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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.
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
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
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!
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.
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!"
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!
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
>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
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?