that they brought him to the 24th century only to drop him off a cliff never sat right.
The fact that they brought him to the 24th century only to drop him off a cliff never sat right.
Well, I just thougt Kirk was enjoying his pension
Yep, the post Crisis reboot in the late 80’s.
Too many prine universe changes or reboots.
But we see exactly what happens. He flies directly into that star and they all die.
So one day I stumbled upon the TNG article for "Too Short A Season" and the Background Information of the article read:
As originally conceived, William Shatner was to appear in this episode as James T. Kirk. The planet in the episode would have been Neural, from TOS: "A Private Little War", with an aged Kirk returning to try to negotiate a peace on the planet. Shatner was either unwilling or unable to appear (probably unwilling, considering his disparaging remarks about The Next Generation during its first year), so the venue and character were changed.
Then later that got removed because it was all made up by someone, but you can still find it on the Talk page. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Talk:Too_Short_A_Season_(episode)#Kirk_in_this_episode?
I just remember reading it and thinking "Huh??"
Same with a discussion in one of the Trek reference books with the TNG actors. Someone says flippantly that William Shatner/Kirk will be guesting or joining the series in Season 8. As a 12 year old I thought that was going to be cool.
As originally conceived, William Shatner was to appear in this episode as James T. Kirk. The planet in the episode would have been Neural, from TOS: "A Private Little War", with an aged Kirk returning to try to negotiate a peace on the planet. Shatner was either unwilling or unable to appear (probably unwilling, considering his disparaging remarks about The Next Generation during its first year), so the venue and character were changed.
Then later that got removed because it was all made up by someone, but you can still find it on the Talk page. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Talk:Too_Short_A_Season_(episode)#Kirk_in_this_episode?
I just remember reading it and thinking "Huh??"
Same with a discussion in one of the Trek reference books with the TNG actors. Someone says flippantly that William Shatner/Kirk will be guesting or joining the series in Season 8. As a 12 year old I thought that was going to be cool.
IIRC, the whole "Too Short a Season was originally going to be about Kirk" is just one of those urban legends that's never had a shred of evidence to back it up. Just like that story about how Trek XI was originally going to start with Nero destroying a classic-style Enterprise 1701 commanded by Robert April.
Yeah, exactly. I'm not entirely sure as to why we had to actually see him die. I figure it's the sort of thing of where the franchise just needed to put a rest to the character officially, but that's just if I had to guess.
There's a reason for this discrepancy. Ron Moore, one of the writers for Generations addressed this issue in an interview. Originally, Generations was supposed to have Kirk, Spock, and Bones in the beginning to send Kirk off. Nimoy, however, decided not to do the film, as he didn't think the script was good and that his character just didn't have a significant role to play (he was also angry/dissapointed/insulted that Rick Berman offered him the director's chair for GEN AFTER the script had been written and pre-production was done so there was nothing Nimoy could do about the script. Nimoy turned Berman down and, the supposition is, was consequently persona-non-grata at Paramount from that point on.). DeForest Kelly also decided not to do the film, following Nimoy's lead. So, Moore and Braga switched the Spock and McCoy lines to Scotty and Chekov and got Doohan and Koenig onboard (and, from a recent interview, Koenig was not happy at all about how Generations turned out). Moore was well aware of the discrepancy regarding Scotty's words in "Relics" regarding Kirk, but thought, in lieu of Spock or Bones, Scotty should be there at least, never mind the issue. Moore suggested that Scotty just had a senior moment or something in "Relics" to explain his words.
There wouldn't have been any issue if they'd used Sulu or Uhura instead, but I think that they needed or wanted someone besides Spock to figure out a solution and if you don't have Spock, Scotty was the guy that was needed.
They didn't need to address Kirk's fate, they just wanted a TOS character of significance to pass the torch. They decided that character should be Kirk so that the two captains of the Enterprise could team up.
If Shanter had turned them down, I suspect that Kirk's fate might very well have been left unaddressed, although Shatner has said that Berman told him that they'd just say Kirk was dead anyway.
Reasonable.
No, my mind doesn't get blown easy.
Anyway, fans can have their cake and eat it too. Because of the possibility of alternate universes constantly branching off, fans can imagine that Generations happens in one alternate universes, and that none, some or all of later Star Trek happens in PIcard's dreams, or they can imagine there were many alternate universes where the Enterprise-D never got involved in Soren's plot and that none, some, or all of later Star Trek actually happened in real life and not in Picard's dreams in those alternate universes.
And fans can argue endlessly which of later Star Trek is Picard's fantasy dreams in the Nexus and which actually happens in alternate universes where Picard never got sucked into the nexus.
I believe that Generations happened the way we saw it on screen. My hypothesis was just for fun.
Only one Prime Kirk, out of an infinite number of others.
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