The death of James T. Kirk in Star Trek: Generations was largely panned but if William Shatner hadn’t returned the Captain’s end would have been even worse. The seventh Star Trek film featured two intense sequences with deadly consequences: one in which the Enterprise-B suffered a catastrophic hull breach that seemingly resulted in Kirk being sucked into space; and another in which the Enterprise-D’s crew made a crash landing in the saucer section only to get annihilated by the shock wave of an exploding star. While those deaths were eventually retconned, Kirk died a second time – this one for keeps – in a bafflingly subdued manner: infrastructure collapse.
No, that’s not a typo. The most famous captain in Star Trek history didn’t die in battle; he died because he jumped onto a damaged bridge with a loose bolt so he could grab a remote control. Sure, the remote control helped Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) save millions of people, but that doesn’t change the fact Captain Kirk didn’t exactly get the death he deserved. Why? Star Trek: Generations was created for a singular purpose: to transition the feature film franchise from the original Star Trek cast to that of Star Trek: The Next Generation. So, a story was devised that allowed characters from both eras to appear in the same movie, but with a definitive path paved for a Kirk-less future.
But, following the dramatic success of Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country, which featured the most intense Starfleet battle to date in Star Trek war history, and the revelation in Star Trek: The Final Frontier that Kirk always knew he would die alone, it wouldn’t have been inconceivable for Kirk to go out in a heroic self-sacrificial blaze of glory befitting the most action-oriented captain of the entire now 55-year-old sci-fi franchise. So, why would William Shatner agree to return for such a lackluster conclusion to Captain Kirk’s story? Because saying no would have done an even greater disservice to the character, and to the fans of Star Trek.
The decision to kill Kirk had been made prior to Shatner being brought aboard the project, and the actor has said he had no say in the manner of the Captain’s death. In fact, producers informed Shatner that Kirk was dying in Star Trek: Generations one way or the other and that if he didn’t return for the movie, they would simply kill his character offscreen. That didn’t sit well with Shatner who decided that returning to embody Kirk for his demise was the more practical option.
While the premise of passing the torch from one generation to the next is certainly understandable, not giving your franchise’s biggest star a say in his character’s exit seems pretty unforgivable. Even if the script and locations were basically locked prior to going out to the actor, Kirk could have died in a more fitting manner within the constraints of what was available to filmmakers: instead of dying because he didn’t have a wrench, Kirk could have taken out evil mastermind Soran (Malcolm McDowell) with him in a manner that saved Picard’s life, allowing the captain of the destroyed Enterprise-D to save his crew and everyone else. But it’s Picard who gets the victory over Soran, saves the Enterprise-D crew, and saves the millions of innocent people in the Veridian solar system, while Kirk hits his head on some rocks at the bottom of a canyon.
Despite the lack of respect given his historic character, Shatner at least gave fans an opportunity to see Kirk die rather than unceremoniously learning about his passing in a few lines of dialog between Chekov (Walter Koenig) and Scotty (James Doohan), and that’s something to be grateful for. But, given reports Shatner would jump at the chance to revisit the role again, perhaps the powers that be can find a way to provide Captain Kirk a more suitable conclusion to his journey than Star Trek: Generations afforded him. If Spock (played by a Star Trek: Generations-hating Leonard Nimoy) could inadvertently change events and ignite an entirely new timeline that allowed him to meet his younger self (Zachary Quinto), then certainly the current ending for Kirk doesn’t have to be written in stone.
