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Shatner May Return to Star Trek (Briefly?)
mfh writes "Apparently, William Shatner may return to Star Trek, after talks with studio executives for a cameo on the fourth season of Star Trek: Enterprise. Rick Berman did not disclose which role wants Shatner play, although I'm sure we'd all love to see Captain James Tiberius Kirk again, right?"
No.
I... don't know if... this... is a good... idea!
-Dizzle
"I most likely AM so interested in myself."
Wouldn't Shatner be just a little old to play Kirk in the "Enterprise" era?
-- Alastair
IMHO the new Star Trek, as of late, has fallen into an old formula that is fast making me lose interest.
:D
Bringing back James Kirk could breathe new life back into the series: after all, that's how it all started. Even just William Shatner playing someone else might do the trick.
We need old blood more than new blood.
Defenestrate Windows...
How much would *you* pay to see him on Star Trek again?
If anything, he should play Kirk's great (great?) grandfather or however it works out...
although I'm sure we'd all love to see Captain James Tiberius Kirk again, right?"
As much as I'd like to see my grandma appear on new episodes of Baywatch...
Live in your skin. Keep changing the scenery.
Don't they know anything? Nothing pisses off a geek more than errors in continuity...
...bug the hell out of me.
I'm all for it, so long as he sits on a stool and sings some lame ass song about how to best go about finding inexpensive airfare.
Oh, wait...
An effective signature identifies a particular user amongst a base of thousands.
She's Dead Jim. Jim, She's Dead. Dammit Jim I'm a doctor not a .....
RIP Deforest Kelley.
He may not be the best actor, but I always thought he did ok in Star Trek. He seems like a duck out of water in anything else. I'm sure he would want his retiring role to be Star Trek instead of commercials. ...now if they could only get Nimoy.
Why bring back Kirk when you could bring back evil mirror kirk.
And quasi-evil goati wearing evil spock too!
Veramocor
"No, sir, he's really just 18 - distortions in the space-time continuum have made dashing young Kirk look old and chubby and act like a condescending travel spokesman."
...but not on Star Trek. He's one of the regulars on next season's "Fleet Street" on ABC, a spinoff of "The Practice." I was never much for courtroom dramas, but I tuned in to see Shatner's guest role toward the end of the just-concluded season -- and kept tuning in week after week until the end. His role on that show must have been written with him in mind; it fits his acting style absolutely perfectly, and it's funny as hell. (James Spader and Rebecca de Mornay aren't bad either.) If "Fleet Street" can maintain anywhere near the goofiness and energy level of the last several "Practice" episodes, it'll be a must-see, and a few years from now it'll be what anyone under 20 thinks of when the name William Shatner comes up.
No offence to the older generation who reads slashdot but I am getting a little tired of being constantly reminded of the baby boomer generation (those people who could leave high school and almost be guaranteed a job that would put bread on the table, today going through colledge/university can't even do that). To be reminded of the Baby Boomers hedonistic glory days of free love, drugs and peace to all gets a tad revolting.
Wasn't Shatner who told a bunch of Trekie fanatics to "get a life"?
ZombieEngineer
> As Shatner is to Startrek as Bill Gates is to home computers.
A monocle and a persian cat away from being a James Bond villian?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Get Leonard Nimoy to direct the episode.
Shatner can play Kirk's great-grandfather...
He doesnt have to be the young sex symbol anymore, he can be an old space dog.
Well, he needs the work since he was fired from Priceline.com.
The fact that he's found new work so quickly is a sure sign that the economy really is on the rebound...
They need to replace the entire cast (sans T'Pol of course) with new actors.
I originally thought that Scott Bacula would make a good captian, but he doesn't. All his dialogue seems forced. The first officer is even more annoying; he's a terrible actor and the character doesn't help him out any being a country bumpkin mechanic/first officer/chief engineer.
They could probably get away with holding on to some of the of the cast, but they need to change the characters quite a bit. The crew of the ship is supposed to be like a Navy ship, that's what the heirarchy is supposed to mirror. These characters are so unprofessional that they would all be kicked out of the Navy in a moment. Now, I know it's the future and everything is all roses but c'mon..
In The Next Generation, the crew was definately more loose then the US navy, but you definately had more of a feel of the chain of command and the characters behaved like the officers they were.
I'm just not interested in these characters. They have very little depth. You don't feel as though you know them at all, even after a few years of being on the air.
Maybe I just miss the Picard/Riker duo. Or maybe it's because ever since UPN took over Star Trek it just hasn't been good. Voyager wasn't that good, and neither is this one. It also doesn't help that UPN puts in commercials every 4 minutes. TNG and DS9 were both very good shows, from the pre-UPN era.
Oh well. They will just never be able to bring back the quality and popularity of TNG. TNG was once the most popular TV show on the planet; Enterprise does all it can do just to stay on the air.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Please don't bring him back - don't get me wrong, Kirk was good in the original enterprise but for show that is seeking new funding to survive past the next half of season four and is competing with all those zillion reality shows - the last thing we need is Shatner giving yet another re-rendition of a character that he theoretically should be too old to play.
Enterprise is my favorite star trek franchise series don't mess it up please !
Jon - TheSpork
Q worked well on TNG because he contrasted well with the stick-up-ass crew of the Ent-D. His character just wouldn't work on the new show.
This series jumped the shark on the pilot episode. The rancid violation of Star Trek canon rampant through this series (i.e.: Romulan Cloaking Devices, The Borg, physical appearance of the Klingons) have completely killed this series, because nothing makes sense anymore. I refuse to watch it, I wish it would get cancelled, and I don't know if I'll ever watch anything having to do with Star Trek again while it's in the hands of CBS. The whole franchise has been going on a progressively downward trend in terms of creative ideas since about halfway through ST:Voyager.
They could probably get away with holding on to some of the of the cast, but they need to change the characters quite a bit. The crew of the ship is supposed to be like a Navy ship, that's what the heirarchy is supposed to mirror. These characters are so unprofessional that they would all be kicked out of the Navy in a moment. Now, I know it's the future and everything is all roses but c'mon..
Think of them as more like the the army air force test pilots. Ever seen "the right stuff"? Those guys were a little loose. They did things like stealing planes without clearance, just to prove they had balls. The "marines" stationed onboard seem a little more lashed down.
At least, I can give them that bit of leeway. I think the show is still pushing suckage.
funny munging
What is this I am seeing?!?
We're talking about Star Trek and you're all complaining about the quality of the acting?!?
Ohhh the irony!!!
You're using her as bait, Master!
Q is not a real character. He's a personification of a plot device -- deus ex machina. Whenever the writers get stumped about how to connect up a plot, they can always throw in Q and get a usable script.
Writer 1: "Darn, I really hate doing sci-fi movies. I wish we could do some historical fiction for a change."
Writer 2: "Yes, I've always wanted to do something on the Civil War."
In Unison: "Q!"
May we never see th
You would know about the date revision in the ST universe to adjust for time lost due to early technology where people would still feel some slight effect from relativity. G'uh.
And yes, I did make that up just now.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I don't think Shatner's been much good at anything since his wife died. Frankly, I don't blame him... if my wife died, I'd probably be a bit aimless as well.
All of that said, Shatner's milked the Star Trek thing long enough. Milking a role 10 years after a show ends might be ok for awhile, but the original Star Trek has been gone for a LONG time. The Johnny Carson show was as good as Star Trek, but you don't see Carson showing up everytime someone opens the curtains.
He's had a full life - he should stop embarrassing himself. There's nothing unique about a 1-role actor. He's a nice guy, but really... bury the role, and try something else.
I haven't really ever watched a Voyager episode that I enjoyed. I quickly gave up on it. I've yet to watch an Enterprise episode. Just kind of lost interest due to Voyager. It was kind of a touchy-feely politically correct show rather than the frequent examination of philosophical problems that came up in the earlier Treks.
I did generally like TNG and DS9, though. Never watched much of The Original Trek.
I don't really understand why people get so rabid about Star Trek in general, though. It's reasonably fun to watch, yes. It elevates the status of science (well, at least pseudoscience, but one can generally put a plausible interpretation on things) and engineering, which is not very common in the media. There was some good acting -- I really do like Patrick Stewart. The makeup is *very* good. It's interesting to see positive predictions about the future -- a *lot* of movies seem to go in for futuristic dystopias. Finally, for such a long-running set of series, things didn't get too formulaic -- there was definitely good writing.
May we never see th
Let's cast Lucas as an Ewok who gets sliced in half and falls into the lava during the lava surfing scene!
"I looked long and hard for Shatner, but i got nuthin'! Cheap skate."
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Aha!
;)
There is an explanation for TOS klingons.
Tight budget and bad FX.
Fucking Andorians antennae didn't move in TOS though
I had nothing but high hopes for Enterprise when it came on the air. Maybe I expected too much, but how about storylines leading in the direction of the founding of the Federation? I think they could do some very interested stories about meeting new alien races, overcoming cultural differences, and moving on towards a confederacy of planets.
While I didn't like the ongoing story line this past season, they could turn it around (noticed a little of that the past couple of weeks). If they bring the Xindi in as allies of the humans against the sphere builders, that could start things in the right direction for the Federation (gotta get the Vulcans involved first, though).
I did like some of the stories this season too, especially the one about Trip's clone and the one with Archer's quantum brain injury. Very creative.
Enterprise jumped the shark already. Bringing in Shatner for a guest shot is nothing more than a cheap attempt by Rick Ahab to drop some chum in the water... bring the shark back around for another game of chicken. It won't work.
If anything, this will only hasten the demise of a franchise that's been circling the drain for years.
Berman, flush twice on your way out -- it's a long way to the writer's department.
James T. Kirk hasn't been born yet.
this!
/plurvert
Here all the golden tones of startrek here.
In both cases I'd say that's better than the "new and improved version". The "Enterprise" crew is completely lacking in personality, and the Space Shuttle (when it actually flies) costs more than building a ramp to orbit out of $100 bills.
Christopher Pike was the first captain of the Enterprise...
Setting his threshold to 5, Sparky eliminated most of the trolls on /.
>>IMHO the new Star Trek, as of late, has fallen
>>into an old formula that is fast making me lose
>>interest. Bringing back James Kirk could breathe
>>new life back into the series:
The only problem with bringing back Kirk is that it will, by necessity, involve yet another freakin' time-warp episode. This is, by definition, more of the same ol' crap. There's an entire rich and diverse world of sci-fi literature out there that doesn't involve time travel that is just waiting to be ripped off! Why can't those hacks rip off something other than old star-trek for a change?
Then there's the obvious continuity errors that would arise if Kirk showed up on Enterprise. He's already been sucked into a TNG flick and even managed to die there at a much younger age than Shatner is now! Of course, it's not like Enterprise hasn't taken liberties with the time-line of the other series before...
As much as I'd like to believe the dynamic B&B duo are smart enough to realize this, they've done so many stupid things that I can't help but fear the worst. They must be getting pretty desperate now. Enterprise did get picked up for one more season, but given that it's being moved to Friday nights I wouldn't bet on it seeing another season after that unless it miraculously stops sucking gangrenous monkey balls.
Having Shatner guest star as a random alien villan is cheesy and dumb, but in the end harmless compared to the other stupidity that is Enterprise.
Having Shatner appear as James T. Kirk would be the final straw that would have me petition to have the "Star Trek" taken back out of the show's title, the show disowned as part of the Trek franchise, and a price taken out on Rick Berman's head.
I mean, come on. Kirk is in his what, 30s or 40s during the TOS series? Enterprise is set over a century before (early 2150s vs. late 2260s). Even with the overreliance on screwing with the timeline that Berman is so fond of, there's no way to make that work. Besides, Shatner himself is in his 70s now. He'd have to be playing an extremely old Kirk sent back in time or something. Of course, Kirk already died in Veridian III ("Generations").
Whoever speculated that Shatner would be playing Kirk either has an even lower opinion of Berman than I do (which is saying a great deal), or is even more of a moron than Berman and Braga (which is saying even more).
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
To appreciate a Star Trek show... one must forget that it is Star Trek. How Zen.
he rancid violation of Star Trek canon rampant through this series
The original series paid no attention to canon, so who cares? They couldn't even keep straight a Romulan versus a Klingon ship, or the name of the planetary federation.
From what I've heard, most of the "canon" broken was never canon to begin with, and only implied in technical manuals, novels and so on. I wouldn't call myself a "trekkie", but I've seen every Star Trek and Next Generation, and I haven't seen anything ridiclous on Enterprise. It's actually cool to see Andorians and non-2D Vulcans.
You say this as though there's something wrong with it.
Who needs a plot when you have decontamination scenes?
"Stupid! Stupid stupid stupid stupid! I touched the hot wire right there - I'm an idiot!"
I'd get more enjoyment out of a five-second appearance by Shatner than I have from the last three years of what passes for Star Trek these days!
You must think in Russian.
Yes, Q definitely was a deus ex machina.
Dammit Jim! The whole franchise is about creating a problem and then solving it in 10 minutes through any of the dozen spare deus ex machina they might have lying around.
grumble...grumble...bring back Babylon 5...grumble...
Sapere aude!
I can't believe all these people dissing BS - sorry, WS. For anyone who watched the original Star Trek as a kid, I ask you:
... pauses ... weren't the way a normal person spoke, and all that high-drama music during the fight scenes was really there to cover up the lack of credible violence. If Shatner could do all this with an obvious speech impediment, then I, a mere kid, had the universe literally at my fingertips!
- who didn't want to be Kirk, tooling around the galaxy getting it on with alien chicks in nearly every episode?
- who didn't want to kiss Nichelle Nicholls?
- who didn't want to fight aliens on a regular basis, always win, get the girl and only token injuries, then do it all again next week?
- who didn't want to be boss of the Enterprise? Not some toy Apollo mission, this is the Enterprise!!!!
- who didn't want to have Spock as a buddy? Spock, the guy who knows everything, is super strong and would *never* horn in on your action
And, somehow, he did all this despite an almost total lack of acting ability. Even as a kid, I knew all those dialog
Bring him back, bring him back now. Cram the TV schedule with Shatner, and bring hope to a new generation of kiddies!
I'd like to see him appear as an inter-galactic travelling jester of some sort - he certainly has the musical background to pull of someone warbling in Klingon.
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we're almost due for the Romulan Wars. maybe Kirk will play a Romulan that helps start the war?
or maybe he plays a human that brings about the Romulan Wars?
("Star Trek Chronology" 2nd ed. places the Romulan Wars in 2156. Enterprise 3rd season ends in 2154.)
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
"Get a life ... will ya, people? I mean, for cryin' out loud, it's just a TV show." -- William Shatner
Sure, I wouldn't mind seeing Shatner on Enterprise. If he's reprising his role as Kirk or playing Kirk's (great?) grandfather, then I'm going to be angry.
Looking at the Nielsen ratings and that Enterprise is moving to the "Friday Evening Timeslot of Certain Cancellation," I'd like the last season to be better than a retread of the Berman/Braga bag-o-tricks of propping up hack creativity with a cameo of a favorite character.
Here come da fudge!
You're wrong. Andromeda (Lexa Doig... or something like that) is damn hot
No, some of those are just ordinary elements of plot, and some of them are just machina without deus required. Rather convienient plot elements to produce a manipulated end, but that's something of a different sort.
Q can be taken as the literal hand of God. He can wave said appendage and create any effect, at any time, including changing the laws of physics throughout the entire universe. You can spend half your lifetime crawling through space in a tin can and then have Q throw a hissy fit and "poof" you back to where you started.
It reduces humanity to below the level of ants, in its own eyes, and rightly so. The existence of Q means there's little point to doing more than porno on the holodeck, and Q could even ruin that if he wanted to.
Bring back Q? Q is what made me stop watching in the first place because, as per above, he renders the whole exercise pointless.
KFG
When TNG was first started, the people producing it were thinking of it as just
another TOS clone, and a take-off at that. They only expected it to run for a
season or two. It was after it became really popular that they realised they
actually had something and started working to give it its own identity and some
quality. Right about the middle of the second season, you can see the changes
start, as they started transitioning it from a TOS knock-off to a real show.
About this time they killed off Yarr (not because Yarr was bad but because they
wanted to make room for Warf on the bridge, clearly a good move in retrospect),
traded out Polaski for Crusher (this one I'm not so sure was as good a decision,
but it ended up working out okay), got rid of the clown they had as chief
engineer and promoted Geordi, started doing a lot more to build up the
repertoire of alien races so it wouldn't be the same enemies every episode,
started handling the holodeck a little differently (using it as a plot device
instead of just a cool new gadget to show off), did some work on costuming
and prop quality, and so on and so forth. By the third season, it was a
very different program.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Canon was invented by obsessive Trekkie fans, not by writers and directors. It ain't real, you know.
As someone has said, get a life.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Shatner is a fine actor. He always brings something to the part. I love the orginal series. However, Kirk is f*cking dead. Ditto Spock. Ditto Scotty. I wish Berman would stop masturbating about action-figure sales and put PLOT first. Tell interesting stories. Have the characters make interesting choices. KILL a few of them.
That's a spicy meatball!
>It was way before my time, but wasn't it really proggressive to have a black woman play the part of one of the officers?
It was but they took it to the next level. The first interracial kiss on TV Nov. 22, 1968 took place between Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) on an episode of "Star Trek."
From what I've heard, most of the "canon" broken was never canon to begin with, and only implied in technical manuals, novels and so on.
Well you heard wrong.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
What keeps Star Trek going is all the brainless Trekkies who gleefully swallow all the crap Paramount dishes out to them. Finally beginning to die off, thank God!
My absolute favorite trekkies are the ones who get offended if you call them trekkies. "I'm not a trekkie. I'm a trekker". Of all the groups to wrap themselves in Political Correctness, this are easily the most rediculous.
I don't think they ever got over Shatner telling them to Get A Life.
"We were looking for a way to make the ratings soar So we orchestrated an encounter with the Borg Normally you'd think that that would get us into shit But this one has a smashing ass and a lovely set of tits"
This series jumped the shark on the pilot episode.
/.
*sigh*
Let me say this again--you probably missed the last four or five times I said it on
Enterprise is NOT a prequel to the other four Treks. It's the series that is latest in the timeline, we're just seeing it from a faulty perspective. The Federation won, conquered every threat they had, and achieved time travel--and we're seeing their latest conflict from a POV that we can better emphasize with.
I can sum up the current conflict for you, with oodles of spoilers, and you can tell me how creative you think it is.
A race of aliens, similiar to the wormhole entities of DS9, are using a network of spheres to alter our reality. The far-future Federation was more than capable of defeating these aliens, so the aliens have convinced a five-species "race" known as the Xindi that Earth is a threat, so that the Federation can be undone by a historical cascade.
To counter the Xindi, the temporal Federation alters the timeline by having the NX-01 not be destroyed, but rather explore the galaxy earlier than had otherwise happened.
As for your other complaints--Romulan Cloaking Devices have, IIRC, always existed as far as the canon cares (a few novels notwithstanding), the Klingons have always looked they way they look (a non-canon explanation from Star Fleet Battles is that the Klingons TV-Kirk fought were human/klingon hybrids), and the Borg were logical effects of the assault from First Contact.
Time Travel isn't an afterthought for Enterprise or a gimick. It's essential to the metaplot of the series, and it's easily as creative as TNG, DS9, or Voyager. (Moreso, even, considering that no one else has ever done quite this setup on TV.)
I mean, heck, they have the guy from Quantum Leap as captain--you don't think that's a little bit of a clue that time travel is important to the show?
...Rick Berman did not disclose which role wants Shatner play, although I'm sure...
Did Yoda get a job as a Slashdot editor when I wasn't paying attention?
"And as 5 people already told you, and you brushed off, Q-like, as if it were meaningless: there are a million similar devices in Trek."
Then you missed the point if you think "Q" is equivalent to "transporters".
Transporters are nonsensical and silly, but at its heart, it does a single thing. Oh sure, the writers bent the rules a little, but they're all within a single framework.
"Q" was inherently different because he was a plot device without any external or internal rules.
Externally, you could throw him into any situation and produce any desired result *because he is "Q"*. No more explanation necessary. Internally, even if you produce a plot that uses "Q" in a sensible way, he can still change thing to anything else at a whim.
When could the Holodeck make the "BORG" appear? THe answer: Its a stupid question, but not with "Q". He's the ultimate plot device, he can make anything into anything.
YOu can use "Q" once. Maybe twice. After that, he is the writer's ultimate crutch. He should never be used again. He spoils what sliver of storytelling remains in Star Trek.
Well, that makes sense. Most of the world isn't white, and in the Earth of the future, everyone is equally prosperous. With equal representation from the entire planet, probably most of the admirals in Starfleet would be black.
It's not politically correct drivel, it's mathematically correct fact.
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
You've absolutely hit on the head what the original Star Trek was about and why especially the character of Captain Kirk still lives on in popular culture: he's the guy you want to be.
Kirk is right up there with James Bond, Rocky and Rambo (though those last two are a little dumb to my taste, Zorro, and John Wayne. Kirk is the image of a hero.The problem with the new series (and Voyager) is when I ask myself who would I want to be, I have no answer. I'm not sure anyone else does either.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Without getting into your theory about Enterprise and where it sits in the whole Trek scheme of things I think that no, the Romulan cloaking device has not always existed.
It was introduced to the Federation in Balance of Terror for the first time. This is made very clear.
Since Enterprise is supposed to predate TOS it's badly out of place. The rest of it (Klingon appearance, Borg showing up) I have almost no concern with. The cloaking device thing though's just plain wrong.
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