I can just see it now, captain James Tiberius Kirk slowly driving a mobility scooter through Ferengi Nar's biggest shopping mall, with soft royalty-free muzac playing in the background while Ferengi shopping clerks watch with a look of bemusement on their faces, while their supervisor watches them with a look of pure hot white anger on his face before shouting at them at the top of his lungs to move their lazy asses. Record scratch, heart attack, no Ferengi medical insurance and no latinum - Captain Kirk dies, the end.
He also has an incredible work ethic and has never been shy about trying a new project. Be it TV, movies, theater. He just released a childrens album last year and of course is royalty at the various cons that's he's constantly appearing at.
Love him or hate him you can't deny Bill Shatner is a legitimate living legend.
It's amazing how an actor can have the majority of his career based on one role, spending decades interacting with fans at conventions and with new writers who watched Captain Kirk as a kid... could also so throughly misunderstand the appeal of his own show.
Bill grew up in the Flash Gordon era of sci-fi and has never left. I say we leave him there. Nothing good comes from his return.
I'm gonna come out in favour of this, despite the comments. One last outing, why not? A guest star spot I think is overdue for any remaining TOSers in SNW. Even if it isn't the greatest episode, I can't see any harm, and Shatner reprising the role would drive engagement pretty high (meaning more episodes!)
I have a bit of a knee-jerk reaction that Star Trek should be looking forward rather than backward, but I also love SNW so that's obviously not a hard and fast rule. You're right that this could be done well, but I'm very skeptical that it would be.
My biggest concern is that they would over aggrandise the character. Kirk was always a big personality, but he was also very flawed and human. I don't want to watch every other character fawning over the legendary Captain Kirk, or see him battling the Borg at 95.
I also don't want to see an uncanny valley digital mockery, I can't stand those.
But if they came up with something like Relics was for Scotty - an intimate, meaningful story that put a button on the character's life and didn't feel the need to build it up as some galaxy-shattering event - I could be into that. But I doubt that's what they're considering.
He stuck around this long and even though he's Bill fucking Shatner, it's hard to say he doesn't deserve one last ride. I just wish he'd played it more gracefully these last 30 or so years.
I'm with you. It can't be Picard, or Indiana Jones and The Cursed Walker. If he's a guest, or secondary character, doing age-appropriate things... he's not the last TOS bridge crew alive, but one of a shrinking few.
I can't see a good way to do more than an episode, but I'd take it. Just don't try to play the tearful farewell card and have him die again. Bring Takei and Koenig along. Maybe one of the many god-like species they ran across has formally requested them for some reason. Maybe Talos IV - that'd be a nice full circle, except that Takei and Koenig weren't involved in that.