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More On Shatner's Possible Return To Trek
Tycoon Guy writes "Is that the sound of desperation I hear? TrekToday is reporting that, according to a trailer shown at CBS Television City, William Shatner will be appearing on Star Trek: Enterprise for a two-episode guest stint - as James T. Kirk! The most likely writers of his episodes are Trek novelists Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, who already resurrected Kirk in their books, and were just hired as story editors for Enterprise's fourth season." We reported a rumor to this effect a couple of months back.
I guess all that dot com stock for that travel company didn't pay off huh? Have to get back to his day job. Which I dont mind.
KHAAAAAN!!
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
Let's just all hope that Kirk doesn't go back to old habits, rip his shirt off, and fight a guy in a rubber suit...*shudders*
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
Star Trek Enterprise: The Original Series
Where Kirk must defeat the Time Travel dudes to once again save the earth... FROM THEMSELVES!
Or something equally as peposterous.
you can always fall back on guest appearances from characters from shows that had good writers.
This is just sad.
Heh, I guess it's back to Star Trek after priceline kicked him out. Is Spock coming back as well?
and here's the link with the exclusive reason of why Shatner is returning for a guest appearance...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
I wonder if shatner got paramount a good priceline price on the time warp to send Kirk back into the past.
And how do they work around the fact that he's now an old fart?
The sheer number of times he's suggested he'll never do any more Star Trek is starting to make me think he just says it to up the price he gets the next time he does it.
- Allen Pike
Altering time, one time at a time.
More entertaining Trek stuff can be found here, though they have some bandwidth limitations and it requiresflash. You may check for StoneTrek here, too.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Now they just have to put McCoy on with him... "I'm dead, Jim."
Just so long as they also bring back the mini-skirted 1960s era women whose job was to have Kirk fall in love with them. And make sure that they have too much make-up on and for some reason get to hang around the bridge even though they don't work there.
John.
Make your voice known, as hopefully a return will prevent him releasing any more terrible cover versions of good songs.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Man, unless he's time-traveling back, it'll be damn hard to make him look like the feisty young thing of the '60s.
They'll have to slather him with makeup and airbrush half of him out of the frames.
The coolest voice ever.
Heh, geez, got any humorless mods here today? Oh yah, I see a couple right here. =P
Fact: Shatner is too old to play Kirk in the Enterprise timeline without some serious higgledy-piggledy with said timeline.
Probability: Yet Another Time Travel Adventure! YATTA!
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
To date my absolute favorite episode of Deep Space 9 was the Trials and Tribbleations episode, now, granted, they spliced them into an old TOS episode, but still. :)
"The saddest words of mice and men, are not those which were, but should have been."
The flexibility and dynamic range that this affords the director will make for a better movie.
Now all we need is for someone to take hit Al Pacino over the head, steal his copy of Simpone and adapt :)
See that long UID - that's what you get for lurking too long
Nuts to Kirk, bring back Welshie!
I'm looking forward to this. Why? Well, Enterprise isn't that bad. In fact, I quite enjoy watching it. Just take everything for face value and sit back. It can be pretty good when you give it a chance.
Next, we have William Shatner; one of the people who is now simply famous for being/playing himself (Christopher Walken, Adam West, Leonard Nimoy, Ron Jeremy, etc.)
I can see nothing bad coming from this. It could be really good and well written. Or, it could be cheesy, and I think I'd like it more in that case. Either way, between that and Corner Gas, I'm going to be quite entertained this season....
- Relativistic? That's barely Newtonian!
So Enterprise takes place, what a couple centuries before TOS, so somehow old fat Elvis^h^h^hKirk travels back in time to join the crew?
The lamest thing in Star Trek is the sloppy way they throw time travel in as a weak plot device to jam characters from the campy old 60s show into the modern ones. The TNG episodes with old timey characters: a 400 year old Bones, a Scotty who'd been stuck in a transporter beam for centuries, Spock - a vulcan who lives for centuries, shows up and even though physiologically he shouldnt be that much older, he looks like King Tut's corpse.
I guess it would be too much work to try and make Enterprise a genuinely interesting show. I'm sure the "James T Kirk appears on a very special Enterprise" promos will spike their ratings a point or two for the first half of the episode, then people tune out after realizing that the show just plain stinks.
Maybe Shatner will kill this crappy show. Perhaps Scott Bakula will mysteriously turn up floating face-down in a swimming pool.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Odds are he will be on, but as a ancestor much like Data will be on (playing his creators great great grandfather and one of the scientists who created Khan durring the eugenics war)
But if the recent word on whats going to take place this year holds true (Vulcan war created by the still unseen romulans which explains the vulcans additude the previous three seasons, end of the TCW storyline and a wrap up of last season, the eugenics war storyline involving tracking down the escaped scientist. more andorian storylines.. to name a few) then Enterprise might have finally recreated it's self as a preqel and not a revision.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
How can expect that poor old man to save Enterprise when he couldn't even float Iron Chef USA? "Today's theme ingredient is... TIME TRAVEL"
Oh, shit, you can fill in the blanks with your own imagination...
His most recent effort was that he submitted a song parody entry to the Howard Stern show, with a cover of Vinny's "Restless, Restless" song. He's also got a forthcoming album...and covers Pulp's "Common People" with Joe Jackson that you can listen to here: http://www.shoutfactory.com/av/common_people.mov As with anything Shatner...it is fantastic in its monotone delivery :)
Because, to borrow and change a quote:
They've done far worse than kill you. They've hurt you and they wish to go on hurting you. They shall leave you as you left Voyager, as you left Deep Space Nine, marooned. for all eternity in the center of a dead science fiction universe: buried alive (with your television set).
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Man, unless he's time-traveling back, it'll be damn hard to make him look like the feisty young thing of the '60s.
They'll have to slather him with makeup and airbrush half of him out of the frames.
Maybe they can do the same thing they did for the guy in Lord of the Rings who played Gollum. Have Shatner on the set acting with all the other characters and then CGI an image of how he looked back in the 60's on top. Like a virtual face lift.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
First, he was more interesting and more fun on The Practice as Denny Craine. The Enterprise should go back and meet Denny. Second, they should use the animated Kirk from the cartoon series. That Kirk was a better actor.
It's been a long time since I've actually groaned aloud from reading a slashdot headline. Eh, thanks I guess.
funny munging
Captians Log: "Had trouble sleeping last night; my hiatal hernia is acting up. The ship is drafty and damp. I complain, but nobody listens."
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
This news just makes me wish there was another season of "Farscape" coming up. Or, hell, another season of ST:TNG.
Or another season of black filler between the commercials. Or another season of static. Or another season of being kicked in the groin by a large horse.
I'm still waiting for a sequel to Shatner's early masterpiece "Incubus."
"Mysteria... profunde... amor!"
Don't get me wrong; I think Shatner has entered his period of self-parody very gracefully (the latest Priceline commercials are really cute). But to re-enter the role of Kirk means playing it straight, and I just don't think he can pull that off anymore.
But more importantly, I think it shows just how creatively bankrupt Star Trek has gotten under Berman's watch. I lost interest in DS9 at about season two, watched perhaps half a dozen episodes of Voyager, and saw Enterprise's pilot, but that's about it. Maybe I'm getting old and crochety, but there's just no sense of wonder there anymore.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
"Redundant?" Please. I feel like this a perfect example of how sloppy moderates are getting these days. The first quote was "Khan!" (note the spelling), referring to the enemy Kirk met in an episode of the original series, and later in Star Wars II: The Wrath of Khan. THIS post is in reference to "Kahn," who (I believe) is a villian who ran afoul of Catpain Krik in an esipode the original "Satr Terk" series.
Or something...
http://cyclocosm.com Pro cycling at its worst
He's got to be in his 60s, right? I wonder what they would do if they made all these big announcements and suddenly his health took a bad turn? How do series deal with signing really old actors, anyway?
And sign me up for CGI kirk with Shatner doing the voice-overs. I don't think I have the stomach (or maybe he has too much of one) to see Bill jumping around the stage with a ripped shirt fighting some rubber lizard over a great-looking woman.
Heck -- just get rid of all of them except the great-looking women. We could do a new show, sort of a cross between Baywatch and Trek. Something like "Nebula-Watch"
"Firefly" is good because of the same reason the TNG was good. There arn't crazy special effects, or crazy intense computer generated graphics, just good story and good actors. Firefly in my opinion has the best un-noticed cast I've ever seen. I was really skeptical on the series, but after watching the pilot and one episode, I was hooked. I now own the whole series on dvd.
... his return will involve a wormhole, travelling back through time, the Borg, and a holodeck malfunction (er, after travelling *forward* through time first, of course).
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
There was an episode on one of the spin-off shows (Voyager?) wherein there was an organization similar to starfleet, but with the responsibility to keep the timeline clean. Maybe the next spin-off (Time Trek) should be about those guys. What, with all the time-travel as an explanation that seems to be occuring recently.
Thanks to the internet, we can now all die alone together! -SomeWoman
All your favourite characters!
Kirk!
Data!
Quark's mother!
The guy in the red shirt that got eaten by the monster on that planet they were trapped on!
We even have a special appearance by a cartoon Kzinti!
And Captain Janeway!
All the best from every Star Trek series, movie and cartoon EVER produced!
See Captain Kirk battle the Obsidian Order to save Beverly Crusher!
(... the ... longest ... pregnant ... pause ... in ... history ...)
back.
MORTAR COMBAT!
http://www.khaaan.com/
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
A couple of episodes of Kirk wouldn't mean that much for the franchise, and here's why:
Kirk wasn't the best captain. Piccard was. As a matter of fact, the original show was good not because of Kirk, but because of the chemistry of the crew: Bones (what kind of nickname is that anyway?) was an alcoholic. You can see that from the way his eyes were always watery. Scotty was probably the only one in his family that finished college, and the rest of the crew was great too.
The next generation had horrible, boring and pollitically correct crewmates, and a kickass captain. (Q and borg were good too)
(You'd better believe that when Piccard would say "Fire at Will!" I'd be the first one to unload a clip into that John Tesh-liking bearded wimp.)
Voyager had 7of9, DS9 had a story, and Enterprise has hmm... not sure yet.
So in conclusion, I believe that it's the characters and their chemistry that makes the show, not any one individual or the wacky situations they're put in. A couple of shots of Kirk are too little, too late.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Why not? The whole series is based on an F'ed up time travel story... They can do anything they want now, and always press the cosmic reset button. Enterprise has no credibility - the only way to redeem it at this point would be to have the series end with a small child reading a book, and at the end we come to find out it is 23rd century fiction about the 'past', and the person reading it is a young James T. Kirk. The story would be the childhood inspiration he had to become a starfleet officer.
Better yet, how about we get Fred Savage to play a father reading the book out loud to his son... the series can then alternate between Enterprise clips, and the son interrupting him with things like, "Eww... not that kissing stuff again", ala Princess Bride.
rofl! Warn us before you have our computers shouting KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAN out at work ;)
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
I like it because it doesn't take itself _too_ seriously, and uses the sci-fi setting more as a means than an end. Sure, they're on a space ship, but that's just a "home" that moves.
It also focuses more on the characters than the tech (which Trek does a lot)
His mission to return Shatner to Trek finally complete, Dr. Sam Beckett leaps out of Captain Archer's body...
The irony is that his stilted speech patterns probably make it much easier to digitally reconstruct dialog.
KHAAAAAN!!
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
This ...BUFFERING... can't be ...BUFFERING... the entire Away Team ...BUFFERING... gone ...BUFFERING... in a flash ...BUFFERING...
Star Trek is a classic example of something that was good, but has been rehashed so many times that it's all tapped out. The mine is spent. The well is dry. Star Trek has died on the vine.
I can't think of any more rediculous ways of saying it. Star Trek must die, for the good of Star Trek. Let it die. Let someone new pick it up again in a decade. End the madness now!
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Tribbles take over the Enterprise! Again!
The vulcan chick's breasts start expanding for no apparent reason, and the Enterprise is helpless to stop them!
Watch as Gene Roddenbury spins over and over in his grave and is then resurrected like in Star Trek IV!
Watch as Berman tries to save a hopelessly bad space opera which has lost all continuity and has turned into an ugly parody of science fiction!
Personally, I'd rather watch Star Trek: Borg, where you watch as the Borg take over the rest of the planets. I can see it now. "These are the voyages of Borg Cube #200345. It's mission: To explore strange new worlds...to seek out new life, and new civilizations...to annihilate them and steal their technology...to boldly destroy what no man has destroyed before. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated." *Cue music*
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
When they have guest appearances from a character who hasn't been born yet, and which would require yet-another-time-loop in the plot:
"The franchise is dead, Jim!"
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I've often wondered what would happen if an audience was shown a movie that mixed live actors and CG humans without being told which of the characters were CG. Given today's graphics technology, would they still be able to determine who was real and who was not? Or what if they weren't even given a reason to think anyone was CG in the first place? How many people would realize what was going on if they weren't consciously looking for clues? What would this do to the uncanny valley effect?
I went through this process myself with a few still images from Final Flight of the Osiris, and I realize that video is a completely different field that can't be directly compared to images in terms of realism, but it won't be too long before this situation is no longer entirely hypothetical.
Bermaaaaaaaaaaan!
Such is the problem with hollywierd insisting on catering to a thematically challenged (US) populace that can't stand to see heroes die, that can't stand to live thru forced/regular ensemble changes. I find it refreshing that some European programming (not necessarily all, but some) change the characters out.
In a real navy (well, at least in the USN, surface ships), crew members rotate. In SOME billets, personnel might remain at a command (as specific ship or base, not referring to being "in command") for up to 3 years. Ship drivers (ship captains and officers near the level of captain) might be rotated afer 24-28 month, mainly due to "ticket-punching" and professional development, or for fleet requirements. Trek rarely took advantage of any of this, relying on the "deep space assignment" crutch. Transporter, time machines, and quantum slipstreams in speed advances could have eliminated this. (Yes, I can see the submarine/deep space analogy... But, on Earth, people can see you rotate/change commands.) And, no, rotating walk-ons to sit in a bridge chair for a few minutes of quick-pan, no-lens dwell time doesn't cut it.
Episodic series too heavily rely upon familiar, pretty, expensive faces. I guess pretty boys and pretty girls and their agents won't get rich on the usual sequel treadmill.
What Trek might need is a revival of Voyager. I wish Harry Kim WAS a captain, not just some shoe-in to an alternate timeline that **suggested** (End Game) he **could** be a captain. After all, Paramount could conveniently find Captain Braxton of the Federation Timeship Aeon to aerate Kim and have Endgame just as (scriptwise) conveniently succeed with the demise of the Borg...
And, probably ALL same-face ensemble-based shows could stand to freshen up their actors/actresses and yield to changing values a bit more frequently, rather than forcing upon gullible or swayed audiences a constant face or actor.
David Syes
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
If it wasn't already. The shark has officially been jumped on that show.
I don't know if special effects are good enough to do that, after all the camera adds 10 pounds...how do they explain the other 100 pounds?
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Let's think about it. Kirk from the time of Enterprise is either not born yet or rather young. Shatner is in his 60's or 70's or something. He's old. So, if Shatner, the old guy, is to appear as Kirk on Enterprise, either Kirk has to travel back in time from the point when he's either admiral the second time or ambassador or something, or Archer's got to travel forward in time, which has been done to death.
The only reason I want to watch is to find out if they can manage some really clever way to make it not suck.
I remember the first time I wne to the site. My co-worker was on a speaker phone conference. Everyone on the line went quiet and one guy said "What the hell was that?" and someone else answered "Star Trek II".
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
I'd watch it too.
Television needs more shows where the villians are the focus. For a change, it'd be fun to root for the Borg, Goa'uld, Overseers, Visitors, Cylons, or even Microsoft.
Get off my lawn.
To boldly go where no man that old should dare to go...
I'm hungry... Is there something to eat?
...
HOW can you talk about FOOD, at a time like THIS?
First order of business: Survival...
Mother, we can't just STAND here.
Oh, yes we can...
David, why don't you show our friends the Genesis Cave (meaning, take our new friends for a walk...)
Jim, let me show you something that will make you feel young, as when the world was new...
(Hmm, I wonder how many re-takes they had at THAT line...
("**ssay!" was yelled out in a theater when I watching ST2TWOK. I was shocked. Shocked, I tell you. Someon yelling such as that expletive in a Star Trek movie (In retrospect, tho, I could see it hollered out for Bond and P. Galore, heheh)
David Syes
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The only reason Guinan's "echo" gave for not leaving, when Picard asked her to come back, was that she "was already there". Kirk's not. He died (with the stupidest last words EVER: "Oh my." WTF). He could come out again, presumably leaving another echo behind. And since The Nexus transcends time, Enterprise could just happen to come upon it.
Nice. Intergalactic, soul-duplicating Xerox machine for resurrecting characters at will. Oh, look! Somehow, Khan got in the Nexus too! ROUND 3: FIGHT!
10) Drop rumors here and there that N'Sync will guest star as plasma-sword wielding space knights.
9) Show more science officer cleavage.
8) Invert the bullshition particle field and modulate it to 5.69 isohertz!
7) Wait until Paramount is 5 minutes plus a commercial break suspense builder away from canceling the show, and present a contrived and not so suprising solution.
6) Start selling pieces of Deforest Kelly's mummified flesh as souvenirs to the faithful.
5) Show more science officer cleavage!
4) Wait for JMS to pitch another scifi show concept, and then blatantly steal it after the lawyers have lawsuit-proofed the theft.
3) Hide Riker's razor!
2) Holodeck brothels.
And the number one way to save the Star Trek franchise is....
(drum roll)
Buy the new 6th edition Formula TV Plots for Dummies!
Television needs more shows where the villians are the focus.
You mean like Simple Life 2?
Another ten cameras?
There has been a website devoted to bringing back Kirk for awhile, and looking back over his acting and writing work it would be a good call when enterprise is the only game in town.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
How about a show that just explores life on earth in the 'utopian' society ST created? What's life like for everyone else on the ground? What about a CSI or NYPD Blue type of show set in the ST world. We get to see life in the future and see something like a cop show, etc.
Jesus, even I can be more original than some of their "writers".
Plus, what is Kirk going to do? Come back in time as an old man (as he is now) and tell the first enterprise to do this and that? Or will they have him play Kirk's great great grandfather?
PLEASE don't compare the Politically Correct, Socialist Nirvana TNG with gritty, realistic Firefly. It's just not right.
You can get away with comparing it with TOS (even comparing it favorably). but thats about it.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
From memepool: Bring Back Kirk!
Between what's happened to Star Trek and Star Wars over the last decade or so, my childhood lies in tattered ruins...
--
bachiatari na torisetsu o yome!
Between the later years of TNG, the movies, and the final episode of V'ger, they have pussified the Borg so much that they are cut-out cartoon characters any more.
I remember watching the first-run of the Best of Both Worlds episodes with my non-Trekkie roommates and even THEY couldn't wait for the cliff-hanger conclusion 3 months away! Now *THAT* was scary Borgness! We didn't know much about them and they could kick ass while being impervious to our pea shooters. How will Humanity survive them??!
Now we throw a few quantum torpedos at them, raise our multiphasic shields, and press on undeterred. Big deal. The mystery has been solved, no puttin the genie back into the bottle, even via timeline manipulation.
Maybe Shatner would look good as a Borg drone? Or could the costume department even come up with enough piping and leather to cover his fat ass?
slashdot: A failed experiment.
It's obvious how Kirk meets the ST:Enterprise crew.
After his retirement from Starfleet, Kirk exploits his Galaxy-wide fame by appearing as a spokesman for PRICETIME, the new commercial venture set up to exploit the dozen or so different time-travel mechanisms Trek has come up with. "Name Your Own Stardate" becomes an irresistible slogan.
Unfortunately, while shooting a PriceTime ad on location in the past, Kirk's film crew is ambushed and nearly wiped out by a team from PriceTime's fierce competitor, KHANPEDIA. Only Kirk survives, marooned on the World of Suzie Wong. His teeth chattering amid the plastic snow and rubber rocks, the delirious Kirk mutters "Kirk to Enterprise" which is miraculously picked up by the prequel vessel cruising nearby.
This episode, "Margin of Promise," is the highest rated of the season, losing only to CRANK YANKERS and a TBS rerun of "The Cable Guy."
If you look at the entire thesis of the Kirk character you will find that his main mode of operation and motivation is to bend the rules of the game in order to triumph over the evil of the moment. Whether it be the modification to the programming of the Kobashi Maru test, or the bluff played in the corbomite maneuver when the deck was stacked against him, Kirk always bluffed and cheated death throughout his whole career. This is in fact evidenced in the whole entry into the Nexus. His most certain death obverted by the luck of the draw as he tumbled into the Nexus, and not the vacuum of space. His character lived expecting to squeak by and live another day. This is part of the enduring charm of the Kirk character. However when finally the odds caught up with him and death was upon him, such a statement of utter astonishment that he didn't make it through this time is quite fitting.
> Fact: Shatner is too old to play Kirk in the Enterprise timeline
> without some serious higgledy-piggledy with said timeline.
> Probability: Yet Another Time Travel Adventure! YATTA!
But there *IS* a nice in-continuity answer. And, yes, it does involve time-travel.
Remember the episode of DS9 where they go back in time to "The Trouble With Tribbles"? When Sisko was explaining themselves to those "temporal investigation" guys, remember the recoil when Sisko mentioned Kirk's name? Kirk apparently held the record for the number of "temporal incursions". I remember seeing a website, once, where somebody went through all the episodes and movies, counted the time travel incidents, and came up well short of the figure in DS9. So there's PLENTY of opportunity for Shatner, and the 1701 to pay a visit to Dr. Beckett.
And Shatner has long since hit the point where old people don't get older, they just get fatter instead. He looks, now, like a kind of chunky version of Kirk, circa ST5 or ST6.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
Not that I think the ST writers would do any better at, say, a legal drama ... "Your honour, I object on the grounds that my client just disappeared into a polaron-induced wormhole." "Bailiff, rotate phase by 90 degrees and fire on that mysterious entity! Bench to sickbay, medical emergency ... and somebody get the courtroom engineer up here immediately!" "Judge, I move for an immediate mistrial - the DA is distracting the jury by decontaminating herself with with body gel again!"
The real Captain Avatar is a fictional character, so I suppose he doesn't mind if I impersonate him.