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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?"

44 of 513 comments (clear)

  1. No. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    No.

    1. Re:No. by Ankle · · Score: 5, Funny

      I. Whole. Heartily. Agree. With. You. If. There. Is. A. God. Hopefully. This. Won't. Happen. As. I. Could. Never. Stand. The. Torture. Of. His. Dialog.

    2. Re:No. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      You. Mean. Mono. Log. You. Green. Blooded. Son. Of. A. Bitch.

    3. Re:No. by cliveholloway · · Score: 4, Funny
      Dialog! Just pray he doesn't start singing...

      cLive ;-)

      --
      -- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
    4. Re:No. by wuice · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If it weren't for William Shatner and his hokey, stilted dialog, there would be no Star Trek as we know it today! Pretend you don't love him, but you can't run from the truth.

    5. Re:No. by Epistax · · Score: 5, Funny

      They could make him into a reoccuring side character who gets killed in every episode. Give him a taste of his own medicine.

      </omg they killed shatner>

    6. Re:No. by Cpt_Kirks · · Score: 4, Funny

      Bite. Me.

    7. Re:No. by bokmann · · Score: 4, Funny

      That post says it all... I wish it could be modereated higher than 5.

      In some UPN Boardroom:

      Lackey #1: Uh, sir, there were 42593 people who voted on a popular geek message board, simply said "no" to the whole Kirk on Enterprise deal.

      Guy with Cigar: Huh? Those nerds love him, don't they? Why wouldn't they want him back?

      Lackey #2: Best we could do dir is bring him back as his own great-grandfather, or maybe as a completely unrelated villian.

      Guy with Cigar: But... TIME TRAVEL! TIME TRAVLEL! The WHOLE FUCKING SERIES IS ABOUT TIME TRAVEL! I don't understand... they loved the Next Gen episode with the previous Enterprise from the rift-thing... They loved the DS9 episode with the tribbles, why wouldn't they want Kirk back?

      Lackey #1: He's too old and fat, sir.

      Lackey number #2 nods, almost unfraid to make eye contact.

      Guy with Cigar: "Oh. Well, what else did they say? Maybe we could use this to our advantage..."

      Lackey #2: Well, sir, the next highest comment was "I can't believe you still watch Trek. Why is it that Trek can go forever while shows like Firefly and the one with all the muppets on Sci-Fi get cancelled?"

      Lackey #1: From there, the conversation degenerated to the Sci-Fi's remake of Battlestar Galactica.

      Guy with Cigar: I see... the nerds have abandonded us... maybe we should abandon them. (Picks up Phone) "Jane? Get me Wil Smith on the phone... I want to see if he wants to help produce a new idea I just had... Moesha - the Next Generation."

  2. Uh oh by Dizzle · · Score: 4, Funny

    I... don't know if... this... is a good... idea!

    --
    -Dizzle
    "I most likely AM so interested in myself."
    1. Re:Uh oh by msobkow · · Score: 4, Funny

      Well, it looks like Enterprise is pre-announcing their "Jump the Shark" episode.

      Oh well, it was good while it lasted.

      --
      I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
    2. Re:Uh oh by katchins · · Score: 5, Funny

      I wonder how long into the episode before he sleeps with T'Pol or Sato.

      --
      if (!sig) { printf("Signature Unavailable\n"); }
    3. Re:Uh oh by Joe+the+Lesser · · Score: 4, Funny

      We

      Must warp

      Now

      Engage

      The engines now

      Spock!

      *Waves hands randomly*

      --
      "I only speak the truth"
      Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
    4. Re:Uh oh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      No, no it wasn't.

    5. Re:Uh oh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
      I wonder how long into the episode before he sleeps with T'Pol or Sato.

      Or?

  3. A new dose of life! by psi42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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: 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. :D

    --
    Defenestrate Windows...
    1. Re:A new dose of life! by Dunkelzahn · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If I had points, I would mod you insightful. I personally started to lose interest with Deep Space Nine, and then my interest went six feet under with Voyager. Seeing what I have of Enterprise, they have deviated far from the continuity of the Star Trek franchise that was established in the original series and Next Generation years (Romulan cloaking devices a century before Kirk? First contact with the Klingons before the Federation even existed? Xindi? Come on!)

      The only thing that would save this show would be to cancel the show and have a final episode where an Ensign Daniels walked out of a holodeck on Enterprise-D, to be railed on about historical inconsistencies by Data.

      I don't recognize any of the movies after First Contact either, so forget about B-4.

      --
      .
    2. Re:A new dose of life! by The+Fanta+Menace · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Of late? Star Trek has been formulaic ever since TNG hit the screens. Just watching reruns of Voyager, you can see the same patterns over and over again, that were in TNG, DS9 and the original.

      Meanwhile, truely groundbreaking and interesting programs like Firefly only last for one series before being axed :(

      --
      -- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
    3. Re: A new dose of life! by Associate · · Score: 4, Funny

      Sharks with freakin laser beams!!!

      --
      Someone hates these cans.
    4. Re:A new dose of life! by NanoGator · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "First contact with the Klingons before the Federation even existed? Xindi? Come on!"

      The Enterprise time line starts after the Enterprise-E visited Earth in First Contact. That little bit of info can be used to correct a lot of 'inconsistencies' in Enterprise, including when exactly they meet a lot of races such as the Klingons. Things are further complicated by the whole temporal cold war thing.

      As for cloaking devices etc, well I dunno. Never watched much of ToS. I'm not defending that bit.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
  4. Hmmmmm.....Priceline...... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    How much would *you* pay to see him on Star Trek again?

  5. ancestor... by IronMagnus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If anything, he should play Kirk's great (great?) grandfather or however it works out...

  6. Urrrr... by xxx_Birdman_xxx · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  7. My thoughts: by jm92956n · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.
  8. Good for him by 4b696e67 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Good for him by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 4, Funny
      He seems like a duck out of water in anything else.

      My God, man! How can you say that about him after seeing his inspired acting on T. J. Hooker and the amazing hosting abilities displayed on Rescue 911! With such versatility, I would be surprised if he couldn't sing just as well, too!!!

      --
      That is all.
  9. Technobabble by ChilyMack · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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."

  10. Re: Shatner Back in StarTrek by Black+Parrot · · Score: 5, Funny


    > 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
  11. Re:A new dose of life! - completely new.. by cbreaker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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. -
  12. Re:A little old? by Rosyna · · Score: 4, Interesting

    No. In Generations (before he died) he was trapped in the ribbon. In the ribbon time did not exist and if you had the will to, you could exit at any point in time. So could could come out with Whoopi Goldberg, kick some ass then go back in the ribbon to come out in generations.

    Personally, I just want a Q plot line.

  13. Re:A little old? by fwarren · · Score: 4, Funny
    Singularities Make Me Nervous

    -------

    --
    vi + /etc over regedit any day of the week.
  14. Re: Jumping the Shark by MastrTek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  15. Re:Clarification by Mycroft_VIII · · Score: 5, Insightful
    StarTrek reflects more of the present world (when an episode was written) than the world of the future. Watching through the original series will tell you more about North American popular culture of the 1960s than what could potentially be around the corner for humanity in several centuries time. Presumably StarTrek TNG is something similar for the 1990s. You call this science fiction?


    In a word, yes I do call it science fiction.
    Science fiction is not about portraying the future, and future cultures accurately. Or trying to be an oracle of what cool gadget you can expect 2022. Or at least not always and certainly not exclusively.
    Science Fiction is fiction where the many a varied topics explored in fiction have, as a setting, or a tool to explote, Science and science like themes and props.
    Somtimes, by placing todays issues in another framework, they can be exposed and examined in ways a more familiar setting might make to uncomfortable to otherwise delve into. Science fiction by it's nature fits this role well.
    Take for example the episode (sorry I have NOT memorized all the titles/scripts/etc.) people who had one half of thier face white and the other half black are engaged in constant conflict based on WHICH half is which color.
    The enterprise crew didn't even realize the distinction existed untill it was explained to them.
    This episode was clearly a morality play on racism, and the pointlessness thereof. Had, say a cop show, tried to make the same point, it would never have aired in the late sixties do to the climate back then.
    This isn't just a Startrek thing. Many Science Fiction shows, and even shows about the far past, have commented on modern society.
    Science fiction isn't just about flying cars and green women and rayguns.

    Mycroft
    --
    https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
  16. Re:A new dose of life! - completely new.. by Robber+Baron · · Score: 4, Funny

    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!

  17. Re:Bring back Q! by 0x0d0a · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!"

  18. Re: Jumping the Shark by 0x0d0a · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  19. What Enterprise Needs... by pico303 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  20. Not as Kirk by GrouchoMarx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

  21. Re: Jumping the Shark by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 5, Funny


    Perheps if you judged Enterprise on its own merits rather than how it compares to other Treks, you'd like it more.


    To appreciate a Star Trek show... one must forget that it is Star Trek. How Zen.
  22. Re: Jumping the Shark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  23. Re:Bring back Q! by Graff · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    Yes, Q definitely was a deus ex machina.

    ...and so was the Holodeck
    ...and also time travel
    ...and Kirk seducing women
    ...and reversing the polarity of anything
    ...and Data
    ...and wormholes
    ...and Wesley Crusher
    ...and Janeway's ability to know everything about everything
    ...and...and...and...

    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...
  24. Come on! by darnok · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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:
    - 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 ... 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!

    Bring him back, bring him back now. Cram the TV schedule with Shatner, and bring hope to a new generation of kiddies!

  25. Re:Bring back Q! by kfg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

  26. Re: Jumping the Shark by Snaller · · Score: 4, Funny

    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
  27. Hmm... by segfault7375 · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...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?