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Star Trek: Paramount Highlights TOS William Shatner; Will He Return?

Paramount+ released highlights from Star Trek: The Original Series star William Shatner's Captain Kirk run. Could a return be in the future?

No one will ever deny William Shatner's place in the legacy of Star Trek, as the franchise's original ambassador in Captain James T. Kirk in The Original Series, he's delivered every which way since it premiered in 1966 for its three season run, The Animated Series and seven of the theatrical films from The Motion Picture (1979) to Generations (1994). While Kirk's epic sacrifice in the David Carson crossover film with The Next Generation was one hell of a final bow, there are always those who are looking to bring Shatner back in some fashion with a seat at the table.

As we've had multiple conceptualizations of Kirk's resurrection from Shatner's own novel The Return (1996), the short from Carlos Baena and Jules Urbach called 765874 Unification with digitized recreations of Shatner's Kirk and Leonard Nimoy's Spock in a reunion produced by OTOY and the Roddenberry Archive, and the recent comic series Star Trek: The Last Starship from writers Collin Kelley and Jackson Lanzing and artist Adrián Bonilla. With Paramount+ releasing a highlight reel of Shatner's Kirk from TOS (not that he needs the ego stroke), could they be foreshadowing a future Kirk project with the 94-year-old Canadian legend?

Star Trek: Paramount+ Releases the Best of Shatner Kirk

In the video, the episodes highlighted are Kirk's fight with a Gorn in the season one episode "Arena." The second season episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" sees Kirk buried to his chest in the voracious and highly reproductive Tribbles. The third season episode "Plato's Stepchildren" featured Kirk and Uhura's (Nichelle Nichols) kiss, which was predominantly banned in NBC affiliates in the South for its pioneering interracial kiss.

Season one's "The Devil in the Dark" has Kirk and Spock trying to defend the Horta from colonists who try to destroy them as they try to explain the Starfleet officers explain the Horta's biology and life cycle. Season two's "Return to Tomorrow", which features guest star Diana Muldaur as Lt. Cmdr. Ann Mulhall, with the Enterprise dealing with an advanced life form in need of physical bodies and, in exchange, will share their technology. Just as Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) raises his objections, Kirk provides arguably the most signature monologue of the series, and how, as Starfleet officers, "Risk is our business" and reminds his crew that's why they have the starship.

The final two episodes highlighted are from season two's "The Doomsday Machine" and the season one dual Kirk episode "The Enemy Within." The closest the franchise came to acknowledging a possible resurrection was on two separate occasions. The first was a proposed scene in 2009's Star Trek where Kirk Prime (Shatner) wished Spock Prime (Nimoy) a Happy Birthday, but Shatner refused, not wanting to just do a cameo for the J. J. Abrams Kelvin Universe film. The second was on the Paramount+ series Star Trek: Picard, where it's revealed that Kirk's body isn't on Veridian III where he died, and Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) buried him in stone with a marker, but rather on Daystrom Station, the top secret lab run by Section 31, Starfleet's off-the-books secret covert organization, and Kirk's biometrics were listed on a panel. We have one more Kelvin film, the upcoming Starfleet Academy, and three more seasons of Strange New Worlds. Let's make it so.

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