Skip to main content

Star Trek fans won’t get old Kirk cameo in Star Trek Beyond, Shatner says

william shatner will not appear in new star trek film gallery startrek
Image used with permission by copyright holder
A legendary actor and the original Captain Kirk, William Shatner will not appear in the upcoming third installment of the J.J. Abrams’-produced Star Trek film franchise, Star Trek Beyond, according to the actor.

J.J. Abrams’ film series exists in an alternate timeline to the original show, and that allows cameos of old characters as “grown-up” versions of their past selves, due to a time-warp phenomena that occurred in the first of the newer films.

Leonard Nimoy, the original Mr. Spock, made a brief cameo in 2013’s Star Trek: Into Darkness, but it looks as though Shatner will not be getting the same treatment for this year’s Star Trek Beyond.

Shatner has said previously that he had been contacted about appearing in the new film, but according to the actor, those conversations never led to anything real.

In an interview with SFX magazine the actor said, “It would have been interesting to see what their fertile imaginations could have done with somebody who is 20 years older than when Captain Kirk died [in Star Trek Generations] and how they would have explained the difference in appearance. But that never came up. I’m sure they must have thought of it one time or another but I never had a substantial conversation about replaying the role.”

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the iconic space exploration franchise, which first hit screens as a television series in 1966. Fans of the series can still expect to see Shatner in a variety of settings this year, and the actor has been actively promoting his upcoming book, An Autobiography of James T. Kirk.

Directed by Justin Lin (The Fast and the Furious), the new film will be the 13th film in the Star Trek canon, and will star Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, Chris Pine, and Zachary Quinto.

Star Trek Beyond will hit theaters on June 22.

Editors' Recommendations

Parker Hall
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Parker Hall is a writer and musician from Portland, OR. He is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Oberlin…
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2, episode 1 release date, time, channel, and plot
Rebecca Romijn, Anson Mount, and Ethan Peck walk in the hallway of the USS Enterprise in a scene from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Paramount+ is the USS Enterprise for Trekkies, as the streaming service continues to produce entertaining and well-received Star Trek programs. There are multiple Star Trek TV shows to choose from that span a variety of genres. Star Trek: Lower Decks is an animated comedy for adults, Star Trek: Prodigy is geared toward families, and Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard are dramas. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds falls into the drama category, but it's a throwback to the original Star Trek and a treat for all fans.

Created by Akiva Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman, and Jenny Lume, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds follows the adventures of Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) and the crew of the starship USS Enterprise as they traverse to new worlds within the galaxy. The series takes place ten years before Star Trek: The Original Series. After a critically-acclaimed first season in 2022, Strange New Worlds returns for its second season this summer. Below is information about the release date, time, channel, and plot for the first episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2.
When does episode 1 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 release?

Read more
Star Trek vs. Star Wars: which one is better in 2023?
Diego Luna walks through a scrapyard of ships in a scene from Andor.

For as long as both entities have existed, fans of science fiction and fantasy have debated the merits of Star Trek and Star Wars. But for most of the 45 years that the two franchises have overlapped, Star Trek and Star Wars haven’t actually had much in common, apart from their cosmic setting. Star Trek is an aspirational sci-fi series set in humanity’s future, while Star Wars is a bombastic fantasy adventure that takes place in a far-off galaxy. One has primarily lived on weekly television, while the other has broken big-screen box office numbers.
However, in recent years, both Star Trek and Star Wars have become tentpoles for their parent companies’ subscription streaming services, Paramount+ and Disney+, respectively, each pumping out a steady stream of content in an ever-widening array of formats. This has led them to encroach further into each other’s territory than ever before. Star Trek vs. Star Wars is no longer an apples-to-oranges comparison — they are directly competing products, sharing some of the same ambitions and struggling against the same environmental forces.
We will likely never settle on which space franchise is the greatest of all time, but we can take a moment to ask: Which is better right now?

Star Trek and Star Wars have both leaned heavily into fan service

Read more
From Khan to Beyond: All the Star Trek movies, ranked from worst to best
Kirk and Picard stand in Star Trek: Generations.

Star Trek is inarguably television’s greatest space adventure, captivating audiences with exciting, inspiring, and thoughtful stories since 1966. However, like most culturally significant pop culture franchises, Trek also has a long history on the big screen, supplementing its over 800 television episodes with 13 feature films. These large-scale adventures are often the gateways through which new fans find their way into the Star Trek universe, attracting mass audiences on a scale rarely enjoyed by their counterparts on TV.
However, as one might expect from a long-running film series that has had multiple casts and behind-the-scenes shake-ups, the Star Trek movies vary wildly in quality. The conventional wisdom amongst fans is that even-numbered Trek movies are much better than odd-numbered ones, an adage that still holds up if you slot in the loving parody Galaxy Quest as the unofficial tenth installment, which, of course, we do.

13. Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)

Read more