Shatner returns to Star Trek movies

By Joshua Tyler Dec 14, 2005, 16:14 GMT

We’ve had more than the usual amount of baseless Star Trek rumors lately. With the once great franchise dead at the moment, fans are a little desperate to get something going for it again. I guess that makes sense.

The latest rumor floating around is that not only is another Star Trek movie in production, but it’ll star of all people, William Shatner. The rumor comes from CanMag.com, whose source claims he heard about it on a movie set from someone else who claims they know what they’re talking about. Believe it, or not.

The story is that a new Star Trek movie will star not only Shatner as Kirk, but Shatner as the evil, Mirror Mirror Kirk who popped up on the original series. The idea would put him together and against all sorts of past Star Trek captains, including Patrick Stewart as Picard and Scott Bakula as “Enterprises’s” Jonathan Archer.

If you’re thinking this sounds like a desperate attempt to squeeze a little more money out of a dead franchise you’re very right. If this is really the direction Paramount is going with a new Trek movie, the franchise is doomed. It’s this sort of thinking that got them where they are today… cancelled and losing more fans by the minute. What Star Trek really needs is some fresh ideas and a few risk takers in charge of their next project. This will get them nowhere, and frankly I’d be surprised if Shatner and Stewart would do it. They don’t need it. Stewart has a successful, non-Trek film career and Shatner is busy winning Oscars on TV’s “Boston Legal”.

What lends this a little bit of credibility though, is that Patrick Stewart (Jean-Luc Picard) has been talking lately about a desire to return to doing Star Trek. But if he does another movie, he should hold out for something better than this.