Shat Should be in Trek, Not Shilling TekWar
It depresses me no end to see Williams Shatner being forced to shill copies of TekWar comic books, when he should be a cornerstone to the upcoming Star Trek film. As someone who grew up loving Star Trek as a kid it’s depressing for me to see the way that they’re treating William Shatner. It would be one thing if Nimoy wasn’t in the film, but he is and that’s just rubbing salt in the wound. And sadly at this point it seems more and more like this isn’t some sort of Andy Kaufman stunt to get PR for the film — but shoving Shat out into the cold.
At the end of the below excerpt of an interview Shatner argues that that Star Trek is science fiction and it’s easy to write him into a script. But I’ll take that a step further — not only is it easy to write him into a script, but if they did it in the right way they could have done it as a future flashback or something. I feel many of the old Trek movies were a mixed bag, so there’s no reason you have slavishly follow the plot if you feel like you’re reinventing the series.
No doubt I’ll be there on line when the film hits the street with my fellow fanboys, but after reading this I’m not sure that I’d love the show as much from this point on:
Shatner On Comics And ‘Star Trek XI’
“Shatner will have his name emblazoned in the title of the new comics, and it would have been a nice tie-in if the early issues were coming out amid the hoopla of his appearance in the next “Star Trek” film, the J.J. Abrams reboot set for May, but that’s a party he is not invited to. Only Leonard Nimoy, sharing the role of Spock, will be returning to the cast, which will otherwise feature young actors portraying Kirk, Spock and the rest of the crew fresh from Starfleet Academy.
“There is no need for me to know anything because I’m not a part of it. They will have an extraordinary campaign when it comes about, and my dear friend Leonard will be part of that and I would have loved to have been there with him. I am very happy for Leonard, my good friend, though.”
But wait, didn’t Shatner’s Kirk die on screen in “Star Trek Generations” in 1994? He rolled his eyes. “It’s science fiction! If we’re trying to put together the DNA of a dinosaur dead for a 160 million years, why can’t scientists take a molecule that’s floating around and bring back Kirk?” Shatner shook his head and watched the traffic on Ventura Boulevard. “It was weird for me to hand over the movie reins to Patrick Stewart in the last movie. It’s strange to say goodbye. But it isn’t any more strange than saying goodbye to ‘Boston Legal,’ which has been part of my life these past few years in an extraordinary way”.”
…And I can understand if J.J. Abrams is just filled with his own ego (I guess if I was a Hollywood director with several hit TV shows and movies I’d be pretty filled with myself) but it’s sad to me that Leonard Nimoy didn’t stick up for Shat. I realize that it’s some sort of sin in Hollywood to never turn anything down, but in accepting the role without Shat being there Nimoy has turned his back on the original series which just isn’t cool in my book. And speaking of books, here’s the cover art of TekWar:
