Star Trek: Enterprise showrunner Manny Coto recently shared new details regarding a scrapped plan to bring back William Shatner as a villainous version of Capt. James T. Kirk.
Per SFFGazette.com, Coto discussed his work on the final season of the Star Trek prequel series in Peter Holmstrom’s book The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek. While writing for the series, Coto and Enterprise co-writers Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens came up with the bold idea of bringing Kirk back from the dead following his controversial demise in 1994’s Star Trek Generations. The twist, however, was to involve the Mirror Universe from Star Trek: The Original Series and have an evil version of Kirk appear to make trouble for Captain Jonathan Archer (Scott Bakula) and his NX-01 Enterprise crew.
“The idea was it was a Mirror Universe-themed episode,” Coto explained. “In the original ‘Mirror, Mirror,’ the evil Kirk had a device that was called the Tantalus field, which you press a button and his enemies would vanish. Now, it was implied in there, in that episode, that they just kind of died, but what the Reeves-Stevenes were saying [was], ‘What if what this field did was transport everyone who was opposed to him into this pocket universe?'”
“It would have been evil Kirk, William Shatner, Tiberius, trying to take over the Enterprise with other minions who had been trapped there.”
Why was William Shatner’s return scrapped?
Despite the intriguing prospect of giving Star Trek fans another memorable turn for Captain Kirk, Coto goes on to explain how Paramount rejected the idea of Shatner’s return, as the studio wanted to end Enterprise. Additionally, Shatner’s asking price was too steep to make his return possible, and Paramount executives feared a Captain Kirk return wouldn’t have saved the series even if it were willing to pay the star.
The Center Seat: 55 Years of Star Trek is now available.
