William Shatner is totally up for a Star Trek return
And he has some thoughts about how it should and shouldn't be done
He may not be back for the next Star Trek movie Beyond, but erstwhile Captain Kirk William Shatner says he’s still keen to return to the USS Enterprise, perhaps in a similar capacity to his late co-star Leonard Nimoy (who played an older version of Spock in the first two films).
"I would play an old Captain Kirk, absolutely," he told the Hollywood Reporter.
"You would have [to have] an interesting character, not a cameo, like, 'Here I am, aren't I interesting?' It's the ongoing world; it's the world within science-fiction. Yes, you age within the universe. Time goes on — but time bends, as well. There's so many things you could do."
He added: "When we finished our movies — the six movies I made — we were putting Kirk into glasses, graying hair, a little old. I wrote a series of novels [in which] they allowed me to tell my story of Captain Kirk. So in a series of Star Trek novels, half a dozen of them, I — taking from my own life, of life and death and love and loss — I created this whole world of Star Trek for Captain Kirk.”
"I would have loved to have done them [as movies]."
Shatner also described how close he’d come to already making a return to Star Trek, having discussed making a cameo for 2009’s reboot with director JJ Abrams.
"How would they handle it, in science-fiction terms? I'm older, I'm heavier, I'm — all the problems of age,” he said.
“So what did Captain Kirk do? Die and age? Doesn't sound science-fiction-y enough. Or maybe you make him really old. I don't know. It seems to have beggared Abrams' imagination."
Star Trek Beyond will be released this summer
Authors
Huw Fullerton is a Commissioning Editor for Radio Times magazine, covering Entertainment, Comedy and Specialist Drama.
