William Shatner Would Change One Thing About Kirk's Death In Star Trek: Generations
Alan Ruck as a Starfleet captain, Malcolm McDowell as a brooding villain, a cottagecore Christmas party, horseback riding — "Star Trek: Generations" has a little something for everyone. Not only does Picard's crew finally get their turn on the big screen, but their story is told through the artful vision of John A. Alonzo, the BAFTA and Oscar-nominated cinematographer behind "Scarface" and "Chinatown." At the same time, fans get to say their final goodbyes to their beloved Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) of "Star Trek: The Original Series" thanks to some timey-wimey, anomaly-infused space shenanigans that ultimately lead to his on-screen death. But in Shatner's mind, Kirk's death falls short of the tribute his iconic character deserved.
The film finds a retired Captain Kirk feeling wistful while attending the inaugural journey of the Enterprise-B. What should have been an uneventful ride down the block turns serious when the ship receives a distress call from two ships caught in an energy ribbon. When the Enterprise also becomes caught as well, Kirk is seemingly sucked into space while trying to free the ship. He's presumed dead until early a century later when Picard finds his predecessor trapped in the energy field's extra-dimensional, heaven-like reality. While saving the world from the Nexus-obsessed Soran's (Malcolm McDowell) plans to commit incidental genocide, Kirk is finally and truly killed.
In an interview with Screen Rant, Shatner revealed that he wasn't quite satisfied with Kirk's final words. As a fearless captain who never balked at facing off with anything, from Klingons to Gorn, the veteran Trek actor believes death would have been just one more adventure, and his last words were meant to capture this. According to Shatner, "I never quite got that nuance that I was looking for."
Shatner says Kirk faced death with courage
James Kirk was always a man of action. He was there with his people on just about every away mission, and he never turned down an opportunity for ripped-shirt fisticuffs. So, for Shatner, understanding Kirk's frame of mind upon greeting the ultimate boss battle was essential when crafting his final words. The actor told Screen Rant, "I thought of Kirk as being so courageous in life that when he faced things that he didn't know about, like the strange, the weird... the entities that the writers thought up, when he faced death, he would face death with a sense of adventure." Expanding on this thought to Variety, Shatner mused, "Here comes death and he meets it with awe and a sense of discovery."
Shatner ad-libbed Kirk's last phrase, hoping to convey that feeling of ultimate wonder. However, according to the actor, he wasn't able to sync up his intentions with the rest of the crew, even after multiple takes. "I never quite hit it," he lamented, adding that the others "didn't understand what I was doing." Shatner would later say he wished he had a few more takes to try again, and at one point he even petitioned Rick Berman to bring Captain Kirk back from the dead.
But the actor has since come to accept the scene for what it is. And despite Shatner's fear that most viewers didn't get what he was trying to get across, most fans of the Star Trek franchise seem to have understood exactly what he was going for. And despite an ill-advised — if only briefly considered — plan to have Captain Archer battle an evil Kirk in "Star Trek: Enterprise," the franchise seems to have decided to let Shatner's version of the good captain rest in peace.