William Shatner Star Trek Cameo Revealed

J.J. Abrams and Chris Nolan have one thing in common with Star Trek and Batman. Both made the decision to simultaneously stay as true to lore as they could, but also say, “I’m not going to go out of my way to provide fan service if this doesn’t help the story I’m telling. This must play across the board to everyone no matter what.” That mentality turned both once-dead franchises to vibrant properties that the movie-going public can’t wait to see the next installments.

In the case of Abrams came the issue of including William Shatner in some form as Captain Kirk. As it turned out, the cameo he and his screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman wrote didn’t suit the Priceline spokesman and he ultimately decided against it. Months after Trek’s wildly successful theatrical run (and a week after the DVD/Blu-Ray hit shelves), comes the script from that scene courtesy of Trek Movie.

It’s basically the meeting of the two Spocks (Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy) near the end. Spock Prime (God I hate saying that name) shows his young counter-part proof that he and the brass Kirk (then Shatner, now Chris Pine) are destined to become best friends even in his newly altered (and thus rebooted) universe. His proof comes from a holographic image of the Shat himself. Singing. Happy Birthday. To his old friend Spock.

Now I joke, but this could have been a moving scene. But we as an audience and the film (and this new rebooted franchise as a whole) are better off without it. The point of the film (at least how I interpreted it) was how no matter what, you can’t avoid your own destiny. Kirk was always meant to become Captain of the U.S. Enterprise. He’ll just never “become” Shatner which made it more effective and by dafault the cameo pointless as Hell. Nothing more than pure fan service.

Everyone knows how Abrams is acting nice about possibly including Shatner in Star Trek 2. But who seriously thinks that's going to happen?